Composers Datebook

• The truth about Alkan

  SynopsisFor many years, the BBC celebrated April Fools’ Day by trying to pull radio listeners’ legs with outrageously fabricated news stories. One year, for example, BBC TV aired footage of an Italian spaghetti farm where happy peasants harvested that year’s crop from bushes that the BBC production crew had draped with limp noodles for the filming.On another April 1, the BBC’s classical service featured a profile of an eccentrically reclusive 19th century French composer who concocted unplayable works in his apartment on a bizarre instrument that combined an organ pedal board with a grand piano. He was, the story claimed, as fantastic a performer as Liszt or Chopin, and supposedly was crushed to death by his own bookcase when he attempted to remove a heavy volume from its top shelf. Only in this case, the story was more or less true, and the composer, Charles-Valetin Alkan, was a very real person.Alkan was born in Paris in 1813 and was buried there on today’s date in 1888. Only the bit about Alkan’s “death by bookcase” in the BBC profile is disputed by some historians. That story originated with Isidore Philipp, one of only four mourners who attended Alkan’s April 1 interment, and who claimed to have been present when the composer’s body was found in his apartment. Philipp was a highly respected and long-lived French composer and piano teacher who came to America in 1940 and died here in 1958. He seems a credible witness — so who to believe?Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888): Bombardo-Carillon; Caroline Clemmow and Anthony Goldstone, pedal-piano; Symposium 1062

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• Dvorak's 'Rusalka'

  SynopsisWe tend to think of the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák as a 19th century composer — but he lived a few years into the 20th and one of his major works, his opera Rusalka, had its premiere in Prague on today’s date in 1901. We also think of Dvořák as primarily a composer of symphonies and chamber works, but forget that in his final years, he devoted himself chiefly to opera — and for reasons that might surprise us today. In a 1904 interview, given just two months before his death, Dvořák said: “Over the past five years I have written nothing but operas. I wanted to devote all my powers, as long as the dear Lord gives me health, to the creation of opera … because I consider opera to be the most suitable medium for the Czech nation and the widest audience, whereas if I compose a symphony I might have to wait years before it is performed.”Dvořák was gratified that Rusalka was a big success at its 1901 premiere and would subsequently become one of his most popular works with Czech audiences, but ironically, outside Czech-speaking lands, most of his other operas, unlike his symphonies, are rarely performed.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonín Dvořák (1841-1904): O Silver Moon, from Rusalka; Renée Fleming, soprano; London Symphony; Sir Georg Solti, conductor; London 455 760

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• Symphonies by Strauss

  SynopsisBy the time of his death in 1949, German composer Richard Strauss was famous worldwide as the composer of operas like Der Rosenkavalier and tone-poems like Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. These operas and tone-poems are so famous, we tend to forget that Strauss also composed symphonies — two of them, both written when the young composer was just starting out.Strauss’ Symphony No. 1 was premiered in his hometown of Munich on today’s date in 1881, when the composer was just 16. That performance was given by an amateur orchestra but was conducted by one of the leading German conductors of that day, Hermann Levi, who would lead the premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal the following year. Another eminent Wagnerian conductor, Hans von Bulow, subsequently took up the teenager’s symphony, and also commissioned him to write a Suite for Winds. American conductor Theodore Thomas was an old friend of Richard Strauss’ father, Franz Strauss, and while in Europe during the summer of 1884, Thomas looked over the score for the younger Strauss’ Symphony No. 2, and immediately arranged for its premiere in New York City the following winter.Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Strauss (1864-1949): Symphony No. 1; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Karl Anton Rickenbacker, conductor; Koch/Schwann 365 322

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• Sheng's 'Silent Temple'

  SynopsisOn today’s date 2000, at the University of Richmond in Virginia, the Shanghai Quartet premiered the String Quartet No. 4 by composer Bright Sheng.Sheng was born in Shanghai in 1955, but since the 80s he’s made the United States his home and has earned an enviable reputation as both a composer and teacher. But in the late 1960s, during the tumultuous years of Madame Mao’s Cultural Revolution, he worked as a pianist and percussionist in a Chinese folk music and dance troupe near the Tibetan border. His String Quartet No. 4 is subtitled Silent Temple, which he explained that title as follows:“In the early 1970s I visited an abandoned Buddhist temple in northwest China. As all religious activities were completely forbidden at the time, the temple, still renowned among the Buddhist community all over the world, was unattended and on the brink of turning into a ruin … In spite of the appalling condition of the temple, it was still a grandiose and magnificent structure … I could almost hear the praying and chanting of the monks, as well as the violence committed to the temple and the monks by the Red Guards.”Music Played in Today's ProgramBright Sheng (b. 1955): String Quartet No. 4 (Silent Temple); Shanghai Quartet; BIS 1138

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• Beethoven in Vienna

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1801, the world — or at least that portion of it seated in the Imperial Court Theater in Vienna — heard a new ballet for the first time. The real draw that evening was the prima ballerina of the company, a certain Fraulein Cassentini.The music was by young, emerging composer Ludwig van Beethoven, and his ballet was called The Creatures of Prometheus. The creatures referred to in the title are two stone statues that are brought to life by Prometheus, the legendary Greek figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Beethoven’s commission came from Italian dancer Salvatore Vigano, who had been working in Vienna since 1793, and was — like Beethoven — seeking the attention and possible patronage of the culture-loving Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.Although Beethoven’s ballet was performed 14 times the first season, and nine more the next, it was never published in his lifetime. Beethoven was evidentially pleased with at least one of its themes, a tune he recycled twice: first in the finale of his mammoth Eroica and again in 15 Variations for Solo Piano.Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): The Creatures of Prometheus; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; DG 453 713

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