Today's Birthdays

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Will Vodery (1885-1951)
Paul V. Yoder (1908-1990)
James Sample (1910-1995)
Kurt Redel (1918-2013)
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
Johnny Ramone (1948-2004)
Robert Saxton (1953)
Carl Vine (1954)
Tabea Zimmermann (1968)
Bruno Mantovani (1974)

and

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963)
Walter Lord (1917-2002)
Philip Booth (1925-2007)
R.L. Stine (1943)

Today's Birthdays

William Billings (1746-1800)
Joe Hill (1879-1915)
Shura Cherkassky (1911-1995)
Charles Dutoit (1936)
John Mellencamp (1951)
Yo-Yo Ma (1955)
Li Yundi (1982)

and

James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
Helen Clark MacInnes (1907-1985)
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021)
Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones) (1934-2014)
Thomas Keneally (1935)
Dianne Ackerman (1948)
Sherman Alexie (1966)

Today's Birthdays

William Bradbury (1816-1868)
Jenny Lind (1820-1887)
Julia Culp (1880-1970)
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)
Maria Jeritza (1887-1982)
Edwin Fischer (1886-1960)
Paul Badura-Skoda (1927-2019)
Dennis Wicks (1928-2003)
Udo Zimmermann (1943-2021)
Keith Lewis (1950)

and

Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
Caroline Gordon (1895-1981)

From the Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1600 that the opera Euridice was first performed, at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It is the oldest surviving opera.

Euridice was performed for the wedding celebrations of Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici. It was written by Jacopo Peri, a beloved composer and singer. He had already written Dafne a few years earlier, which is considered to be the first opera, but that music has been lost.

Euridice is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the gifted musician Orpheus falls in love with the beautiful Eurydice, but just after their wedding she is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus is heartbroken, and he journeys to the underworld, to Hades, to try to bring her back. He charms the king of the underworld, also named Hades, and his wife, Persephone, and they agree to return Eurydice to Orpheus on one condition: that he get all the way back to the upper world without looking back to see if Eurydice is following. He almost makes it, but right as he is walking out into the sunlight he turns back, and Eurydice is still in the underworld, so he loses her forever. Peri not only wrote the opera, but he sang the role of Orpheus. The climax of the opera came during "Funeste piagge," or "Funeral shores," when Orpheus begs Hades and Persephone to release his beloved.

Peri wrote a long preface to Euridice, in which he explained the new musical form he was working in, which we now call opera. He said that he was trying to write the way he imagined the Greeks would have, combing music and speech into the ultimate form of drama. One of the people who came to Florence to see Euridice was Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. And he probably brought his servant, Claudio Monteverdi. A few years later, in 1607, Monteverdi premiered his first opera, L'Orfeo, which was also a retelling of the legend of Orpheus. Monteverdi elevated the opera form to new heights, and L'Orfeo is considered the first truly great opera, with all of the dramatic orchestration and lyrics that are so central to the drama.

Today's Birthdays

Cyril Bradley Rootham (1875-1938)
Jürgen Jürgens (1925-1994)
John Downey (1927-2004)
Iwan Edwards (1937-2022)
Ken Noda (1962)

and

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Helen Churchill Candee (1858-1949)
Flann O’Brien (1911-1966)
Václav Havel (1936-2011)
Edward P. Jones (1950)
Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958)
Maya Ying Lin (1959)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1930, The New York Philharmonic begins its famous series of weekly Sunday afternoon national broadcasts with a program from Carnegie Hall conducted by Erich Kleiber. The first-ever radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic had occurred on August 12, 1922, when a summer-time concert from Lewisohn Stadium conducted by Willem van Hoogstraten was relayed locally over WJZ in New York.

My note: Willem van Hoogstraten was the conductor of the Portland Symphony (former name of the Oregon Symphony) from 1925 to 1938.

Superb brass ensemble highlights Vancouver Symphony season opener

Orchestra concertos that feature five brass players are very, very rarely performed, so it was an extra special occasion when the Vancouver Symphony opened its season with Salvador Brotons’ “Brass Quintet Concerto.” Featuring the Spanish Brass ensemble as guest artists, this unusual musical concoction expressed an expansive sonic range that was utterly delightful. Their playing resonated well with the audience at Skyview Concert Hall on September 28, and they added two encores to make the evening even more memorable.

Brotons wrote his concerto for the Spanish Brass, which is one of the premiere brass ensembles in Europe. Over the past 35 years, the Spanish Brass (trumpeters Carlos Benetó and Juanjo Serna, hornist Manolo Pérez, trombonist Indalecio Bonet, and tubist Sergio Finca) have won international awards and highlighted 32 recordings. They maintain a rigorous schedule that spans the globe with tours in France, South Korea, and the USA this year.

Originally written for piano and brass quintet in 2013, Brotons revised the “Brass Quintet Concerto” for symphonic band in 2015 finally for orchestra in 2019. Using their virtuosic chops, the Spanish Brass handled all of the technical challenges with gusto. The piece began with a stream of notes as if the ensemble was chattering with each other. Each musician got a tricky solo and handled it with gusto. The second movement featured a plaintive trumpet solo that was augmented gently by the orchestra. A trombone solo evoked a sense of climbing that was joined by all forces, building a huge swell of sound that leveled out into a beautiful melody. After a brief solo from concertmaster Eva Richey, the movement finished with crystalline smoothness. The third movement picked up the tempo, and had a curious passage for bassoon and brass. Another lovely melody surfaced before the piece arrived at a satisfying finale.

Enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation brought the Spanish Brass back to center stage for a couple of encores. The first was a flamenco-infused “De Cai” by Pascual Piqueras. The second was Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” in an arrangement by Juan Tizol and Carlos Benetó. It had a devilish part for tuba with constant jumps that were at least one octave. Finca made that look easy-peasy.

A bit of a lighting problem delayed the start of Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8,” but when it was corrected, concertgoers chuckled a bit and applauded the stage hand(s). Conducting from memory, Brotons chose excellent tempi and elicited lots of dynamic contrasts from the orchestra. The violins scurried through the fast section of the first movement, and the building of tension in the second movement highlighted the second. The folksy waltz of the third movement evoked the Bohemian spirit, and the fourth movement ended with a blaze of glory. But there were intonation problems and some missed notes that muddied up the waters.

The concert opened with a swirl of bright colors from “Argentum,” which British composer Dani Howard wrote in 2017 for the silver anniversary of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the UK’s Classic FM radio station. Even though it lasts only a handful of minutes, “Argentum” covers a lot of territory with punchy exchanges between the brass and the strings. Anchored periodically by blasts from Principal Tuba Mark Vehrencamp, the piece delightfully sped to an impressively emphatic ending.

The orchestra is fortunate to be helmed by Brotons who has such excellent talent for both composition and conducting. It’s an unusual combination that the VSO can be very proud of. This fall marks the 34th season that Brotons has led the orchestra, and his uncanny ability to transmit his boundless energy and joy of music-making resonates terrifically with musicians and the audience. So, there are many concert ahead to look forward to.

Today's Birthdays

Fanny Tacchinardi‑Persiani (1812-1867)
Alain Daniélou (1907-1994)
Alain Lombard (1940)
John Aler (1949-2022)
Fransico Araiza (1950)
Marc Minkowski (1962)
David Dzubay (1964)

and

Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
Damon Runyan (1880-1946)
Buster Keaton (1895-1966)
Brenden Gill (1914-1997)
Jackie Collins (1937-2015)
Roy Blount Jr. (1941)
Anne Rice (1941)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1921, the American Academy in Rome awards American composer Leo Sowerby its first two-year composition fellowship. American composer Howard Hanson was awarded the second two-year composition fellowship on November 9, 1921. The third fellowship was awarded to Randall Thompson on June 6, 1922. The fellowship awards continue to this day.

Review of Fear No Music concert featuring Oregon composers

 

My report of Fear No Music's season opener, featuring terrific music by Oregonians is now published in Oregon Arts Watch here.

Today's Birthdays

Antoine Dauvergne (1713-1797)
Stanisław Skrowaczewski (1923-2017)
Steve Reich (1936)
Shiela Silver (1946)

and

Emily Post (1873-1960)
Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993)
Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

Today's Birthdays

Frantisek Tuma (1704-1774)
Henry Février (1875-1957)
Leroy Shield (1893-1962)
Francis Jackson (1917)
Mary Jeanne van Appledorn (1927-2014)
Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988)
Phill Niblock (1933-2024)
Michel Plasson (1933)
Peter Frankl (1935)
Ton Koopman (1944)
Jonathan Summers (1946)

and

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Jan Morris (1926-2020)