Surviving a Russian Tour
Monday, June 1, 2020, 11:30am
Clara Schumann was one of the best-known pianists in the world. After a concert tour, she shared some of her impressions of Russia and Russian performers in a letter she wrote to Johannes Brahms from Dusseldorf on June 1st, 1854: “We attended a grand festival in the Kremlin on Easter night and I'll...
The Riot
Friday, May 29, 2020, 11:30am
The Champs-Elysees Theater. May 29th, 1913. One of the most notorious premieres in classical music is about to occur. Pierre Monteux is about to conduct the first performance of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring. The wife of dancer and choreographer Vaslev Nijinksy has heard bits of the...
The Ambulance Driver
Thursday, May 28, 2020, 11:30am
When World War I swept across France, Maurice Ravel set aside composing and became an ambulance driver. He was an ambitious volunteer. But at the age of 41 he discovered a problem that threatened to take him out of the service entirely. He wrote to a friend at the end of May 1916: “You know—because...
The Catastrophic Conductor
Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 11:30am
Louis Spohr was one of the first conductors to use a small stick--a baton--instead of a staff. The baton enabled Spohr to direct the orchestra in subtle ways, the staff was good for little more than beating time. But the conductor whom Spohr found dramatic and expressive--to a fault--was Beethoven...
Wagner vs. the Londoners
Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 11:30am
It wasn't the best offer Richard Wagner had received--an invitation to conduct eight concerts for the London Philharmonic Society for a fee of 200 pounds. But Wagner was attracted to the chance of conducting a large and excellent orchestra, and so in 1855 he came to London--and the center of a...
The Gruff Giant
Monday, May 25, 2020, 11:30am
At the age of twenty-one Felix Mendelssohn was already known as one of Europe’s finest composers, and he came from a family that moved in high social circles. But young Mendelssohn was in awe and unsure of himself when he visited the 81-year-old literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. On May...
Bruckner's Clutter
Friday, May 22, 2020, 11:30am
He wrote vast dramatic symphonies but Anton Bruckner led a life that tended to be prosaic and more than a little cluttered. He didn’t look like other musicians of the 1880's. He kept his hair cut so short that many people remembered him as being bald. He wore a short jacket and voluminous trousers...
The Man I Was Looking For
Thursday, May 21, 2020, 3:05pm
He ‘s generally thought of as a singularly English composer, but early in his career, Ralph Vaughan Williams had trouble developing his style in England. He needed the right teacher and he found him in an unexpected place. One of Vaughan Williams' first teachers was Charles Villiers Stanford, who...
The Plow That Broke the Plains
Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 11:30am
The Great Depression was a difficult time for most Americans, including musicians. In 1936 Virgil Thomson was a forty-year-old composer struggling for recognition and cash. His friend John Houseman recommended Thomson to a documentary filmmaker named Pare Lorenz. Lorenz had already interviewed...
Telemann's Runaway Wife
Tuesday, May 19, 2020, 11:30am
Composer George Philip Telemann had lived a long, productive life, but on the home front events had taken some unhappy turns. Telemann consoled himself with two loves--poetry and plants. Telemann's unfortunate home life was publicized by a theater scandal that broke in Hamburg. A play was being...
Liszt in the Lap of Luxury
Monday, May 18, 2020, 11:30am
In 1876 Franz Liszt was on his way from Hanover to Weimar, but he was making the trip in a leisurely, glamorous way. He stopped over at Loo Castle near Utrecht in Holland. On May 18th he wrote to a friend in Weimar: “I already asked you from Hanover to keep your quartet together on Friday, May 26th...
Dangerous Disobedience
Friday, May 15, 2020, 11:30am
Vienna in 1787. It could be a risky place and time for a composer to make a living. And Antonio Salieri took a big risk. He disobeyed the Emperor. Salieri had recently returned from Paris where his opera Tarare had been produced. Emperor Joseph the Second ordered Salieri and his librettist Lorenzo...
Toscanini and the Fascists
Thursday, May 14, 2020, 11:30am
You might think that conducting an orchestra would be a safe profession, but at times a conductor can fall into a life-threatening situation. So it was with Arturo Toscanini in Bologna,Italy on May 14th, 1931. Toscanini had accepted an invitation to conduct two concerts in Bologna. The purpose was...
Faces to Make One Miss Notes
Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 11:30am
New Orleans-born pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk toured the northern states during the Civil War. As he traveled through New York State he was occasionally able to forget about the war and concentrate on the two great loves of his life--music and women. In May 1864 he wrote in his...
The Unlikely Ally
Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 11:30am
The Frenchman Gabriel Fauré was inclined to write refined, soft-spoken music. In 1908 one of his staunchest supporters was a composer of outgoing, often dissonant pieces--the Spaniard Isaac Albéniz. Fauré was born on May 12th, 1845. He was fifteen years Albéniz' senior, but Albéniz had been a...
William Grant Still
Monday, May 11, 2020, 11:30am
It was the place for an artist to grow--Paris in the 1920's. The American melodist William Grant Still took an unlikely route to get there, and chose an unlikely teacher--the champion of electronic music, Edgar Varèse. Still was born on a plantation near Woodville, Mississippi on May 11th, 1895...
Richard Strauss and the Yanks
Friday, May 8, 2020, 11:30am
May 8th, 1945 -- V.E. Day. Germany surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. Composer Richard Strauss was among the many who were glad that the war was over regardless of who had won. He and his family had been suffering under the Nazi regime while living near the village of...
The Money Back Guarantee
Thursday, May 7, 2020, 11:30am
The following letter to Giuseppe Verdi in 1872 shows that to be a composer is to expose oneself to criticism from anyone and everyone: Much Honored Signor Verdi, “On the second of this month I went to Padua, lured by the sensation caused by your opera Aida. I was so intrigued that I was in my seat—...
Chopin in Vienna
Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 11:30am
In 1831 a young pianist and composer named Frederick Chopin left his native land, Poland, in order to establish himself in European musical circles. He was a popular success as a concert performer, but at times was lonely in a crowd. In Vienna in the spring of 1831 Chopin wrote in his journal: “...
Winning Over the Master
Tuesday, May 5, 2020, 11:30am
The young American composer Daniel Gregory Mason had come to Boston to interview the great pianist and composer Ignace Jan Paderweski for Century Magazine. There was trouble from the start. Mason made the appointment through Paderewski's secretary and arrived at Paderweski's hotel on time for the...