Festival Music for Vienna, by Strauss

Synopsis

In 1943, before allied bombing made it unsafe, Vienna was the primary residence of the German composer Richard Strauss. Now, in a city mad about music and opera, the presence of a composer of Strauss’s stature was not something that went unnoticed or unappreciated. The previous year, the Vienna City Council awarded Strauss its Beethoven Prize, and the composer, for his part, felt obliged to write a little something as a thank-you gesture.

The resulting piece was entitled “Festival Music for the City of Vienna,” and was scored for a brass ensemble sufficiently large to provide pomp and pageantry—and written in a style guaranteed to swell the breasts of the City Council with civic pride. Strauss himself conducted the Vienna Trumpet Corps in the premiere at the city’s Town Hall on April 9, 1943.

It’s a stirring piece, and went over so well that Strauss quickly made an arrangement for a smaller ensemble than the original, rather lavish, version for ten trumpets, seven trombones, two tubas, and timpani. It’s also quite possible that working on this piece reminded Strauss of some of his earliest compositions, which were also written for wind ensembles.

In any case, to keep himself busy while the disastrous course of the war meant the closure of theaters and fewer commissions for new music, Strauss began work on a piece for a small ensemble of wind and brass instruments, which would become his Sonatina No. 1.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Festmusik der Stadt Wien Locke Brass Consort;James Stobart, cond. Chandos 8419

On This Day

Births

• 1717 - Austrian composer Georg Matthias Monn, in Vienna;

• 1846 - Italian-born British composer and vocal teacher Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti, in Ortona;

• 1887 - American composer Florence Price, in Little Rock, Ark.;

• 1906 - Hungarian-born American composer and conductor Antal Dorati, in Budapest;

• 1935 - Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, in Salmi;

Deaths

• 1933 - German composer and organist Sigfrid Karg-Elert, age 55, in Leipzig;

• 1960 - Australian composer and pianist Arthur Benjamin, age 66, in London;

Premieres

• 1903 - Frederick S. Converse: "Endymion's Narrative" for orchestra, by the Boston Symphony, Wilhelm Gericke conducting;

• 1916 - de Falla: "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" for piano and orchestra, in Madrid;

• 1920 - Stenhammar: incidental music for Shakespeare's "As You Like It," at the Lorensberg Theater in Gothenburg, Sweden;

• 1926 - Varèse: "Amériques," by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting;

• 1942 - Stravinsky: "Circus Polka" at Madison Square Gardens in New York, by the Barnum & Bailey Circus, with M. Evans conducting;

• 1948 - Barber: song-cycle "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" for voice and orchestra, by the Boston Symphony with Serge Koussevitzky conducting and soprano Eleanor Steber the soloist;

• 1959 - Benjamin Lees: "Prologue, Capriccio and Epilogue" for orchestra, in Portland, Ore.;

• 1967 - Ned Rorem: "Water Music"for clarinet, violin and orchestra, by the Youth Chamber Orchestra of Oakland, with Robert Hughes conducting and Larry London (clarinet) and Thomas Halpin (violin) the soloists;

Others

• 1870 - Grieg writes a letter from Rome describing how Franz Liszt performed his Piano Concerto at sight and praised the work highly;

• 1938 - American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 by the NBC Symphony, Artur Rodzinski conducting;

• 1939 - First lady Eleanor Roosevelt sponsors an Easter Sunday concert by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial to protest racial discrimination after the singer is denied use of Washington's Constitution Hall (owned and administered by the Daughters of the American Revolution); Some 75,000 people attend this open-air event.