Composers Datebook

• Tomaso Albinoni

  SynopsisFor some composers, what made them popular in their own day is not always what makes them popular today. Take, for example, Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who was born in Venice on today’s date in 1671.Albinoni was the son of a wealthy paper merchant, so he was sufficiently well-off, not to have to land a job with the church or some noble patron. He was most famous as an opera composer and travelled outside Italy to lead productions. Unfortunately, his opera scores were never published and so were lost to posterity. He did, however, publish several collections of instrumental works, and it is on these that his fame rests today.By a quirk of fate, nowadays Albinoni’s best known work, his famous Adagio in g minor, was not one those works published in the 18th century. Rather, it was a 20th century recreation by musicologist Remo Giazotto based on a rather skimpy surviving sketch. No matter that there are scads of other Albinoni Adagios equally ravishing and straight from his own quill pen. In 1996 the Erato label even issued an album consisting of nothing but 22 original and legitimate Albinoni Adagios and slow movements — plus the famous Adagio that was cooked up by Remo Giazotto tossed in for good measure!Music Played in Today's ProgramTomaso Albinoni (1671-1751): Adagio, from Concerto No. 12; I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone, conductor; Erato 0630-15681-2

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• Claudette Sorel and Tania León

  SynopsisClaudette Sorel was a pianist, educator and passionate advocate for equal rights for women in music, especially composers and performers. In 1996, she founded the Sorel Organization to expand opportunities and stretch the boundaries for promising emerging female musicians through a variety of collaborations and scholarships, and to acknowledge notable masters in the field.On today’s date in 2022, for example, Cuban-born American composer Tania J. León was awarded the Organization’s Sorel Legacy Medallion for her life and work in music.While still in her 20s, León became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, establishing its music department, school, and orchestra. She has composed a number of both large scale and chamber works that have been performed here and abroad. In February 2020, the New York Philharmonic premiered her orchestral piece Stride and in 2021 that work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.León said, “Stride was inspired by women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony. She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got [it] done. That is what Stride means. Something that is moving forward.”Music Played in Today's ProgramTania León (b. 1943): Batá; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Soundmark CD 48027

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• Carter and Copland in dancing shoes

  SynopsisIn 1935, 26-year-old American composer Elliott Carter returned to the States after composition studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Carter found work as the music director of Ballet Caravan, an ambitious and enterprising touring ensemble whose mission was to present specially-commissioned new dance works on quintessentially American themes. Virgil Thomson, for example, wrote the ballet Filling Station, and Carter, decades before the animated Disney movie, wrote a ballet version of the story of Pocahontas and John Smith.While on tour, these new scores were presented in two-piano versions, but on today‘s date in 1939, the orchestral version of Carter’s Pocahontas Ballet was presented by the Ballet Caravan at its home base at the Martin Beck Theater in New York.The New York Times reviewer didn't much care for the staging or Carter’s music: “The costumes are in the manner of the old-fashioned cigar box Indian,” he wrote, “and after the first amusing glimpse their psuedo-naiveté begins to grow irksome. Mr. Carter’s music is so thick it is hard to see the stage through it.”The Times reviewer did like another new ballet also receiving its orchestral debut that same night. This was Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid. “A perfectly delightful piece of work," enthused the same critic, concluding, “Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere.”Music Played in Today's ProgramElliott Carter (1908-2012): Pocahontas Ballet; American Composers Orchestra; Paul Dunkel, conductor; CRI 610 Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Billy the Kid Ballet; St. Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; EMI 73653

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• Tower's Violin Concerto

  Synopsis“In an ideal musical world, a composer should have a friendly, creative, and ongoing working relationship with performers for whom she writes,” composer Joan Tower said. For Tower, who has emerged as one of the most successful American composers of her generation, a friendly, creative and ongoing relationship with chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, and soloists has resulted in a number of musical works.Her Violin Concerto, for example, was written for American violin virtuoso Elmar Oliveira, who gave its premiere performance on today’s date in 1992, at a Utah Symphony concert.Tower wrote the piece with Oliveria in mind. “A lot of violinists are speed freaks, but Elmar can play both virtuosically and with an innate singing ability,” she wrote. The more lyrical and emotional heart of the work was written as memorial to Olivera’s older brother, also a violinist, who died of cancer during work on the new concerto. That’s not to say she didn’t supply some flashy, pyrotechnical passages for her star soloist, however.As Oliviera put it, “It’s the kind of flashiness an audience can relate to. Joan doesn’t need avant-garde gimmicks, because now she’s completely comfortable speaking her own language, one that is expressive and natural to her.”Or, as Tower put it, “Sometimes it’s a struggle to find out what you’re good at. It took me a number of years to decide how I wanted to write with my own voice.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJoan Tower (b. 1938): Violin Concerto; Elmar Oliveira, violin; Louisville Orchestra; Joseph Silverstein, conductor; D’Note 1016

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