Composers Datebook

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1928, Danish composer Carl Nielsen conducted the first public performance of his new Clarinet Concerto in Copenhagen.“The clarinet can, at one and the same time seem utterly hysterical, gentle as balsam, or as screechy as a streetcar on badly greased rails,” Nielsen said. He set himself the task of covering that whole range of the instrument’s conflicting emotions and colors. He wrote it for a Danish clarinetist he admired, Aage Oxenvad, who played both the public premiere on today’s date and a private reading a few weeks earlier.After the private performance Oxenvad is supposed to have muttered: “Nielsen must be able to play the clarinet himself — otherwise he would hardly have been able to find all the instrument’s worst notes.” The concerto’s wild mood swings puzzled audiences in 1928, but today it’s regarded as one of Nielsen’s most original works.In October of 1996, another clarinet concerto received its premiere when American composer John Adams conducted the first performance of his work Gnarly Buttons with soloist Michael Collins. This concerto contains a bittersweet tribute to Adams’ father, a clarinetist who fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease. In Adams’ concerto, the swing tunes slide into dementia, but the concerto ends with a kind of benediction.Music Played in Today's ProgramCarl Nielsen (1865-1931): Clarinet Concerto; Kjell-Inge Stevennson, clarinet; Danish Radio Symphony; Herbert Blomstedt, conductor; EMI 69758John Adams (b. 1947): Gnarly Buttons; Michael Collins, clarinet; London Sinfonietta; John Adams, conductor; Nonesuch 79453

SynopsisIn James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the thoughts of its major characters keep shifting from the sights and sounds they encounter in and around Dublin to their private, non-stop interior monologues. This narrative technique came to be called “stream of consciousness” writing.In music, something similar occurred on today’s date in 1968, when the Italian composer Luciano Berio conducted the Swingle Singers and the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of his new work, Sinfonia.Sinfonia included music quotes from Bach to Mahler intermingled with sung and spoken texts ranging from Claude Levi-Strauss to Samuel Beckett. There’s even a bit of Joyce’s Ulysses tossed in as well, alongside slogans from the student protests of 1968. The text of Sinfonia’s second movement was a tribute to the recently-assassinated Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King — and consisted of nothing but the intoned syllables of his name.Sinfonia was Berio’s “stream of consciousness” interior monologue on the year 1968 made public with great theatrical flair: a dizzying mix of poignant music and political text. Berio was quoted as saying, “The juxtaposition of contrasting elements, in fact, is part of the whole point.”Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, Sinfonia turned out to be a hit, and Columbia Records even released a recording of the work with its premiere performers.Music Played in Today's ProgramLuciano Berio (1925-2003): Sinfonia; New Swingle Singers; French National Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor; Erato 88151

SynopsisJohn Lennon was born on today’s date in the year 1940, in Liverpool, England — during a German air raid on that city, as it happened. With three other young lads from Liverpool, Lennon would eventually become world-famous, courtesy of the band he helped formed in 1959 called the Beatles.The Beatles started out in a Liverpool nightclub called the Cavern, playing pop tunes of the day, but soon began performing original material of their own. Before disbanding in 1970, some recognizable elements of classical music were incorporated into some Beatles songs, including a string quartet, a Baroque trumpet, and even an orchestra.And it wasn’t just a one-sided exchange: Leonard Bernstein played a Beatles song on one of his Young People’s Concerts to demonstrate sonata form. Arthur Fiedler performed symphonic arrangements of Beatles tunes at his Boston Pops concerts. And decades after the Beatles disbanded, former member Paul McCartney began composing original chamber works and big concert hall pieces, including a semi-autobiographical Liverpool Oratorio.Not surprisingly, some young British and American composers coming of age in the 1960s and 70s credit the Beatles as an influence. One elegant set of solo guitar arrangements of Lennon-McCartney tunes even came from Japan, courtesy of eminent Japanese composer (and Beatles fan) Toru Takemitsu.Music Played in Today's ProgramLennon and McCartney (arr. Toru Takemitsu): Here, There and Everywhere; John Williams, guitar Sony 66704

Synopsis1991 was a big year for American composer John Corigliano. The Metropolitan Opera premiered his opera The Ghosts of Versailles and the 53-year old composer won two Grammys and the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No. 1. Corigliano was increasingly recognized as one of the leading American composers of his generation, and was deluged with commissions for new works.But about 10 years before all that, guitarist Sharon Isbin had asked Corigliano to write a concerto for her, and kept on asking him. On today’s date in 1993, her persistence paid off when, with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and conductor Hugh Wolff, she gave the premiere performance of Corigliano’s Troubadours — Variations for Guitar and Orchestra. This piece was inspired by the courtly love tradition of the medieval troubadours, whose songs combined sophisticated word play with simple but elegantly communicative melodies.“For composers the idea of true simplicity — in contrast to chic simple-mindedness — is mistrusted and scorned,” Corigliano wrote. “But the guitar has a natural innocence about it … So the idea of a guitar concerto was, for me, like a nostalgic return to all the feelings I had when I started composing — before the commissions and deadlines and reviews. A time when discovery and optimistic enthusiasm ruled my senses … Troubadours is a lyrical concerto.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938): Troubadours; Sharon Isbin, guitar; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Hugh Wolff, conductor; Virgin 55083

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1909, The Golden Cockerel, the last opera of the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, had its premiere in Moscow. Rimsky-Korsakov had died the previous year, after a bitter battle with government censors who objected to the opera’s thinly disguised satire against the bumbling administration of Czarist Russia. For the premiere, the censors won — the opera was performed with all the changes that Rimsky-Korsakov had so stubbornly resisted while alive.The original text was not restored until after the Russian revolution of 1917.Closer to our own time, in October 1987, American composer John Adam’s Nixon in China, debuted at Houston Grand Opera. Alice Goodman’s libretto depicts the historic visit to Red China of President Nixon and then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Adams says he was completely indifferent to what the real-life personages in his opera might have thought of it.No government censors objected, in any case, but Adams said that Richard Nixon’s lawyer, Leonard Garment, did attend a performance of Nixon in China, and probably reported back to the former President. Nixon’s reaction is not known — nor that of Henry Kissinger. We’re happy to report, however, that according to John Adams, Leonard Garment did subsequently became something of a fan of his music.Music Played in Today's ProgramNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): The Golden Cockerel Suite; Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, conductor; DG 447 084John Adams (b. 1947): The Chairman Dances; San Francisco Symphony; Edo de Waart, conductor; Nonesuch 79453

SynopsisThe first performance of the Liebeslieder — or the Love Song Waltzes — for piano four-hands by Johannes Brahms took place on today’s date in 1869. The performers were two distinguished soloists: Clara Schumann, widow of composer Robert Schumann, and Hermann Levi, a famous conductor of his day. But in fact, the Liebeslieder Waltzes were intended for amateur musicians to play. These popular scores provided Brahms with some steady income, certainly more than he earned from performances of his symphonies, which some of his contemporaries considered difficult “new” music.Brahms wrote to his publisher: “I must admit that, for the first time, I grinned at the sight of a work of mine in print. Moreover, I gladly risk being called an ass if our Liebeslieder don’t give more than a few people pleasure.”Some much more recent piano music designed for amateur performers was collected into a volume, Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book. This volume was conceived by composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and the artistic director of Carnegie Hall, Judith Arron. They were concerned about the lack of contemporary piano works that intermediate-level piano students could perform, so commissioned ten composers to write suitable piano pieces from composers ranging from Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carte to Chen Yi and Tan Dun.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833-1897): Liebeslieder Waltz No. 18; Silke-Thora Matthies and Christian Köhn, piano; Naxos 553140Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021): The Days Fly By; Ursula Oppens, piano; Companion CD to Boosey and Hawkes ‘The Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book’ ASIN: B003AG8IUK

SynopsisIt was on this day in 1972 that A Ring of Time by American composer Dominick Argento was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis. The work was commissioned to celebrate that orchestra’s 70th anniversary. A Ring of Time is subtitled “Preludes and Pageants for Orchestra and Bells,” and evokes the hours of the day, from dawn to midnight, and the seasons of the year.Though born in York, Pennsylvania, Argento was of Italian heritage, and after spending a year studying in Italy, returned there often to reflect and compose. Argento said: “On one level the title of A Ring of Time refers to the predominant role assigned to bells ... those aural signals of time’s passing. But it should also be mentioned the work was wholly composed in Florence where the hourly ringing of church bells is inescapable.”Bells figured prominently in another 20th-century work by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, From Me Flows What You Call Time, which was premiered by the Boston Symphony in 1990, in New York City, as a commission to celebrate the centennial of Carnegie Hall. Again, bells play a significant role, and Takemitsu directs that at the end of his piece, a series of small bells be rung gently from the balcony above and around the audience.Music Played in Today's ProgramDominick Argento (1927-2019): A Ring of Time; Minnesota Orchestra; Eiji Oue, conductor; Reference 91 Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996): From Me Flows What You Call Time; Pacific Symphony; Carl St. Clair, conductor; Sony 63044

SynopsisIn 1939, Dale Carnegie published a self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, suggesting you could change people’s behavior to you by changing your behavior toward them. We’re not sure if Carnegie’s book was ever translated into Russian, but we’d like to cite the case of famous Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich as an example of one way to influence a particular composer.In Rostropovich’s day, the greatest living Soviet composers were Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1949 Prokofiev wrote a Cello Sonata for 22-year old Rostropovich, and also dedicated his 1952 Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra to him.Not surprisingly, Rostropovich hoped Shostakovich might write something for him, too, and so asked that composer’s wife, Nina, how to ask him. She replied the best way was never to mention the idea in the presence of her husband. She knew Shostakovich was following the cellist’s career with interest, and if the idea of writing something for Rostropovich was his own, rather than somebody else’s, it stood a better chance of becoming reality.Rostropovich followed her advice, and — surprise surprise — on today’s date in 1959, gave the premiere performance with the Leningrad Philharmonic of a brand-new cello concerto specially-written for him by Dmitri Shostakovich.Music Played in Today's ProgramDmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Cello Concerto No. 1; Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, conductor; (Sony 7858322)

SynopsisIf you had arrived early for the gala reopening celebration of Vienna’s Josephstadt Theater on today’s date in 1822, you might have heard the theater orchestra frantically rehearing a new overture by Beethoven. They had just received the score, and so at the last minute were getting their first look at the new piece they would perform that evening.Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture was a last-minute commission and interrupted Beethoven’s work on two bigger projects: his Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. This overture begins with a series of solemn chords, continues with a stately march, and closes with a fugue — a tribute to Handel, whose music was much on Beethoven’s mind at the time.One hundred forty-six years later to the day, another festive occasion was observed with new music, when, on October 3, 1968, the New York Philharmonic, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, premiered a new orchestral work by the American composer William Schuman. Leonard Bernstein conducted.Schuman’s piece, To Thee Old Cause, was scored for solo oboe and orchestra. Originally, Schumann planned an upbeat, celebratory work, but the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy changed all that and more somber music, dedicated to their memory, was the result.Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Consecration of the House Overture; Berlin Philharmonic; Bernhard Klee, conductor; DG 453 713 Willliam Schuman (1910-1992): To Thee Old Cause; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 63088

SynopsisThese days, the cost of commissioning a major American composer to write a major orchestral work requires, well, a major amount of money.Back in 2001, a group of smaller-budget symphonies around the country decided to pool their resources and commission American composer Joan Tower to write a new orchestral piece for them. What would have been cost-prohibitive individually proved very doable when they all chipped in, aided by foundation grant or two. 65 orchestras from all 50 states participated, with the idea being each of them would get first performing rights to Tower’s new work.“When they asked me to do this, they called the project Made in America, and that became the work’s title. [Since] it was going across the U.S., this word ‘America’ kept popping up in my brain. Also, the tune ‘America the Beautiful’ started to come in, and I thought, ‘I really love this tune. It’s a beautiful tune, and I think I’ll start with this,’” she said. Joan Tower’s Made in America received its first performance by the Glen Falls Symphony Orchestra in New York State on today’s date in 2005, then premiered in each of the remaining 49 states over the next two years, ending up in Alaska with the Juneau Symphony in June of 2007.Music Played in Today's ProgramJoan Tower (b. 1938): Made in America; Nashville Symphony/Leonard Slatkin (Naxos 8559328)

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1768, two regiments of British redcoats marched into colonial Boston accompanied by martial music provided by their regimental wind band. It was that city’s introduction to the exotic sound of massed oboes, bassoons and French horns.One Bostonian who was very impressed by these new sounds was Josiah Flagg, an engraver by trade and a boyhood friend of famous Boston silversmith Paul Revere. Before long, Flagg had formed his own musical ensemble, which he called The First Band of Boston.Flagg organized that city’s first concert series, presenting music by J.C. Bach, Stamitz, and other European composers. Occasionally, the First Band of Boston was augmented by musicians from the same British regiment whose entry into town had inspired Flagg’s own musical ambitions.In October 1773, Flagg presented a gala concert at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, which proved to be his last. He included music from Britain — excerpts from Handel’s Messiah — but closed with the “Song of Liberty,” the marching hymn of Boston’s patriots. We rather suspect the British troops did not participate in that concert.Soon after, Flagg moved to Providence, where he served as a colonel in the Rhode Island regiment during the American Revolution, and disappeared from our early musical history.Music Played in Today's ProgramOliver Shaw (1779-1848): Gov. Arnold’s March; Members of the Federal Music Society; John Baldon, conductor; New World 80299

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1960, the second season of The Twilight Zone — the legendary TV series created by Rod Serling — began airing on CBS. For this, the producers added a new signature theme written by Marius Constant, a Romanian-born French composer. Constant had studied composition with Olivier Messiaen, Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger and had a respectable career as a composer and teacher, but he’s best known for his brief, but iconic, Twilight Zone theme.During its five-season run, that show also employed the talents of other famous composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, Fred Steiner and Franz Waxman.And in case you’re wondering who wrote the theme for the first season of The Twilight Zone, well, that was another famous Hollywood composer: Bernard Herrmann.Music Played in Today's ProgramMarius Constant (1925-2004): The Twilight Zone Main Theme (second version); Orchestra; Joel McNeely, conductor; Varese-Sarabande VSD2-6087Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): The Twilight Zone Main Theme (first version); Orchestra; Joel McNeely, conductor; Varese-Sarabande VSD2-6087

SynopsisOne of the most popular works of 20th-century orchestral music, The Planets by Gustav Holst, had its first performance on today’s date in 1918. This was at a private concert at Queen’s Hall, London, under the baton of Adrian Boult, who later became one of the most famous interpreters of this work. The first public performance of excerpts from The Planets took place in February 1919, after which it quickly became Holst’s best-known composition.The great success of The Planets actually dismayed Holst, who feared it would create a demand for more orchestral works in the same vein, and Holst always liked to do something new and different. He never considered The Planets anywhere near his best work, but posterity disagrees.Holst’s seven-movement orchestral suite is based on the symbolic astrological associations of the planets. Only seven planets are represented because Pluto had yet to be discovered when the music was written. This omission has recently been rectified by a contemporary English composer, Colin Matthews.At the request of conductor Kent Nagano, Matthews composed a Pluto movement, which had its premiere performance in England in May 2000. Matthew’s new piece has also been recorded, as you might expect, as an occasional eighth planetary appendix to new recordings of Holst’s original seven.Music Played in Today's ProgramGustav Holst (1874-1934): The Planets; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 460 606Colin Matthews (b. 1946): Pluto; Hallé Orchestra; Mark Elder, condictor; Hyperion 67270

SynopsisIt happens to all of us: you’re in some public space and overhear someone say something that strikes you as memorable, oddly poetical, or perhaps even moving. American composer Lisa Bielawa and soprano Susan Narucki started collecting such overheard phrases, and created a musical work incorporating them.Commenting on the phrases, Bielawa said, “I noticed … people often say things … that help locate themselves in space and time: ‘Last time I ate here by myself’ or ‘Remember — it was snowing horribly? And she was holding the dog?’” Or nostalgic phrases like “We used to have a house here, but then my father lost his job. I never go there now.”The resulting composition for soprano and 12 instrumentalists, Chance Encounter, was designed to be performed in a public spaces as well, with the performers arriving and leaving at different times and from different directions, taking up positions scattered around the site, with the soprano singing the overheard phrases as she strolls among them.This unusual work received its premiere performance at Seward Park in New York City on today’s date in 2008. Since then, Chance Encounter has been performed in Rome on a walkway along the banks of the Tiber River, and in other public spaces in places ranging from Venice to Vancouver.Music Played in Today's ProgramLisa Bielawa (b. 1968): Chance Encounter; Susan Narucki, soprano; The Knights (Orange Mountain Music 7004)

SynopsisOn this date in 1828, Franz Schubert attended a party at the Vienna home of one of his admirers and played some of his new piano sonata in B-flat, which he had completed only the previous day. That same month, Schubert composed one of his greatest works, the String Quintet in C Major.Tragically, in less than two months, Schubert would be dead, an apparent victim of tertiary syphilis, the most dreaded sexually-transmitted disease of Schubert’s day. In our time, antibiotics can treat this once fatal disease, but in the early 1980s, its place was taken by the AIDS epidemic, which, before effective treatments were discovered, shortened the lives of many contemporary artists.One of these was the American composer Kevin Oldham, born in 1960 in Kansas City. His piano concerto was premiered to critical acclaim and a standing ovation by the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Bill McLaughlin in 1993.At that time, Oldham was seriously ill in a New York hospital and weighed only 135 pounds. Nevertheless he checked himself out, flew to his home town to solo in his concerto, then returned to the hospital the following day. He died six weeks later at 32.When Schubert died, he was only 31.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Schubert (1797-1828): Piano Sonata No. 21; Alfred Brendel, piano (Philips 456 573) Kevin Oldham (1960-1993): Concerto for Piano; Ian Hobson, piano; Kansas City Symphony; Bill McGlaughlin, conductor (BMG/Catalyst 61979)

SynopsisThe haunting melody September Song by Kurt Weill was first heard by the public on today’s date in the year 1938, during a trial run of a new musical, Knickerbocker Holiday in Hartford, Connecticut. Weill was 38 at the time and had been in America just three years. In Europe, he had been a successful composer of both concert and stage works, most notably the enormously popular Three-Penny Opera from 1928, a collaboration with the Marxist poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. He had left his native Germany after being warned that he was under danger of imminent arrest by the Gestapo.In America, Weill set out to establish himself on Broadway, but to remain faithful to the philosophical thrust of his European work. The text for his Knickerbocker Holiday, for example, was by Maxwell Anderson, inspired by Washington Irving’s fanciful Father Knickerbocker’s History of New York. But in the Anderson-Weill treatment, the historical Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant comes off as a proto-Fascist dictator, a comic but pointed reference in the year 1938, when both Hitler and Mussolini were at the height of their power.Until his untimely death in 1950, Weill’s Broadway musicals continued to set serious subjects — ranging from psychoanalysis to South African apartheid — in a distinctive yet accessible style.Music Played in Today's ProgramKurt Weill (1900-1950): September Song (arr. Morton Gould); Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; John Mauceri, conductor; (Philips 446 404)

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1966, the 60th birthday of composer Dimitri Shostakovich was celebrated at the Moscow Conservatory with a gala orchestral concert of his music. Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich gave the premiere performance of Shostakovich’s new Cello Concerto No. 2, and the composer’s son, Maxim, conducted his father’s youthful Symphony No. 1 from 1926.On the morning of the concert, it was announced that, for his outstanding services in the development of Soviet musical culture, the Central Committee had awarded Shostakovich the title “Hero of Socialist Labor,” along with the Order of Lenin and the gold medal “Hammer and Sickle.”Ironically, earlier that year, Shostakovich had composed a self-deprecating parody piece for voice and piano, Preface to the Complete Edition of My Works and a Brief Reflection apropos of This Preface, whose text included a deadpan recitation of just a small portion of the many honorific titles he had received and the imposing but meaningless official posts with which he had been honored — and now, he found, he had been awarded several more to boot!All that must have seemed grimly comic to Shostakovich, who, about 30 years earlier, had written an opera which had so offended Joseph Stalin that the composer had come perilously close to disappearing without a trace into the Soviet prison system.Music Played in Today's ProgramDmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 1; St. Petersburg Philharmonic; Yuri Temikanov, conductor (BMG 68844)Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Cello Concerto No. 2; Msistislav Rostropovich, cello; Boston Symphony; Seiji Ozawa, conductor (DG 437 952)

SynopsisIn all, Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki completed eight symphonies, and in 2013, to celebrate his 80th birthday, there appeared a box set of recordings billed as his “complete symphonies,” all conducted by their composer. But while that “complete” set included Symphonies Nos. 1-5 and 7&8, it was missing No. 6. The reason? Although Penderecki had begun work on his sixth symphony years earlier, it remained unfinished when the set was issued.Fast forward to today’s date in 2017 for the out-of-sequence premiere of Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6, given in China by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. The venue was apt, since the symphony was subtitled Chinese Poems, and included settings for baritone and orchestra of eight ancient Chinese poems — with a Chinese instrument, the erhu, providing solo interludes.Curiously, Penderecki chose to set German translations of the Chinese poems, translations published back in 1907 in the same collection Gustav Mahler had sourced for his unnumbered song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde, the Song of the Earth. And it’s probably no coincidence that Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6 sounds very much like he was trying to channel both the spirit and sound world of Mahler’s early 20th century song-symphony into own his 21st-century one.Music Played in Today's ProgramKrzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020): Symphony No. 6 (Chinese Poems); Stephan Genz, baritone; Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Sopot; Wojciech Rajski, conductor; Accord ACD-270

SynopsisIf you were a member of the European nobility, the summer of 1798 was a scary time. That revolutionary wild man Napoleon Bonaparte had crushed your armies on land and now word had it his fleet had escaped a British blockade. The possibility that Napoleon would control both land and sea struck terror in many a nobleman’s breast.During this anxious time Prince Nicholas Esterhazy the Second’s favorite composer Joseph Haydn composed a Latin mass Missa in Angustiis or Mass in Time of Fear. It opens in the key of D minor, the key employed by Mozart for the spookiest scenes in Don Giovanni, an opera that had made a big impression on Haydn at its premiere in Vienna ten years earlier. As Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon put it, in Don Giovanni, 18th century listeners were presented with ”the presence of real fear — nay terror.”So, when word reached the rattled princes of Europe that British Admiral Nelson had destroyed the French fleet, everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief, and, coincidentally, Haydn ends his Mass in the more optimistic key of D Major.First performed on today’s date in 1798, Haydn’s work soon came to be known as the Lord Nelson Mass, and in Robbins Landon’s view stands as “arguably Haydn’s greatest single composition.”Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Joseph Haydn: Missa in Angustiis (Lord Nelson Mass)

SynopsisAs the season begins, we offer you this Autumn Music — a woodwind quintet by American composer Jennifer Higdon. She said she wanted to write a companion piece to another famous woodwind quintet, Summer Music by Samuel Barber. Higdon’s Autumn Music was commissioned by Pi Kappa Lambda, the national music honorary society, and premiered at their 1994 national convention in Pittsburgh.“Autumn Music is a sonic picture of the season of brilliant colors. The music of the first part represents the explosion of leaves and the crispness of the air of fall. As the music progresses, it becomes more spare and introspective, moving into a more melancholy and resigned feeling,” she said. Jennifer Higdon was born in Brooklyn in 1962, and teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her chamber and orchestral pieces have been performed by ensembles coast to coast. She’s also active as a performer and, as she explained, as an enthusiastic member of the audience:“I love exploring new works — my own pieces and the music of others — in a general audience setting, just to feel a communal reaction to new sounds. Music speaks to all age levels and all kinds of experiences in our lives. I think it can express anything and everything.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Autumn Music; Moran Woodwind Quintet; Crystal 754