The Fragrant Faust
Monday, February 10, 2020, 11:30am
The producers of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust had their work cut out for them. The opera had not done so well at its Paris debut in 1859, and now a Hanover premiere was in the works. Although many in the city and the surrounding countryside were excited about the upcoming performance, several...
The Vocal Critic
Friday, February 7, 2020, 11:30am
Casting an opera for the stage and casting it for the movies can be quite different, as was proved by a notable blunder at RCA. In his 1976 autobiography Cadenza: A Musical Career longtime Boston Symphony conductor Erich Leinsdorf tells of recording sessions in Rome in the late 1950s. For a...
The Rift
Thursday, February 6, 2020, 11:30am
The great philosopher was a champion of the great composer until one of them tried to enter the field of the other. That’s the way conductor Hans Richter told the young pianist Ernst von Dohnányi about the rift between Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Richter, who was a close...
Lost in Translation
Wednesday, February 5, 2020, 11:30am
As an established concert pianist, Cyril Smith was accustomed to overcoming the routine obstacles that inevitably arose during performances in England. In 1937 he was invited by the British Consul to undertake a six-week swing through Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,...
Charisma
Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 11:30am
James William Davison, music critic for The Times of London, was known for his caustic dismissals of celebrated composers and performers. But when the charismatic young pianist Arabella Goddard came to his attention, Davison changed his tune. At the age of four-and-a-half, the French-born daughter...
Pay it Forward
Monday, February 3, 2020, 11:30am
One day in 1962 world renowned violinist Isaac Stern was at the Paris workshop of celebrated lute maker Etienne Vatelot, a good friend who had written him a letter about a Chinese family of his acquaintance. Vatelot said to Stern, “They have this young boy, about six, seven years old. You should...
The Next Generation
Friday, January 31, 2020, 11:30am
After a grueling concert tour of Great Britain, Johann Strauss had faced a rebellious orchestra and suffered a physical breakdown. After his return to Vienna to recuperate in the winter of 1839, his shattered health and tattered finances gave him no alternative but to lie in his sickbed and hope to...
An Irresistible Force
Thursday, January 30, 2020, 11:30am
Johann Strauss the Elder and his orchestra had come to London to perform for the coronation of Queen Victoria, but before playing a note, he had been hauled into court over a dispute with an unprincipled hotel proprietor. He won the case, but Strauss was compelled to pay the court costs, which was...
Insult to Injury
Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 11:30am
Was it the crowning of the new king, George II, or something in the air that made London audiences tire of Italian music, operas in particular, in 1727? Whatever it was, George Frederick Handel pressed on in spite of it and continued to produce operas until he and his backers ran out of money. As...
Rebound
Tuesday, January 28, 2020, 11:30am
Six days after the Hamburg debut of his First Piano Concerto, on January 28, 1859, Johannes Brahms wrote an assessment to violinist Joseph Joachim in Leipzig: Dearest Friend–Even though I’m still quite stunned by the sublime delights that have assaulted my eyes and ears for the last few days via...
Crocodile Teeth
Monday, January 27, 2020, 11:30am
A sojourn in Paris was necessary for an aspiring composer, but the cost of living was high, and, toward the end of 1927, Heitor Villa-Lobos was beginning to run out of money. He needed to attract more people to the concerts of his music, and he concluded that the fastest way to do it would be with...
Occupational Hazards
Friday, January 24, 2020, 11:30am
Clara Schumann was one of Europe’s great pianists. The widow of Robert Schumann was also the closest friend of Johannes Brahms, and she wrote to him from Vienna on January 24, 1866: The financial situation here seems to be pretty bad and yet all of the concerts are well attended. I hope mine will...
The Salesman
Thursday, January 23, 2020, 11:30am
Antonio Vivaldi taught at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, an institution for orphaned or abandoned girls, but he had further ambitions, and so he also began managing the San Angelo Theater as a producer of operas. At the same time, he was also a good salesman, and, on one occasion, he sold some...
The Guide
Wednesday, January 22, 2020, 11:30am
As organist and choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church in the Chelsea section of London, John Ireland was known for nurturing the talent of singers and instrumentalists who came up through the ranks. He was also known for being a fierce disciplinarian who was not above shouting expletives at erring...
Soloists, Choirs, and Ghosts
Tuesday, January 21, 2020, 11:30am
As the March 14 Florence debut of his opera Macbeth approached, Giuseppe Verdi was becoming more and more concerned about the details of its production. Impresario Antonio Lanari had written to him about some of the finer points of hiring soloists and chorus members, which began to get into...
The Experimenter
Monday, January 20, 2020, 11:30am
The work that made Edgar Varèse known internationally was Amériques. He finished it in 1921, by which time he was thirty-eight years old. What happened to all the music he wrote before it? In 1913 Varèse and his wife were living in Berlin, and, after six years of marriage, decided to separate. She...
Blunt
Friday, January 17, 2020, 11:30am
Florent Schmitt was an innovative French composer whose 1907 ballet La tragédie de Salomé in some ways anticipated Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring , and the Russian composer expressed admiration for his works. His music had what someone called “an aggressive masculinity,” and when it came to...
First Hearing
Thursday, January 16, 2020, 11:30am
The composer was all caught up in conducting the debut of his first really big work. For several days, Ralph Vaughan Williams had been too nervous to sleep or eat right. He was unaware of friends and musical personages in the audience–Charles Villiers Stanford and the promising composer George...
The Façade
Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 11:30am
Poetry had prompted William Walton to write the music for Façade, but the provocative melodrama propelled the young composer into some very prosaic situations. The poet, Edith Sitwell, had goaded the reluctant Walton into the project. Her brother Osbert came up with the idea of reciting the words...
I Feel Sorry for All of Them
Tuesday, January 14, 2020, 11:30am
In his 1928 autobiography John Philip Sousa describes a concert in which he felt that he had to make a statement. On January 14, 1792, Joseph Haydn wrote from London to Luigia Polzelli in Italy a letter that gives some insight into the rough-and-tumble music business: My dearest Polzelli! I...