Composers Datebook

SynopsisAmerican 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 GlassKnock-knock.Who’s there?Philip GlassMusic Played in Today's ProgramPhilip Glass (b. 1937): Symphony No. 3; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; Nonesuch 79581

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramHarold Shapero (1920-2013): Symphony for Classical Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor; New World 373

SynopsisToday 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 ProgramDonald Shirley (1927-2013): Orpheus in the Underworld; Donald Shirley, piano; Cadence CLP-1009

SynopsisLate 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 ProgramJohn Tavener (1944-2013): Ikon of Eros; Jorja Fleezanis, violin; Minnesota Chorale; Minnesota Orchestra; Paul Goodwin, conductor; Reference Recording 102

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramKathryn Bostic: Main Title, from Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am; Lakeshore Records 35495 (original soundtrack album)

SynopsisIn 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 ProgramRoy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 1 (1933); Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany 012

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramRichard Strauss (1864-1949): Elektra; Alessandra Marc, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic; Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor; DG 453 429Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier; Waltz Suite Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, conductor; Sony 60989

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Symphony in Three Movements; Berlin Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 457 616Alfred Newman (1901-1970): Song of Bernadette; National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, conductor; RCA 184

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramJohn Field (1782-1837): Nocturne No. 2; John O’Conor; Telarc 80199

SynopsisAs 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 ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685-1750): Two-Part Invention #6; Simone Dinnerstein; Sony 79597

SynopsisThe 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 ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Concerto No. 1 - I. Maestoso - Poco più moderato; Maurizio Pollini, piano; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 447041

SynopsisOn 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 ProgramFrancis Poulenc (1899-1963): Gloria; Tanglewood Festival Chorus; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Seiji Owaza, conductor; DG 427304

SynopsisEach January, Martin Luther King Day is observed on the third Monday of the month, and in 2009, MLK day fell on January 19.To celebrate, the director of the Boston Children’s Chorus commissioned and premiered a new work from the American composer Trevor Weston. Rather than set words spoken by King, Weston took a different course:“[Dr. King’s] speeches speak to … the beauty of living in a society where the truth of equality is actually realized and often demonstrate a broad historical perspective, so I celebrated King by using texts from the African Saint Augustine and the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar,” he said. From Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Weston includes the line, “O Truth, you give hearing to all who consult you … you answer clearly, but all men do not hear you,” and from a Dunbar work, The Poet, this line: “He sang of life, serenely sweet/With now and then a deeper note.”Musically, Weston echoes works both medieval and modern, specifically the 12th century composer Hildegard von Bingen and the 20th century composer Morton Feldman, with a variation on the spiritual “Wade in the Water” tossed in for good measure.The result is Truth Tones, a haunting, inward-looking choral work. Music Played in Today's ProgramTrevor Weston: Truth Tones; Trinity Youth Chorus; Julian Wachner, conductor; Acis 72290

SynopsisOn today's date in 1958, Leonard Bernstein asked, “What does music mean?” He posed the question to an audience of kids assembled at Carnegie Hall for the first of his Young People’s Concerts — but since the concert was televised, it was a question he posed as well to a nationwide audience of all ages.That 1958 concert opened with Rossini’s William Tell Overture — music that meant The Lone Ranger to TV audiences back then, or as Bernstein put it: “Cowboys, bandits, horses, the Wild West.”But, Bernstein argued: “Music is never about anything. Music just is. Music is notes and sounds put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them, and that's all it is.” Bernstein then demonstrated how the same music could plausibly be the soundtrack to any number of different stories.Bernstein concluded his first Young People’s Concert with Ravel’s La Valse and these comments: “Every once in a while we have feelings so deep and so special that we have no words for them. Music names them for us, only in notes instead of in words. It’s all in the way music moves and that movement can tell us more about the way we feel than a million words can.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGiaocchino Rossini (1792-1868): William Tell Overture; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 48226Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): La Valse; New York Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, conductor; CBS/Sony 45842

SynopsisIn Rochester, New York, on today’s date in 1957, there was a concert at the Eastman School of Music, conducted by the school’s famous director Howard Hanson, showcasing new works composed by Eastman graduate students. Included on the program was a brand-new Trombone Concerto by George Walker.Back then, Walker was better known as a remarkable pianist. He was a graduate of the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, after all, a student of Rudolf Serkin, and an impressive recording exists from his Eastman days of Walker as soloist in the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2. But for Walker, as an African-American, a successful career as a concert pianist in a still-segregated America was not possible — it would be 10 years before Andre Watts broke that taboo, remember, so he opted for a musical career as a composer and educator, and proved remarkably accomplished at both.  Walker’s early Trombone Concerto was a hit from the start. “The composer evidently had a soloist of superior ability in mind in writing this difficult and complex work,” wrote a reviewer at the premiere. “It is music of sound and fury, with lots of dissonance and imaginative drive. Soloist and composer shared in prolonged applause.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Walker (1922-2018): Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra; Denis Wick, trombone; London Symphony; Paul Freeman, conductor; in Sony Black Composers Series CD set 19075862152

SynopsisIn 1916, Imperial Russia was still using the old Julian calendar. In Russia, as Hamlet might have put it, “time was out of joint,” lagging 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used everywhere else.Well, Saint Petersburg’s January 16 might have Paris’s January 29, but on that date Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre premiered a wild, decidedly forward-looking orchestral work with its composer, Sergei Prokofiev, conducting.The music had been commissioned in 1914 by another Russian, the Paris-based ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had asked Prokofiev for “a ballet on a Russian fairy tale or a primitive prehistoric theme,” hoping for something along the lines of Igor Stravinsky’s colorful Firebird or scandalous Rite of Spring, both earlier Diaghilev commissions. Thinking of those two successful ballets perhaps, Prokofiev set to work on one set in ancient Russia about a forest princess rescued from an evil ogre by a Scythian prince, with a big orgy of evil spirits tossed in as well just to spice things up. But Diaghilev nixed the ballet even before Prokofiev had finished it, so its composer reworked the music into a wild concert hall score, Scythian Suite. Even today it remains — for some — a strongly spiced cup of Russian tea!Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Scythian Suite; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 447 419

SynopsisIn the fall of 1784, Mozart and his wife moved into an elegant apartment near St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The house belonged to the Camesina brothers, whose father made ornamental rococo plasterwork, and the ceiling of one of the larger apartments in the house was decorated in a lavish style as a kind of show room for prospective clients.In that apartment on today’s date in 1785, Haydn heard a few of the new string quartets Mozart had recently completed and would eventually dedicate to the older composer. It’s likely Mozart performed the viola part on that occasion.A month later, when Mozart’s father paid a visit to Vienna, the rest of the new quartets were performed, again with Haydn present. That was the occasion that Haydn turned to him and said: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”It was probably the most deeply appreciated compliment Mozart ever received, but one the following evening wasn't too shabby either. After a performance of one of his Piano Concertos, his majesty the Austrian emperor waved to Wolfgang as he left the stage and called out: “Bravo, Mozart!”Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet No. 14; Juilliard Quartet CBS/Sony 45826Wolfgang Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 18; Richard Goode, piano; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Nonesuch 79439

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1900, Tosca, a new opera by Giacomo Puccini had its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Rome was, in fact, the opera’s setting and those in the audience would have instantly recognized the real-life landmarks depicted on stage.Puccini composed Tosca at the height of the “verismo” or “realism” craze in opera. It might seem downright silly that a theatrical form as unreal and stylized as opera could ever be described as “realistic” – but the idea was to depict “a slice of real life” – even if that slice includes melodramatic characters like a sadistic, lecherous police chief and a beautiful opera diva he lusts for.To be as realistic as possible, Puccini visited Rome to listen to the early morning church bells from the ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo, the setting of his opera’s third act and to consult with a Roman priest on the details of the liturgy for the “Te Deum” that concludes Act I.Some early audiences for Tosca thought Puccini had taken this realism thing way too far. One proper British reviewer wrote: “Those who were present were little prepared for the revolting effects produced by musically illustrating torture ... or the dying kicks of a murdered scoundrel.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGiacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Tosca; Soloists and Philharmonia Orchestra; Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor; DG 431 775

SynopsisToday’s date in 1904 marks the birthday of Richard Addinsell, a versatile British musician who became one of the most famous film score composers of his generation.Addinsell was born in London, studied music at the Royal College of Music, and pursued additional studies in Berlin and Vienna before heading off to America in 1933 for some practical education at Hollywood film studios. He put both his theoretical and practical learning to good use when he returned to England, where he began composing for a series of successful British movies, like the Oscar-winning 1939 film Goodbye, Mr. Chips.Addinsell also became a popular songwriter and accompanist for British comediennes and cabaret singers of the day.But Addinsell is best known as the composer of the Warsaw Concerto, a piano concerto consciously modeled on the big Romantic scores of Rachmaninoff. This music originally appeared in the 1941 British adventure film Dangerous Moonlight, retitled Suicide Squadron when it was released in the U.S. in 1942.After that mega-hit, Addinsell’s fluent and versatile writing continued to grace a goodly number of Post-War British films and TV dramatizations, ranging from historical epics to psychological thrillers, gritty “slice-of-life” dramas, and whimsical, light-hearted comedies.Addinsell died in London at 73 in 1977.Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Addinsell (1904-1977): Goodbye, Mr. Chips; BBC Concert Orchestra; Kenneth Alwyn, conductor; Marco Polo 8.223732Richard Addinsell (1904-1977): Warsaw Concerto; Cristina Ortiz, piano; Royal Philharmonic; Moseh Atzmon, conductor; London 414 348

SynopsisComposers and publishers don’t always see eye to eye. Simrock, the German publisher of Dvořák’s music, irritated the patriotic Czech composer by issuing his scores with his first name printed in its Germanic form “Anton” rather than its Czech form “Antonín.” They finally came up with a compromise: Simrock abbreviated Dvorak’s first name, printing it as “A-N-T-period” on the music’s title page: Germans could read that as “Anton” and Czechs as “Antonín.” Everyone was happy.Simrock would also have liked Dvořák to stick to writing small-scale chamber works — which sold well — rather than large-scale symphonic works — which didn’t.“You counsel me that I should write small works, but this is very difficult … At the moment my head is full of large ideas and I will have to do as dear Lord wishes,” he wrote in 1891. A few years later, he would make Simrock very happy by sending them some large- and small-scale works that would sell tremendously well, including his New World Symphony and American String Quartet … plus this music — an American String Quintet published by Simrock as Dvořák’s Op. 97.Dvořák’s quintet was composed in Spillville, Iowa, in the summer of 1893 and was first heard at Carnegie Hall in New York on today’s date in 1894.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonín Dvořák (1841-1904): American String Quintet; Smetana Quartet; Josef Suk, viola; Denon 72507