Hanson and "The Golden Age of Radio"

Synopsis

For public radio listeners born long after the Golden Age of American Radio in the 1930s and 1940s, the variety of music broadcast on the COMMERCIAL radio stations back then seems hard to believe.

For example, on today’s date in 1938, the NBC radio network broadcast the premiere of a new symphony by the eminent American composer, Howard Hanson.

But Hanson’s Symphony was, in fact, commissioned by the rival CBS network, whose house orchestra commissioned and performed hundreds of works by American composers. The reason? On the staff of CBS was the young composer and conductor Bernard Herrmann, who later became famous for his Alfred Hitchcock film scores. In 1934, Herrmann had been hired to write background music for CBS radio shows, and eventually became the chief conductor of the CBS Radio Symphony.

The CBS Radio Symphony had premiered the opening three movements of Hanson’s Symphony on their network in the fall of 1937, but on today’s date the following year, the rival NBC Symphony broadcast the first complete performance of the whole work, conducted by Hanson himself.

Music Played in Today's Program

Howard Hanson (1896-1981) Symphony No. 3 Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, cond. Delos 3092

On This Day

Births

• 1925 - French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, in Montbrison;

Deaths

• 1566 - Spanish composer and organist Antonio de Cabezón, age c. 56, in Madrid;

• 1827 - German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, age 56, in Vienna;

• 1918 - Russian composer Cesar Cui, age 83, in Petrograd (St. Petersburg);

• 1977 - British composer, pianist and actress Madeleine Dring, age 53, in Streatham, London;

Premieres

• 1723 - J.S. Bach: "St. John Passion," at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig;

• 1735 - Handel: Organ Concerto Op. 4, no. 5 in London as an intermission feature during a revival performance of Handel's oratorio "Deborah" at the Covent Garden Theater (Gregorian date: April 6);

• 1827 - Rossini: opera "Moïse et Pharaon" (Moses and Pharaoh) at the Paris Opéra; This is the 3rd and French-language version of Rossini's Italian opera "Mosè in Egitto" (see March 3 and 7 above);

• 1943 - William Schuman: cantata "A Free Song" (after Walt Whitman), in Boston; This work won the first Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1943;

• 1958 - Henry Cowell: "Ongaku" a symphonic suite on Japanese themes, by the Louisville Orchestra. Robert S. Whitney conducting;

• 1958 - Lutoslawski: "Marche funèbre" (in memory of Béla Bartók), in Katowice, Poland;

• 1960 - Ralph Shapey: "Evocation" for violin, piano and percussion, in New York City;

• 1984 - Philip Glass: Act V ("The Rome Section"), from "The CIVIL warS," at the Rome Opera, Marcello Panni conducting;

• 1986 - Ned Rorem: "The End of Summer" for clarinet, violin, and piano, at Patkar Hall in Bombay (India), by the Verdehr Trio;

• 1998 - Zwilich: Violin Concerto, at Carnegie Hall in New York, by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Hugh Wolff conducting, with soloist Pamela Frank;

• 2001 - Corigliano: "Mannheim Rocket," in Mannheim (Germany), by the Mannheim National Theater Orchestra;

Others

• 1828 - Franz Schubert gives a concert of his own works in Vienna, to great success.