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Synopsis Contemporary Hungarian composer György Kurtág is famous for writing short, sparse and concentrated musical works. He has, however on occasional written more expansive pieces, including one big orchestral piece for the Berlin Philharmonic and some works for large chorus. Obsessively self-critical, Kurtág disavowed most of the music he wrote before his mid-thirties, which included some for chorus, but a suggestion from Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono that he write for chorus again resulted in a work that the BBC Singers premiered in London on today’s date in 1981. It has an Italian title, Omaggio a Luigi Nono, or Tribute to Luigi Nono, — a tip of the hat to his Italian colleague, but the work itself is a setting of bits of Russian poems. Now at the time of its premiere, 25 years after the Russian-led invasion of Hungary in 1956 and 10 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Hungarian eyebrows were raised when Kurtág chose to set Russian texts. Disparaging or just plain dissing anything Russian was the normal M.O. for Hungarian intellectuals in those days. Kurtág, for his part, stood his ground: as an ardent Dostoevsky’s fan, he simply said Russian was a sacred language to him. Music Played in Today's Program György Kurtág (b. 1926): Omaggio a Luigi Nono; SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart; Marcus Creed, director; SWR Music; 93.174

Synopsis On today’s date in 1795, Haydn was in England and about to conduct one of his new symphonies at The King’s Theater in London. An early biographer recounts what happened next: “When Haydn entered to conduct the symphony, the curious audience left their seats and crowded towards the orchestra the better to see the famous Haydn. The seats in the middle of the floor were thus empty, and hardly anyone was there when the theater’s great chandelier crashed down and broke into bits, throwing the numerous gathering into great consternation. As soon as the first moment of fright was over and those who had pressed forward could think of the danger they had luckily escaped and find words to express it, several persons uttered the state of their feelings with loud cries of ‘Miracle! Miracle!’” And thus, one of Haydn’s symphonies, his symphony No. 96, came to be called The Miracle Symphony. It’s a nice story, but it actually occurred just before the first performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 102. Somehow or another the nickname got stuck to one of Haydn’s earlier London Symphonies, and simply refused to become “unstuck.” In his book, The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide, musicologist Michael Steinberg suggests an elegant solution: He still lists Haydn’s Symphony No. 96 as The Miracle but give the Symphony No. 102 a new nickname: The REAL Miracle. Music Played in Today's Program Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 96; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Sir Colin Davis, conductor; Philips 442 611

Synopsis On today's date in 1862, while President Lincoln was fretting over General McClellan’s unwillingness to confront Secessionist rebels, New York concert-goers could find some relief from Civil War headlines by attending a New York Philharmonic concert at Irving Hall. Conductor Carl Bergman had programmed some brand-new music by a Hamburg composer named Brahms, whose Serenade No. 2 received its American premiere at their February 1 concert — a concert that took place almost two years to the day after the serenade’s world premiere in Hamburg in 1860. Give the New York Philharmonic some credit for daring programming. After all, it would be another year before the same Serenade would be performed in Vienna. Moreover, in 1863, during the Vienna Philharmonic’s final rehearsal of this “difficult” new music by a composer nobody there had ever heard of, open mutiny broke out. The first clarinetist stood up and declared that the music was too darn hard and the orchestra simply refused to play it. Conductor Otto Dessoff, who had programmed the Brahms, turned white with anger, laid down his baton, and resigned on the spot, joined by the Vienna Philharmonic's concertmaster and principal flutist. Alarmed at the threatened disintegration of their orchestra, the Viennese rebels capitulated; and the performance of Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 took place as scheduled and was, to the mutineers’ chagrined astonishment, a tremendous success. Music Played in Today's Program Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Serenade No. 2; Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Sir Charles Mackerras, conductor; Telarc 80522

Synopsis American composer Philip Glass was born in Baltimore on this date in 1937. Glass says he discovered music via his father’s radio repair shop, where, in addition to servicing radios, Papa Glass sold records. When certain titles sold poorly, Papa would take them home and play them for his three children, trying to discover why they didn't appeal to customers. And so the future composer rapidly became familiar with commercially unsuccessful records of Beethoven string quartets, Schubert piano sonatas, and Shostakovich symphonies. After some decades studying music, both commercially successful and not, Glass struck out on an original path. In the 1970s, he made a name for himself as both a composer and a performer of hypnotically and repetitiously patterned music for dance and theatrical events in association with Mabou Mines and avant-garde theatrical director Robert Wilson. In 1976 the Philip Glass-Robert Wilson opera Einstein on the Beach premiered in France and was subsequently staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In the decades that followed, Glass has composed many more operas, symphonies, and film scores, and has the dubious distinction of generating of “Philip Glass jokes,” the most famous being: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Philip Glass. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock-knock. Who’s there? Philip Glass Music Played in Today's Program Philip Glass (b. 1937): Symphony No. 3; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; Nonesuch 79581

Synopsis On today’s date in 1948, Leonard Bernstein, 29, conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of a new orchestral work by Harold Shapero, 27. This was Shapero’s Symphony for Classical Orchestra, a work modeled on Beethoven but sounding very much like one of the Neo-Classical scores of Igor Stravinsky. This was exactly what Shapero intended, but some found the music perplexing. Aaron Copland, for one, wrote, “Harold Shapero, it is safe to say, is at the same time the most gifted and baffling composer of his generation.” That comment by Copland, one should remember, came at a time when Shapero’s generation included the likes of Barber, Bernstein, Menotti and Rorem. But Copland continued, “Stylistically, Shapero seems to feel a compulsion to fashion his music after some great model. He seems to be suffering from a hero-worship complex — or perhaps it is a freakish attack of false modesty.” “Copland was so original that he just couldn’t understand anyone who wasn’t,” Shapero responded. Even so, Shapero’s superbly crafted orchestral imitations suffered many decades of neglect. In the 1980s, however, conductor and composer Andre Previn fell in love with Shapero’s Symphony, performing and recording it with the LA Philharmonic, and declared its Adagietto movement the most beautiful slow movement of any American symphony. Music Played in Today's Program Harold Shapero (1920-2013): Symphony for Classical Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor; New World 373

Synopsis Today marks the birthday of American pianist and composer Donald Shirley, who was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1927, to Jamaican immigrant parents: a mother who was a teacher and a father an Episcopalian priest. He was a musical prodigy who made his debut with the Boston Pops at 18, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. If Shirley had been born 20 years later, he might have had the career enjoyed by Andre Watts, who born in 1946. But in the late 1940s, when he was in his 20s, impresario Sol Hurok advised him that America was not ready for a black classical pianist, so instead he toured performing his own arrangements of pop tunes accompanied by cello and double-bass. His trio recorded successful albums marketed as jazz during the 1950s and 60s, but he also released a solo LP of his piano improvisations that sounds more like Debussy or Scriabin, and he composed organ symphonies, string quartets, concertos, chamber works, and a symphonic tone poem based on the novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. The 2018 Oscar-winning film Green Book sparked renewed interest in Shirley’s career as a performer, but those of us curious to hear his organ symphonies and concert works hope they get a second look as well. Music Played in Today's Program Donald Shirley (1927-2013): Orpheus in the Underworld; Donald Shirley, piano; Cadence CLP-1009

Synopsis Late in 2013, the musical world was gearing up to celebrate the 70th birthday of British composer John Tavener, but sadly he died, so his 70th birthday, which fell on today’s date in 2014, became a memorial tribute instead. Tavener had suffered from ill health throughout his life: a stroke in his thirties, heart surgery and the removal of a tumor in his forties, and two subsequent heart attacks. In his early twenties, he became famous in 1968 with his avant-garde cantata, The Whale, based loosely on the Old Testament story of Jonah. That work caught the attention of one of The Beatles, and a recording of it was released on The Beatles’ own Apple label. Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, and his music became increasingly spiritual. Millions who watched TV coverage of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, were deeply moved by his “Song for Athene,” which was performed to telling effect as Diana’s casket left Westminster Abbey. He was knighted in 2000, becoming Sir John Tavener. In 2003, his Ikon of Eros, commissioned for the Centennial of the Minnesota Orchestra, and premiered at St. Paul’s Cathedral — the one in St. Paul, Minnesota, that is, not the one in London — and Tavener came to Minnesota for the event. Music Played in Today's Program John Tavener (1944-2013): Ikon of Eros; Jorja Fleezanis, violin; Minnesota Chorale; Minnesota Orchestra; Paul Goodwin, conductor; Reference Recording 102

Synopsis On today’s date in 2019 a new documentary film, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah examining her powerful works and her career as a Black American artist. Appropriately enough, the musical score for that documentary was crafted by another talented Black American woman, namely Kathryn Bostic, an accomplished composer of film, TV, theatrical, and concert hall scores. Bostic is a recipient of many fellowships and awards including several from the Sundance Festival. She served the Vice President of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, is a member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2016 she became the first female African American score composer in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “My parents loved music and my mother was a classical pianist and teacher. Listening to the wide range of music while growing up brought me to a phenomenal treasure trove of black composers including William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, George Walker, Margaret Bonds, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Isaac Hayes … I mean I could go on and on. They are all such extraordinary innovators of rich textures and amazing emotional depth. Definitely big influences for me,” Bostic said. Music Played in Today's Program Kathryn Bostic: Main Title, from Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am; Lakeshore Records 35495 (original soundtrack album)

Synopsis In 1933, Aaron Copland introduced Roy Harris to Serge Koussevitzky, the famous conductor of the Boston Symphony in those days. Now, Koussevitzky was one of the great patrons of American music and was always looking for new American music and new American composers. Roy Harris had been described to him as an “American Mussorgsky,” which probably intrigued the Russian-born conductor. When Koussevitzky learned that Harris had been born in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, no less — well, perhaps he hoped the 41-year old Harris might produce music equally all-American in origin. “Write me a big symphony from the West,” asked Koussevitzky, and Harris responded with a three-movement orchestral work: Symphony, 1933, which had its premiere performance on today’s date in 1934 with the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky’s direction. Koussevitzky loved it. “I think that nobody has captured in music the essence of American life — its vitality, its greatness, its strength — so well as Roy Harris,” enthused the famous conductor, who recorded the piece at Carnegie Hall in New York just one week after its premiere. And it was Koussevitzky’s Boston Symphony that would subsequently premiere Harris’s Symphonies No. 2, 3, 5 and 6. Music Played in Today's Program Roy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 1 (1933); Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany 012

Synopsis On today’s date in 1909, Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra had its premiere in Dresden. The libretto, a free adaptation of the grim, ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles, was by the Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In ancient Greek tragedies, violence occurred off-stage, and for his libretto, Hofmannsthal honored that tradition. But the music of Strauss evoking the tragedy’s violence unleashed a huge orchestra with a ferocity that stunned early listeners. After its American premiere, one New York critic wrote of “a total delineation of shrieks and groans, of tortures physical in the clear definition and audible in their gross realism … Snarling of stopped trumpets, barking of trombones, moaning of bassoons and squealing of violins.” Even Strauss later admitted Elektra “penetrated to the uttermost limits of … the receptivity of human ears,” and what he called his “green horror” opera might cause him to be type-cast as a purveyor of creepy-crawly music. And so, Strauss prudently suggested to Hofmansthal “Next time, we’ll write a Mozart opera.” Almost two years later to the day, on January 26, 1911, their “Mozart” opera, Der Rosenkavalier, or the The Rose Bearer premiered. It’s set in 18th century Vienna, and for this opera Strauss included anachronistic, but eminently hummable waltz tunes. Music Played in Today's Program Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Elektra; Alessandra Marc, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic; Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor; DG 453 429 Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier; Waltz Suite Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, conductor; Sony 60989

Synopsis On this day in 1946, Igor Stravinsky conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of his Symphony in Three Movements, a work inspired in part by World War II newsreels. “Each episode in the symphony is linked in my imagination with a specific cinematographic impression of the war. But the symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes — that is all. How and in what form the things of this world are impressed upon their music is not for them to say,” Stravinsky wrote. What Stravinsky did say was that images of goose-stepping soldiers influenced its first movement, and its third movement was inspired in part by newsreels of the victorious march of the Allies into Germany. The themes of middle movement, however, had nothing to do with the war, but consisted of bits and pieces Stravinsky salvaged from his unused and unfinished score for the 1943 movie The Song of Bernadette. The producers decided instead to go with a score by Alfred Newman, a more experienced film composer. To Stravinsky’s embarrassment, Newman’s score for The Song of Bernadette won an Oscar for the Best Film Score of 1943. But Igor needn’t have felt too chagrined — his music may have failed in Hollywood, but it triumphed at Carnegie Hall. Music Played in Today's Program Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Symphony in Three Movements; Berlin Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 457 616 Alfred Newman (1901-1970): Song of Bernadette; National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, conductor; RCA 184

Synopsis On today’s date in 1837, the Dublin-born pianist and composer John Field breathed his last in Moscow at 54. Born in 1782 into musical family, Field soon moved to London to study with the Italian composer Muzio Clementi and became a sought-after concert artist at a very tender age. Haydn heard the 13-year perform in London and was impressed. At 16, Field premiered his Piano Concerto No. 1. Over the course of his life, he would meet, play for, and perform with many other famous composers of his day, including Beethoven, Czerny, Hummel, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn. Field ended up in St. Petersburg, where he published his own compositions and apparently lived rather extravagantly. It’s said he was so well-off that he could afford to turn down a lucrative appointment to the Russian court. In Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace, the Countess Rostova even asks a pianist to play her favorite Field nocturne. And it’s quite likely that while in Russia, like most of the Russian nobility of the day, Field got by speaking French, not Russian. It’s said that on his deathbed when asked what his religion was, Field replied with a French pun: “I am not a Calvinist, but a Claveciniste (French for a harpsichord player).” Music Played in Today's Program John Field (1782-1837): Nocturne No. 2; John O’Conor; Telarc 80199

Synopsis As kids, many of us received home-made presents: a sweater or pair of socks, perhaps, or — if you were unlucky — a crocheted bow tie you were forced to wear when Auntie came to visit. On today’s date in 1720, Johann Sebastian Bach started a home-made present for his 9-year old son, Wilhelm Friedemann. It was a collection of little keyboard pieces designed to teach him to play the harpsichord, pieces now known as Bach’s Two- and Three-Part Inventions. Here’s how J.S. Bach himself described these pieces: “Straightforward Instruction, in which amateurs of the keyboard, and especially the eager ones, are shown a clear way not only of learning to play cleanly in two voices, but also, after further progress, of dealing correctly and satisfactorily with three … all the while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition.” In the case of little Wilhelm Friedemann, it did the trick. Not only did he master the keyboard, he became a composer himself. Even just attentively listening to Papa Bach’s inventions can have its rewards, according to the late music critic Michael Steinberg, who wrote, “Bach has done such a good job at instilling 'a strong foretaste of composition’ that… they will make the hearer a better, … a more aware and thus a more enjoying, listener as well.” Music Played in Today's Program J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Two-Part Invention #6; Simone Dinnerstein; Sony 79597

Synopsis The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms received its premiere public performance on today’s date in 1859 with the Hanover Court Orchestra under the direction of Brahms’ close friend Joseph Joachim and its 25-year composer as soloist. That first night audience had never heard anything quite like it. In his biography of Brahms, Jan Swafford describes what was expected of a piano concerto back then, namely “virtuosic brilliance, dazzling cadenzas, not too many minor keys, [and nothing] too tragic.” “To the degree that these were the rules, [Brahms] violated every one of them,” wrote Swafford. His concerto opens with heaven-storming drama, continues with deeply melancholic lyricism, and closes with something akin to hard-fought, even grim, triumph. Rather than a display of flashy virtuosity, Brahms’s concerto comes off as somber and deeply emotional. A second performance, five days later in Leipzig, was hissed. “I am experimenting and feeling my way,” Brahms wrote to his friend Joachim, adding, “all the same, the hissing was rather too much." Now regarded a dark Romantic masterpiece, it’s important to remember how long it took audiences to warm to Brahms’ music. American composer Elliott Carter recalled that even in the 1920s, Boston concert goers used to quip that the exit signs meant, “This way in case of Brahms.” Music Played in Today's Program Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Concerto No. 1 - I. Maestoso - Poco più moderato; Maurizio Pollini, piano; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 447041

Synopsis On today’s date in 1961, French composer Francis Poulenc was in Boston for the premiere of his new choral work. It was a setting of a Latin text “Gloria in excelsis Deo“ or “Glory to God in the Highest.” These days Poulenc’s Gloria is regarded as one of his finest works, but back in 1961, some critics shook their heads and tut-tutted about the perceived irreverence of sections of the new work which to them came off as too light-hearted and out of place in a presumably “serious” religious work. Poulenc’s setting of the Latin text “Laudamus te, Benedicimus te” (We praise you, we bless you), seemed downright giddy to those critics. In his defense, Poulenc said: “I was thinking when I composed it of these frescoes by Gozzoli with angels sticking out their tongues, and of Benedictine [clergy] I once saw playing soccer.” In retrospect, it seems odd that anyone should have been surprised by the coexistence of the serious and the silly in the music of Poulenc, since both moods had been evident in his music for decades. In 1950, critic Claude Rostand described the composer as “A lover of life, mischievous and good-hearted, tender and impertinent, melancholy and serenely mystical, half monk — and half delinquent.” Music Played in Today's Program Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Gloria; Tanglewood Festival Chorus; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Seiji Owaza, conductor; DG 427304