Monday, April 9, 2018, 11:30am
In 1874 Georges Bizet was caught up in writing what would become his masterpiece, his opera Carmen. So it’s understandable that he was preoccupied and temperamental when he had to take time out to give piano lessons. An American girl living in Paris at the time had vivid memories of the reluctant...
Friday, April 6, 2018, 11:30am
Although he had established himself as one of England’s finest keyboard players and conductors, Samuel Wesley was beset by physical and emotional difficulties and often was at odds with his family. In 1816 the death of an infant son threw him into a state of depression, and while he was en route...
Thursday, April 5, 2018, 11:30am
In the years leading up to World War I, concert disturbances brought on by clashing musical tastes became commonplace in Europe, and Italy was no exception. A patron asked Alfredo Casella to conduct a concert of contemporary music in the Teatro Augusteo. He prepared works by Jean Roger-Ducasse,...
Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 11:30am
The most capable employee does not always make the most compliant one, as will be apparent in a letter that Mozart wrote from Vienna to his father in Salzburg on April 4, 1781, while he was employed by the Archbishop of Salzburg: I can assure you that I was very pleased with the Viennese public...
Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 11:30am
Carl Czerny counted many great pianists among his students and at least one pianist who, apparently, was not so great, but whose uncle knew something about music and sent Czerny a letter in an effort to make the lessons go more smoothly. In 1817 Czerny received a letter from Ludwig van Beethoven:...
Monday, April 2, 2018, 11:30am
As World War I ended, Romanian composer Georges Enesco had two reasons to be worried. He had turned his concert earnings over to his father to invest, thinking that the earnings would enable him to retire to the country and spend his time writing music. The elder Enesco had invested the money in...
Friday, March 30, 2018, 11:30am
Although London conductor Henry Wood had led orchestras through all kinds of difficulties, he wasn’t quite prepared for an engagement with the Queen’s Hall Orchestra at the Hippodrome in 1909. Wood first noticed the problem during rehearsal. “I noticed an appalling smell of fish,” he recalled. He...
Thursday, March 29, 2018, 11:30am
A great composer isn’t always a great conductor, even when leading a performance of his own music. That was the upshot of an extraordinary occurrence involving Claude Debussy. In 1909 Debussy was in London to conduct several of his works at Queen’s Hall. He was delighted to be there, thinking that...
Wednesday, March 28, 2018, 11:30am
Lehman Engel was a successful composer and music director for the stage in New York, but when the United States entered World War II, he took a less predictable job as a yeoman, third class, in the Navy. Engel was put in charge of organizing a symphonic concert band at the Great Lakes Naval...
Tuesday, March 27, 2018, 11:30am
Dissatisfied with the quality of teaching at the Paris Conservatory, Vincent d’Indy and two colleagues had founded the Schola Cantorum in 1894 as a way of raising the standard of music education in France. He was not about to let anything close it down, including a German bombardment. In March of...
Monday, March 26, 2018, 11:30am
He was determined and innovative and, at twenty-two, California-born Henry Cowell was also trying to establish his musical reputation. His mentor, John Varian, who was quite a nonconformist himself, advised young Cowell that “you will have to depend on yourself and very few other musicians to...
Friday, March 23, 2018, 11:30am
For Spanish pianist and composer Enrique Granados, writing music was mostly a matter of the moment. He was not one to work out a formal scheme for an extended composition, but when inspiration struck, he was impulsive and completely absorbed until he had turned his feelings into notes. A variety of...
Thursday, March 22, 2018, 11:30am
The popularity of his music was waning and he was in debt and ailing, but during his last days, John Bach enjoyed life. After twenty years of eclipse, the eleventh son of Johann Sebastian Bach had restored his reputation as an opera composer by succeeding with La Clemenza di Scipione. His friend...
Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 11:30am
In 1774 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a description for a biographer of his late father Johann Sebastian: The first thing he would do when trying out an organ was to joke, “Above all, I have to find out whether the organ has good lungs.” He’d pull out all the stops and play in as many voices as...
Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 11:30am
Georg Solti’s career as an opera conductor was nipped in the bud in 1938 when German troops marched across the Austrian border, making life unsafe in Hungary. Solti left Hungary for the security of Switzerland, where he conducted two more opera performances. For the duration of World War II, with...
Monday, March 19, 2018, 11:30am
In 1859 composer Georges Bizet was a twenty-year-old student studying in Rome. He had already written a masterful Symphony in C , a major sacred work, and his comic opera Don Procopio , and he had strong opinions about his fellow composers. He wrote to his mother in Paris on March 19: You attribute...
Friday, March 16, 2018, 11:30am
By the time the Venice debut of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Beatrice di Tenda finally took place, it was a month overdue, and winning over an impatient audience was not easy. Librettist Felice Romani was part of the problem. He was slow to deliver and, apparently, stood Bellini up at least once,...
Thursday, March 15, 2018, 11:30am
Serge Koussevitzky had studied conducting with the great Arthur Nikisch, founded his own orchestra in Moscow in 1909, and published the music of several prominent composers of the day, so he had reason to feel that he had some control over the way the music was performed. One of the composers whose...
Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 11:30am
After the success of his Second Symphony in Germany, Norwegian composer Johan Svendsen received encouragement from a representative of Leipzig publisher C.F. Peters, who thought that a third symphony would be lucrative for both of them. In the fall of 1882, after several years had passed without...
Tuesday, March 13, 2018, 11:30am
In the late 1830s and early ’40s Gaetano Donizetti had gone through years of grief and bad health. In 1843 his comic opera Don Pasquale became an instant international success, and a year later Donizetti wrote another opera, Caterina Cornaro . When it failed, he was quick to take the blame. He...
