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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Birthdays

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

In 1876 Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice, Italy. He was the son of an Italian mother and a German father. Ferrari was his mother’s maiden-name, which he added to his own surname in 1895. Although he studied piano from an early age, music was not the primary passion of his young life. As a teenager Wolf-Ferrari wanted to be a painter like his father; he studied intensively in Venice and Rome and traveled abroad to study in Munich. It was there that he decided to concentrate instead on music, taking lessons from Josef Rheinberger. He enrolled at the Munich conservatory and began taking counterpoint and composition classes. These initially casual music classes eventually completely eclipsed his art studies, and music took over Wolf-Ferrari’s life. He wrote his first works in the 1890s. At age 19, Wolf-Ferrari left the conservatory and traveled home to Venice. There he worked as a choral conductor, married, had a son called Federico Wolf-Ferrari, and met both Arrigo Boito and Verdi. In 1900, having failed to have two previous efforts published, Wolf-Ferrari saw the first performance of one of his operas, Cenerentola, based on the story of Cinderella. The opera was a failure in Italy, and the humiliated young composer moved back to Munich. German audiences would prove more appreciative of his work; a revised version of Cenerentola was a hit in Bremen in 1902, while the cantata La vita nuova brought the young composer international fame. Wolf-Ferrari now began transforming the wild and witty farces of the 18th-century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni into comic operas. The resulting works were musically eclectic, melodic, and utterly hilarious; every single one became an international success. In fact, until the outbreak of World War I, Wolf-Ferrari’s operas were among the most performed in the world. In 1902 he became professor of composition and director of the Liceo Benedetto Marcello. In 1911 Wolf-Ferrari tried his hand at full bloodied Verismo with I gioielli della Madonna; a story of passion, sacrilege and madness. It was quite popular in its day and for a period after, especially in Chicago, where the great Polish soprano Rosa Raisa made it a celebrated vehicle. Maria Jeritza (and, later, Florence Easton) triumphed in it at the Metropolitan Opera, in an all-out spectacular production in 1926. World War I, however, was a nightmare for Wolf-Ferrari. The young composer, who had been dividing his time between Munich and Venice, suddenly found his two countries at war with each other. With the outbreak of the War, he moved to Zurich and composed much less, though he still wrote another comedy, Gli amanti sposi (1916). A new melancholy vein appeared in his post-war work; his operas grew darker and more emotionally complex. He did not really pick up his rate of output until the 1920s, when he wrote Das Himmelskleid (1925) and Sly (1927), the latter based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In 1939 he became professor of composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1946 he moved again to Zürich before returning to his home city of Venice. He died in Venice at Palazzo Malipiero and is buried in the Venetian cemetery Island of San Michele. 1

Premieres

In 1864 Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 23 was premiered in Vienna. 

In 1883 George Whitefield Chadwick conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of his Thalia Overture. 

In 1894 Antonín Dvořák‘s String Quintet in Eb, Op. 97 (the “American”) was premiered in New York by the Kneisel Quartet and violist Max Zach. 

In 1918 George Templeton Strong, Jr.’s tone-poem Le Roi Arthur was premiered in Geneva, Switzerland, with Ernest Ansermet conducting the orchestra which would be become the Orchestra of the Suisse Romande. 

In 1934 Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service was premiered in Turin, Italy. 

In 1942 Nikolai Miaskovsky’s Symphony No. 22 was premiered in Tbilisi, Georgia.

In 1964 Cowell’s Concerto Grosso for chamber orchestra was premiered in Miami Beach by the Miami Symphony Orchestra, Fabien Sevitzky, conducting. 

In 2002 15 year-old Athena Adamopoulos’ Soliloquy for cello and piano was premiered at a “From the Top” recording session for Public Radio International by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Christopher O’Riley.

On This Day in Classical Music

In 1885 Richard Strauss meets Englebert Humperdinck for the first time at a rehearsal of Strauss’ Symphony No. 2. They would remain lifelong friends.

In 1910 Act II of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca becomes the first radio broadcast from the New York Metropolitan Opera House.

In 1920 Vladimir Horowitz made his American debut, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic, Thomas Meecham conducting. Well, sort of. The story goes that Horowitz felt that Meecham was holding him back and not letting the piece go faster. Apparently Horowitz finally decided to ignore Meecham all together and play at his own pace, forcing the orchestra to keep up with him.

In 1931 the New York Times published an editorial piece by Sergei Rachmaninov, who was living in the United States, that was highly critical of the Soviet Union government. The result was that the Soviet Union banned Rachmaninov’s music from being played or even studied in Russia. The ban would be lifted two years later.

  1. Wikipedia contributors, “Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ermanno_Wolf-Ferrari&oldid=696786152 (accessed January 11, 2016).