The first performance of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz in Berlin, on June 18, 1821, was one of the most memorable first performances in the history of music in the 19th and 20th centuries; it can be properly compared to the Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite of Spring, in 1913. In Berlin, the opera made a profound and lasting impression on the 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. Der Freischütz…

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) Le Freyschütz Composed 1817–1821 Arr. Hector Berlioz, 1841 The libretto by Johann Friedrich Kind (1768–1843) was based on a story by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun, with french with lyrics translated by Émilien Pacini and Hector Berlioz, and recitatives composed by Berlioz replacing the original work’s spoken dialogue. Premiere: The original Singspiel was premiered on June 18, 1821, in Berlin at the Königliches Schauspielhaus, conducted…

Dudley Buck Born March 10, 1839, in Hartford, Connecticut Died October 6, 1909, in West Orange, New Jersey Festival Overture on the American National Air Composed 1879 Premiered July 4, 1879 at Manhattan Beach, Coney Island, New York Performance Time: Approximately 7 minutes A native of Hartford, Connecticut, Dudley Buck taught himself to play the flute by the age of 12, and quickly moved on to the organ after his…

The history of classical music for the concert hall and the opera stage in the US mirrors the complex crosscurrents and tensions that have characterized the history of the nation since its founding in 1776. The “New World,” the land on which the US was established, was neither new nor uninhabited when Europeans arrived between the end of the 15th century and transformed 13 English colonies into a new nation…

Peter Cornelius Born December 24, 1824, in Mainz, Germany Died October 26, 1874, in Mainz, Germany Stabat Mater Composed 1848-49 Premiered on August 11, 1929 in Salzburg, Austria Conducted by Joseph Messner Performance Time: Approximately 43 minutes In 1906 a columnist for The Musical Times lamented that Peter Cornelius’s life was “the usual story of a genius-gifted composer’s struggle for recognition which refused to come.” During his fascinating life distinguished…

Today’s concert at St. Bartholomew’s brings to light, with live performance, two sacred works from the first half of the nineteenth century. The earlier work—the Cherubini Requiem from 1816 closes our concert. However, it provides a foundation for understanding the character and place of sacred music during the Romantic era. The conventional account of the early nineteenth century argues that the so-called Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason came…

Julia Perry Born March 25, 1924 in Lexington, KY Died April 24, 1979 in Akron, OH A Short Piece for Small Orchestra Composed 1952 Premiered in 1952 in Turin, Italy Conducted by Dean Dixon Performance Time: Approximately 6 minutes In a 1986 article, the celebrated African-American composer Olly Wilson observed that many Black composers create “works which, on the face of it, are indistinguishable in general musical style from works…

The American Symphony Orchestra is honored and pleased once again to be part of the open-air concert programs in Bryant Park, right next to the glorious New York Public Library. Today’s concert addresses a habit to which we have become accustomed: assigning unique national characteristics to facets of our culture. It seems entirely understandable that people want to know what makes some music “American.” The assertion of unique national characteristics…