Webern conducts Berg

Synopsis

Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto was first performed in Barcelona, Spain, on today’s date in 1936, at the opening concert of the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival. Berg had died the previous winter, and the premiere was supposed to be conducted by his close friend and fellow composer, Anton Webern, but he withdrew at the last minute, and so Hermann Scherchen conducted the first performance, with the violinist who had commissioned the work, Louis Krasner, as soloist.

Krasner was born in Ukraine but raised in America and served for a time as the concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony under Dimitri Mitropoulos. He later taught at Syracuse University and the New England Conservatory of Music.

In the spring of 1976, he was cleaning out his attic, and discovered he still had private acetate discs he had made of the second performance of the Berg Violin Concerto, a May 1, 1936 radio broadcast of the new work by the BBC Symphony, with Krasner again as the soloist. This time the conductor was Webern. The 40-year old discs were transcribed to tape, and eventually were released on CD, allowing posterity a chance to listen in as music history was being made.

Music Played in Today's Program

Alban Berg (1885-1935): Violin Concerto; Louis Krasner, violin; BBC Symphony; Anton Webern, conductor; Testament/Continuum 1004

On This Day

Births

• 1868 - German composer Max von Schillings, in Duren

• 1892 - French composer Germaine Tailleferre, in Pau-St.-Maur

Deaths

• 1799 - Dutch composer, violinist and organist Pieter Hellendaal, 78, in Cambridge (England)

• 1986 - Swedish composer Dag Wiren, 80, in Stockholm

Premieres

• 1774 - Gluck: opera Iphigenia in Aulis, in Paris at the Palais Royale Opéra

• 1899 - Franck: String Quartet, in Paris

• 1936 - Berg: Violin Concerto, in Barcelona at the Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, by the Pablo Casals Orchestra conducted by Hermann Scherchen with Louis Krasner (who had commissioned the work) as the soloist

• 1964 - Stravinsky: Fanfare for a New Theater, at the Inauguration of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center

• 1975 - Rameau: unfinished opera Les Boréades, in London. This was Rameau’s last opera, composed in 1764 and left unfinished at the time of the composer’s death. For the 1975 premiére in London, conductor John Eliot Gardiner prepared a performing edition of the score.

• 2000 - Kernis: Valentines for soprano and orchestra, in Minneapolis, with Renée Fleming and the Minnesota Orchestra, Eiji Oue conducting

• 2001 - Michael Daugherty: UFO for solo percussion and winds, in Denton, Texas, by Evelyn Glennie and the North Texas Wind Symphony, Eugene Migliaro Corporon conducting

• 2001 - Poul Ruders: Paganini Variations for guitar and orchestra, with soloist David Starobin and the Odense Symphony of Denmark

Others

• 1787 - Mozart finishes his String Quintet in Vienna. Mozart had offered this work on a subscription basis via announcements in the Wiener Zeitung on April 2, 5 and 9 of that year; due to the poor response, Mozart extended the offer June 25 through Jan. 1, 1789.

• 1851 - First documented American performance of Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture, at the Melodeon in Boston, during a Grand Symphony Concert conducted by C.C. Perkins.