Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1995, the four members of the Arditti String Quartet entered four helicopters warming up their engines at an airfield in Holland. Followed by video cameras, each player’s image and audio was relayed to huge video displays and loud-speakers on the ground for the mid-air  premiere of a work titled – what else – “Helicopter Quartet” by the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1910, one week after his 28th birthday, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky attended the premiere performance of his ballet, “The Firebird” at the Paris Opéra, staged by the famous Ballet Russe ensemble of Serge Diaghilev.

Recalling the premiere, Stravinsky wrote: “The first-night audience glittered indeed, but the fact that it was heavily perfumed is more vivid in my memory . .  ...

Synopsis

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the biggest, longest, most massively orchestrated symphony of all time is the “Gothic Symphony “of the British composer Havergal Brian.

The Symphony was composed between 1919 and 1922, but didn’t receive its first performance until some 40 years later, on today’s date in 1961, when Bryan Fairfax conducted it for the first time in Westminster...

Synopsis

A New Yorker scanning the music pages of the Times for June 23rd, 1940 might have caught a headline announcing a new work by the American composer William Grant Still, scheduled for its premiere the following day at an open-air concert by the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium. As bad luck would have it, storm clouds postponed the premiere until June 25th...

Synopsis

On this date in 1787, an obituary in London’s Morning Post noted the passing two days earlier of Carl Friedrich Abel – composer, concert impresario and viola da gamba virtuoso – aged 63.

The viola da gamba was the forerunner of the modern cello. Its heyday was in the 17th century be soon after the softer-voiced gamba lost out to the more powerful cello...

Synopsis

There are dozens of famous cello concertos that get performed in concert halls these days, ranging from 18th century works by the Italian Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi to dramatic 20th century works of the Russian modernist Dmitri Shostakovich.

The American composer Sean Hickey was commissioned by Russian cellist Dmitry Kouzov to write a new one, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 2009...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1901, the English composer Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his cheery, upbeat, and slightly rowdy “Cockaigne” Overture, a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society dedicated to his many friends in British Orchestras...

Synopsis

It was on today’s date in 1926, an avant-garde musical piece entitled “Ballet Mechanique,” scored for multiple pianos and percussion, had its PUBLIC premiere at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris. Its composer was a 25-year old American named George Antheil.

But Antheil’s piece had its PRIVATE premiere earlier that year at the palatial Parisian home of a very beautiful – and very rich – young American who wanted to break into elite European society...

Synopsis

On today's date in 1985, a brand-new piece of music had its premiere in a brand-new concert hall in Minnesota. The American composer Paul Fetler wrote his jaunty "Capriccio" to celebrate both the first concert of the 7th season of conductor Jay Fishman's Minneapolis Chamber Symphony and the new Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul, which had just opened its doors to the public that year...

Synopsis

As Leipzig’s chief provider of both sacred and secular music Johann Sebastian Bach probably gave a huge sigh of relief on today’s date in 1733...