Concert Notes
New York and Gustav Mahler
The New York City to which Gustav Mahler arrived in 1907 was the third largest German-speaking city in the world. With its nearly 800,000 Germans, and over 140,000 inhabitants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only Berlin and Vienna had more German speakers. Already in the 1870s, the largest German language newspaper in the world was the…
Read MoreALL-DUKE ELLINGTON PROGRAM
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington Born April 29, 1899, in Washington, D.C. Died May 24, 1974, in New York, NY By the time Duke Ellington was 75 years old, he was perhaps the most lauded composer of not only the 20th century, but possibly of any century. He had been presented with the Presidential Medal of…
Read MoreDuke Ellington
During his three-year sojourn in the United States in the early 1890s—as director of a conservatory here in New York—the world-famous Czech composer Antonin Dvo˘rák observed that if composers in the United States were ever to break away from being trapped in the shadow of Europe’s musical culture and make an original lasting American contribution…
Read MoreAmerican Harmonies: The Music of Walter Piston
American Harmonies: The Music of Walter Piston By Leon Botstein Written for the concert American Harmonies: The Music of Walter Piston, performed on March 29, 2011 at Carnegie Hall. The contrast between Walter Piston’s career and his posthumous reputation and place in the repertory exposes the ironies and shortcomings in the way the history of…
Read MoreBeyond Beethoven
Louis Spohr Born April 5, 1784, Brunswick, Germany Died October 22, 1859, Kassel, Germany Symphony No. 6, “Historical Symphony” Composed in 1839 Performance Time: Approximately 26 minutes After Beethoven’s death in 1827, European critics and audiences generally agreed that Louis (née Ludwig) Spohr was the greatest German composer. Until the rise of Mendelssohn,…
Read MoreCelebrating Beethoven
Our habit of marking anniversaries in our culture of concert programming has to inspire some ambivalence. Mathematical symmetries in chronology are superstitions. If we want to exploit them to attract the attention of the audience, we ought to celebrate composers who need remembering, those whom we have forgotten but should not have, or those in…
Read MoreA Miraculous Family
There are probably enough members of tonight’s audience who will readily recognize—with a smile–the name P.D.Q. Bach—whose music does not appear on the program. P.D.Q.’s creator, the American composer Peter Schickele (whose aptitude for musical jokes was unparalleled) described him as “the last and unquestionably the least of the great Johann Sebastian Bach’s many children.”…
Read MoreThe Sons of Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) wrote more than a thousand musical works, and had twenty children. Four of his six sons became respected composers in their own right. Though they had the same father, the two eldest—Wilhelm Friedemann (1710–1784) and Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–1788) had a different mother, Maria Barbara (1684–1720), than the two younger sons—Johann…
Read MoreThe Kingdom
Edward Elgar Born June 2, 1857, Broadheath, United Kingdom Died February 23, 1934, Worcester, United Kingdom The Kingdom, Op. 51 Composed in 1906 Premiered on October 3, 1906 in Birmingham, England at Birmingham Music Festival conducted by Elgar with soloists Agnes Nicholls, Muriel Foster, John Coates and William Higley Performance Time: Approximately 95 minutes Due…
Read MoreElgar’s The Kingdom
During the Bard Music Festival in 2007, which had Edward Elgar as its focus, the American Symphony Orchestra planned to present in the New York area the composer’s three great oratorios. The festival, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, closed with a performance of The Dream of Gerontius.…
Read More