Tavener's "wake up" call?

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1998, a work by the British composer John Tavener received its European premiere at the Beauvais Cello Festival in France. It’s scored for solo cello and just the cello section of a symphony orchestra and was commissioned by Sony Classical to fill out a CD of Tavener’s music featuring that label’s star cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.

Two years earlier, in 1996, Yo-Yo Ma had recorded another Tavener piece for cello entitled “The Protecting Veil,” but since that piece ran only about 45 minutes, Sony needed something to fill out the disc and so – perhaps acting on the principle that there’s “always room for cello” -- this 20-minute work for cello and celli was commissioned to fill out the disc.

Tavener gave the new piece a VERY strange title, namely “Wake Up and Die.”

The mystically-minded Tavener explained he was referring to the spiritual paradox that, as he put it, “If you wake up spiritually, then you will die to all that is not of God.”

Perhaps Tavener knew first-hand what he was talking about: In 1990, during surgery to remove a tumor in his jaw, he actually DID die -- clinically speaking -- on the operating table but was fortunately resuscitated by the surgical team. “Before my illness,” Tavener wrote, “I'd always had a morbid fear of death, but since the operation it’s not terrifying anymore.”

Music Played in Today's Program

John Tavener (1944 - 2013) Wake up . . . and die Yo Yo Ma, vcl; Baltimore Symphony cellists; David Zinman, cond. Sony 62821

On This Day

Births

• 1740 - Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, in Roccaforzata, near Taranto;

• 1814 - German pianist and composer Adolph von Henselt, in Schwabach,Bavaria;

Deaths

• 1707 - German organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehunde, age c. 70, in Lübeck;

• 1770 - (on May 9 or 10) English composer, conductor and writer on music Charles Avison, age 61, in Newcastle upon Tyne ;

• 1791 - American statesman and songwriter Francis Hopkinson, age 53, in Philadelphia; He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and dedicated a book of his songs to George Washington;

• 1799 - French composer Claude Balbastre, age c. 72, in Paris;

Premieres

• 1812 - Rossini's opera "La Scala di seta" (The Silken Ladder), in Venice;

• 1868 - Bruckner: Symphony No. 1, in Linz, composer conducting;

• 1893 - Rachmaninoff: opera "Aleko," in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater (Julian date: April 27);

• 1924 - R. Strauss: ballet "Schlagobers" (Whipped Cream), in Vienna;

• 1940 - The film "Our Town" opens in Hollywood at Grauman's Chinese Theater; The film was based on the play of the same name by Thorton Wilder, and featured a filmscore by Aaron Copland; Copland arranged a suite of music from his filmscore, which premiered on CBS Radio on June 9, 1940; A revised version of the suite was given its first public performance by the Boston Pops conducted by Leonard Bernstein on May 7, 1944;

• 1981 - Christopher Rouse: "The Infernal Machine" for orchestra (Movement II of Rouse's "Phantasmata"), at the Evian Festival, France, by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Gustav Meier conducting;

• 1986 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: "Concerto Grosso" (after Handel's Sonata in D), by the Handel Festival Orchestra of Washington, Stephen Simon conducting;

• 1988 - Bernstein: "Arias and Barcarolles," at Equitable Center Auditorium in New York City, by vocalists Louise Edeiken, JoyceCastle, John Brandstetter, and Mordechai Kaston, with the composer and Michael Tilson Thomas at the piano; An orchestrated version of this work prepared by Bright Sheng premiered on September 22, 1989, at the Tilles Center of Long Island University with the New York Chamber Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz and featuring vocalists Susan Graham and Kurt Ollmann;

• 1990 - John Harbison: "Words from Patterson" (to texts by William Carlos Williams), at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with baritone William Sharp and the members of the New Jersey Chamber Music Society;

• 1998 - John Tavener: "Wake Up and Die," for solo cello and orchestral cello section, at the Beauvais Cello Festival in Beavais , France;

• 1999 - Zwillich: "Upbeat!" by National Symphony, Anthony Aibel conducting;

Others

• 1863 - American premiere of Berlioz's "Harold in Italy," by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra in New York.