Herbert's Earthquake Benefit

Synopsis

April 29th fell on Sunday in the year 1906, and readers of The New York Times photogravure supplement were able to view scenes of the terrible destruction in San Francisco that followed the great earthquake that struck that city just 11 days before. The paper was filled with accounts of the suffering caused by the quake, and undoubtedly, many New Yorkers asked themselves what they could do to help. The New York musical community provided one answer by quickly arranging a number of benefit concerts.

The largest of these occurred on today’s date that year at New York’s Hippodrome, and was organized by the popular composer Victor Herbert, who conducted his orchestra with Metropolitan Opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink as a featured soloist. The vast Hippodrome was completely sold out, with standing-room-only tickets filling the aisles. Seven thousand dollars were raised, which by today’s standards seems a rather modest sum, but by 1906 standards was impressive enough to make newspaper headlines.

Perhaps New York musicians and their audiences felt a personal affinity with the quake victims, as their own Metropolitan Opera Company, including its star tenor Enrico Caruso, was on tour in San Francisco when the quake struck on April 18th, and, as the Times reported, the Met’s touring orchestral musicians, almost without exception, lost their instruments.

That bit of news must have struck a special chord with Victor Herbert. In 1886, both he and his wife had come to America from Europe to join the Metropolitan Opera – he as an orchestral cellist, and she as a soprano soloist.

Music Played in Today's Program

Victor Herbert (1859–1924) — Cello Concerto No. 1 (Lynn Harrell, cello; St. Martin's Academy; Sir Neville Marriner, cond.) London 417 672

On This Day

Births

• 1879 - British conductor and occasional orchestrator-arranger of Handel scores, Sir Thomas Beecham, in St. Helens (near Liverpool);

• 1855 - Russian composer Anatoly Liadov (Gregorian date: May 11);

• 1888 - American popular song composer Irving Berlin (Isidore Balin) (Gregorian date: May 11); There are several possibilities concerning his birth city. It could be Tyumen or Tumen, any one of several villages near the city of Mogilyov, Russia (now Belarus), not the city in Siberia.

• 1885 - American composer Wallingford Riegger, in Albany, Ga.;

• 1899 - American composer and jazz band leader, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, in Washington, D.C.;

• 1920 - American composer Harold Shapero, in Lynn, Mass.;

• 1929 - Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, in Launeceston;

Deaths

• 1712 - Spanish composer and organist Juan Bautista José (Juan Bautista Josep; Joan) Cabanilles (Cavanilles, Cabanillas, Cavanillas), age c. 67, in Valencia;

Premieres

• 1784 - Mozart: Violin Sonata in Bb, K. 454, at Vienna's Kärtnertor Theater in the presence of Emperor Joseph II, with the composer at the piano with Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi; Mozart also performed one of his Piano Concertos, possibly the premiere performance of the Concerto No. 17 in G, K. 453 (see also June 13, 1784);

• 1798 - Haydn: oratorio "The Creation" at a private performance in Vienna at Schwarzenbgerg Palace; The first public performance occurred n March 19, 1799 (Haydn's nameday);

• 1927 - Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke): "Zephyr et Flore"ballet suite, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting;

• 1928 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 9, in Moscow;

• 1929 - Prokofiev: opera "The Gambler" (sung in French) in Brussels;

• 1962 - Stravinsky: "Eight Instrumental Miniatures" (based on his "Five Fingers" of 1921), in Toronto by the CBC Symphony conducted by the composer;

• 1980 - John Williams: "The Reivers " (Suite for narrator and orchestra) with a William Faulkner, as part of the first concert Williams conducted as music director of the Boston Pops, with Burgess Meredith as narrator;

• 1988 - Peter Maxwell Davies: "Strathclyde Concerto" No. 1 for oboe and orchestra, at Glasgow's City Hall, by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer, with soloist Robin Miller;

• 1990 - Philip Glass: chamber opera "Hydrogen Jukebox" (to poems by Allen Ginsberg), by the Philip Glass ensemble conducted by Martin Goldray, in a concert version presented at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia; A staged production was presented at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C,, on May 26, 1990;

• 1993 - Michael Torke: "Run" for orchestra, by the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Slatkin conducting;

Others

• 1906 - Victor Herbert conducts a benefit concert at the Hippodrome in New York City for victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake;

• 1969 - On his 70th birthday, Duke Ellington receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House from then-President Richard Nixon.