Composers Datebook

• Villa-Lobos meets the harmonica

  SynopsisTraditionally, the harmonica is the instrument of the loner: the cowboy by the campfire, the hobo riding the rails, the bluesman pouring out his soul at midnight.The harmonica seems a little out of place in a concert hall — especially when played by someone wearing a tuxedo. But every so often a virtuoso player comes along who commissions a new concert work for the instrument. In the mid-1950s American harmonica virtuoso John Sebastian asked Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos for just such a work.On today’s date in 1959, Sebastian premiered Villa-Lobos’ Concerto for Harmonica and Orchestra in Jerusalem. This work is now regarded as one of the finest concertos ever written for the instrument, but when British harmonica virtuoso Tommy Reilly wanted to record it 20 years after its 1959 premiere, he said had a very hard time tracking down the score. Even Villa-Lobos’ own publisher didn’t seem aware of its existence!Truth be told, Villa-Lobos was both a prolific and not-always-very-organized composer, so his poor publisher may be forgiven for his ignorance of the work. Even he couldn’t remember all the pieces he had written, and once said, “I am like a father of a family too numerous who doesn’t always recognize his own infants.”Music Played in Today's ProgramHeitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959): Harmonica Concerto; Robert Bonfiglio, harmonica; New York Chamber Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; RCA/BMG 7986

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• Holst (and Colin Matthews) in outer space

  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

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• Bielawa's 'Chance Encounter'

  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)

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• In Memoriam: Schubert and Oldham

  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)

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• Weill's 'September Song'

  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)

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