Piston's 'New England Sketches'

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, the Detroit Symphony, led by eminent French conductor Paul Paray, gave the first performance of new music by American composer Walter Piston. He had studied in Paris with famous French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and great French composer Paul Dukas, so perhaps this was an astute paring of composer and conductor.

In any case, to help celebrate the 100th Worcester Festival, Paray and the Detroit orchestra were on hand in Massachusetts for the premiere of Piston’s Three New England Sketches, an orchestral suite with three movements: Seaside, Summer Evening, and Mountains.

Piston didn’t intend these titles to be taken literally. “[They] serve in a broad sense to tell the source of the inspirations, reminiscences, even dreams that pervaded the otherwise musical thoughts of one New England composer,” he noted.

Piston certainly qualified as a bonafide New England composer. He was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1894, taught at Harvard, had a vacation home in Vermont, and died in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1976.

Even so, the most striking hallmark of his music remains its quite cosmopolitan style and neo-classical form — the lasting influence, perhaps, of his two famous French teachers.

Music Played in Today's Program

Walter Piston (1894-1976): Three New England Sketches; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3106

On This Day

Births

• 1801 - German composer Albert Lortzing, in Berlin

• 1906 - American composer Miriam Gideon, in Greeley, Colorado

• 1923 - American composer Ned Rorem, in Richmond, Indiana

Premieres

• 1754 - Rameau: opera-ballet Anacréon, at Fortainebleau

• 1890 - Borodin: opera Prince Igor (completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov) at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, with K.A. Kuchera conducting (Gregorian date: Nov. 4)

• 1897 - Scriabin: Piano Concerto, in Odessa, with the composer as soloist (Gregorian date: Nov. 4)

• 1903 - MacDowell: symphonic poem Lamia (after Keats), by the Boston Symphony, Max Fiedler conducting

• 1913 - Delius: On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and Summer Night on the River, by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Artur Nikisch conducting

• 1931 - Stravinsky: Violin Concerto, in Berlin, by the Berlin Radio Orchestra conducted by the composer, with Samuel Dushkin as soloist

• 1941 - William Grant Still's Plain Chant for America, by the New York Philharmonic, John Barbirolli conducting

• 1959 - Piston: Three New England Sketches for orchestra, in Worcester, Massachusetts, by the Detroit Symphony, Paul Paray conducting

• 1959 - Rorem: Eagles, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting

• 1963 - Hovhaness: Symphony No. 17 (Symphony for Metal Orchestra), in Cleveland

• 1970 - Crumb: Black Angels (13 Images from the Dark Lord) for string quartet, in Ann Arbor, Michigan

• 1981 - Sessions: Concerto for Orchestra, by the Boston Symphony; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1982

• 1997 - Danielpour: Celestial Night, by the New Jersey Symphony, Zdenek Macal conducting

• 2002 - Peter Maxwell Davies: Naxos Quartet No. 1, at Wigmore Hall, London, by the Maggini Quartet

Others

• 1739 - Handel completes his Concerto Grosso No. 7 (see Julian date: Oct.12)

• 1881 - First concert by Concerts Lamoureux, in Paris, founded by Charles Lamoureux