Strauss, De Lancie and the Oboe Concerto

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1946, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra gave the premiere of a new oboe concerto by the German composer Richard Strauss, then in his 80s. The soloist was a Swiss oboist named Marcel Saillet, to whom the work is dedicated.

The concerto owes its existence, however, to a 20-something American oboist and GI named John de Lancie, who was then stationed in Germany and who visited Strauss at his Bavarian home shortly after the end of World War II.

“I asked him,” recalled de Lancie, “in view of the numerous beautiful, lyric solos for oboe in almost all his works, if he had ever considered writing a concerto for oboe. He answered ‘No,’ and there was no more conversation on the subject.”

But de Lancie’s question did plant a seed, and after returning to civilian life in the states in 1946, de Lancie got a letter from Strauss’s publisher offering him the work’s American premiere.

As it turned out, the American premiere of the Strauss Concerto was given by another oboist named Mitchell Miller – a musician who some of us “of a certain age” remember as an energetic choral conductor of a sing-along TV show entitled “Sing Along with Mitch.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864 — 1949) Oboe Concerto (John de Lancie, oboe; Chamber Orchestra; Max Wilcox, cond.) RCA/BMG 7989

On This Day

Births

• 1770 - Bohemian-French composer Anton (Antoine) Reicha, in Prague;

• 1879 - English composer Frank Bridge, in Brighton;

Deaths

• 1770 - Italian composer and violinist Giuseppe Tartini, age 77, in Padua;

• 1981 - American conductor, composer and Eastman School of Music director, Howard Hanson, age 84, in Rochester, N.Y.;

Premieres

• 1752 - Handel: oratorio “Jephtha,” in London at the Covent Garden Theatre (Gregorian date: Mar. 8);

• 1877 - Borodin: Symphony No. 2, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: March 10);

• 1899 - Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (heavily cut), by Vienna Philharmonic, with Gustav Mahler conducting; On February 11, 1883, Wilhlem Jahn had conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in premiere public performance of this symphony's 2nd and 3rd movements only;

• 1922 - Saint-Saëns: "Carnival of the Animals," in Paris;

• 1927 - Respighi: “Vetrate di Chiesa” (Church Windows), by the Boston Symphony with Serge Koussevitzky conducting;

• 1935 - Bizet: Symphony No. 1, posthumously, in Basel, Switzerland, with Felix Weingartner conducting; This symphony was composed by the 17-year old Bizet in 1855;

• 1939 - Copland: Sextet (arranged from "Short Symphony"), at Town Hall in New York City, by a Juilliard graduate ensemble;

• 1943 - Roy Harris: Symphony No. 5, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzsky conducting;

• 1946 - R. Strauss: Oboe Concerto, by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by Volkmar Andreae, with Marcel Saillet as soloist; This composition of this work had been prompted by a chance comment made by the American oboist (and then U.S. soldier) John de Lancie during a post-war visit with the elderly composer in Bavaria that Strauss should consider writing an oboe concerto (Strauss offered de Lancie the American premiere, but the work was given its first U.S. performance in 1948 by oboist Mitchell "Mitch" Miller and the Columbia Concert Orchestra under Daniel Saidenberg; Many years later, De Lancie made a stereo recording of the piece for RCA Victor, which has been re-released on compact disc) ;

• 1953 - Bernstein: musical "Wonderful Town," at the Winter Garden in New York City; A trial run of the show had opened in New Haven at the Schubert Theater on January 19, 1953;

• 1953 - Elliott Carter: String Quartet No. 1 at Columbia University in New York City, by the Walden Quartet;

• 1959 - Rochberg: Symphony No. 2, in Cleveland;

• 1981 - Peter Maxwell Davies: Symphony No. 2, at Boston's Symphony Hall, by the Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conducting;

• 2001 - Klass De Vries: "…sub nocte per umbras" (through the real of spirits), at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, by the San Francisco Contemporary Players;

Others

• 1832 - Chopin makes his debut in Paris at the Salle Pleyel, playing his Piano Concerto No. 2; Liszt attends the performance.

• 1856 - American premiere of J.S. Bach's Concerto for Three Claviers and Orchestra No. 1 in D minor, at Dodworth's Hall in New York during a Eisfeld chamber music "Soiree," with Henry C. Timm, William Scharfenberg, and William Mason at three pianos, accompanied by a string quintet; An 1856 edition of Dwight's Journal waxed poetical about this performance, commenting: "The leaven of blurred blockwork of the tyro instrumentalists was forgotten whilst the splendid artistic rendering of the occasion shadowed forth the truly sculpturesque effects designed by the incomparable author";

• 1874 - First documented American performance of Handel's Coronation Athem "Zadok the Priest," at Steinway Hall in New York, by the Oratorio Society, Leopold Damrosch conducting; Theodore Thomas introduced this anthem in Cincinnati on May 21, 1881, during that city's May Festival.