Lost, hidden, and forgotten. These works were never performed during their composers’ lifetimes, but came to light decades later, shining new light on their creators.Maestro Leon Botstein shares the stories behind the music in a lively 30-minute Conductor’s Notes Q&A at 7 PM in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. Free for all ticket holders.

Read the Playbill for this program. (©Playbill, Inc.)

FRANZ SCHUBERT
Overture from Claudine von Villa Bella
By age 17, Schubert had written a symphony, two masses, over 150 songs, and four singspiels. So it isn’t surprising that not everything saw the light of the day. The 3-act opera Claudine von Villa Bella wasn’t performed during his lifetime, and the final 2 acts were burned as kindling 20 years after his death.

ANTON BRUCKNER
Symphony No. 00
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Bruckner wrote this “Study” Symphony near the end of his instruction with Otto Kitzler. But while the composer never regarded it as anything more than an exercise, he also never threw it out, which allowed it to be first performed some 50 years later, 27 years after the composer’s death.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 1
Always back up your work. Dvořák submitted his first symphony to a competition and then never got it back. It was purchased in a used bookstore 17 years later by a curious customer with the same surname, and didn’t see the light of day for another 41 years, by which time the composer had been dead for almost two decades.

VIDEO

WQXR’s Elliott Forrest & ASO’s Music Director, Leon Botstein, discuss Opus Posthumous

Dvořák: Symphony No. 1