"Tempest Fantasy" by Paul Moravec

Synopsis

When Patrick Stewart began his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the Los Angeles Times called him an "unknown British Shakespearean actor." Ouch! That must have caused a wry smile to cross the face of this star actor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theater.

In any case, in 1995, when Stewart played Prospero in Shakespeare’s “Tempest” at New York’s Public Theater, one reviewer said he acted “with white hot fury.” (Who knows, maybe he was thinking of that L.A. Times critic?)

Composer Paul Moravec was in the audience for one of those New York performances, found Stewart “extraordinary,” and began writing a chamber work he titled “Tempest Fantasy.” Moravec describes it as follows:

"'Tempest Fantasy' is a musical meditation on various characters, moods, situations, and lines of text from my favorite Shakespeare play. ... Rather than trying to depict these elements in programmatic terms, the music simply uses them as points of departure for flights of purely musical fancy. The first three movements spring from the nature and selected speeches. ... The fourth movement begins from Caliban's uncharacteristically elegant speech from Act III, scene 2: ‘Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not.’”

Paul Moravec’s “Tempest Fantasy” debuted in New York City on this date in 2003 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2004.

Music Played in Today's Program

Paul Moravec (b. 1957) Tempest Fantasy Trio Solisti Arabesque Z-6791

On This Day

Births

• 1660 - Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, in Palermo; founder of the "Neopolitan School" of music and father of the composer, Dominico Scarlatti;

• 1752 - Baptismal date of German oboist and composer Ludwig August Lebrun, in Mannheim;

• 1810 - Danish conductor and composer Hans Christian Lumbye, in Copenhagen;

• 1843 - Austrian conductor and operetta composer Carl Michael Ziehrer, in Vienna;

• 1905 - English composer Alan Rawsthorne, in Haslingden;

Deaths

• 1864 - German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jakob Liebmann Beer), age 72,in Paris;

• 1990 - American composer William Levi Dawson, age 90, in Montgomery, Ala.;

Premieres

• 1692 - Purcell: opera "The Fairy Queen," in London at the Queen's Theater, Dorset Garden;

• 1935 - Ibert: "Concertino da Camera" for saxophone and chamber orchestra, in Paris;

• 1936 - Prokofiev: "Peter and the Wolf" at a children's concert by the Moscow Philharmonic, conducted by the composer;

• 1947 - Copland: "In the Beginning" for mezzo-soprano and chorus, at Harvard University;

• 1947 - Schoenberg: String Trio, Op. 45, at Harvard University;

• 1951 - Cage: "Imaginary Landscape No. 4" for 12 radios, in New York;

• 1951 - Ulysses Kay: "Sinfonia" for orchestra, in Rochester, N.Y.;

• 1965 - Bolcom: "Oracle" for orchestra, in Seattle;

• 1965 - Grofé: "Trick or Treat: Halloween," by the Philadelphia Orchestra, André Kostelanetz conducting;

• 1981 - David Amram: Violin Concerto, by the St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting, with Charles Castleman the soloist;

• 1984 - Ezra Laderman: String Quartet No. 7, in New York City, by the Colorado Quartet;

• 1984 - Broadway premiere of Sondheim: musical "Sunday in the Park with George";

• 1990 - Elliott Carter: Violin Concerto, by the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, with Ole Böhn as soloist;

Others

• 1855 - American premiere of Verdi's opera "Il Trovatore" (The Troubadour) at the Academy of Music in New York.

• 1872 - First documented American performance of Beethoven's "Missa solemnis" in D (Op. 123), at Steinway Hall in New York , by the Church Music Association, Dr. James Pech conducting; Subsequent regional premieres of this work occurred in Cincinnati (May 19, 1880) and Boston (Mar. 12, 1897).