SynopsisLAUGH-IN was a popular TV comedy sketch program in the late 1960s and one of their recurring alliterative gag lines referred to “the fickle finger of fate.” Now, composers who enter — and lose — competitions, often mutter something similar — or stronger. In London in 1703, three English composers, John Weldon, John Eccles, Daniel Purcell and Moravian-born Gottfried Finger took part in a competition organized by wealthy opera fans. All four composers were asked to set the same short English-language libretto, and the resulting works were all staged on today’s date for the audience to choose their favorite.The grand prize of 100 guineas was won by Weldon, even though many bet on Eccles to win. Gottfried Finger came in dead last and was not happy about it. He left the country in disgust complaining that, “He had thought to be judged by men, not boys,” and that the competition was rigged. And in his defense, some recent recordings of Finger’s virtuoso viola da gamba works show him to have been, in fact, a very good composer. Even so, as the old LAUGH-IN hosts might put it, “Fun fact: fickle fans found Finger faulty. Finished fourth. Forthwith fuming foreigner fled.” Music Played in Today's ProgramGottfried Finger (ca. 1655-6-buried 31 August 1730): Sonatae pro Diversis Instrumentis; Echo du Danube; Accent CD 24264

SynopsisWhen you listen to classical music like Bach or Mozart, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical music is the soundtrack of your previous lives.”American composer Sebastian Currier went even further, and said: “It’s only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that music is made of nothing but time ­­— well, and air too … melodic or rhythmic gestures are made of a series of events moving forward in time. … the rest is air. A musician bows a string, blows air in a cylinder, strikes a metal object, and a series of sound waves take that information to our ears … It has always been fascinating to me that an art form that is so penetrating … is made of such ephemeral stuff.”So no surprise Currier gave the title Time Machines to his work for violin and orchestra that premiered in New York City on today’s date in 2011. The German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter was the soloist performing with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert, and they made a live recording of the new work.Music Played in Today's ProgramSebastian Currier (b. 1959): Time Machines; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; New York Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert, conductor (recorded live June 2, 2011); DG 477 9359

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1988, the New York Philharmonic gave a concert in a city then called Leningrad and in a country then called the Soviet Union.For their visit to the city we now call St. Petersburg in a country known today as Russia, the Philharmonic commissioned a new work by American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Her Symbolon received its premiere performance there, and, in fact, was first American symphonic work to be premiered in the USSR.“The word ‘symbolon’ comes from the Greek and refers to the ancient custom whereby two parties broke a piece of pottery in two, each party retaining half. Each half (or symbolon) thus became a token of friendship. From the beginning, I knew this piece would receive its first performance in the Soviet Union, and I found this profoundly moving. I’m sure my complex feelings, embracing both hope and sadness about the state of the political world, found their way into this work,” she explained. After its premiere, Zwilich’s Symbolon was performed in Moscow, New York, London, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Paris and the former East Berlin, making it one of Zwilich’s “most-travelled” works.Music Played in Today's ProgramEllen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Symbolon; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor; New World CD

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1998, in Purchase, New York, the Westchester Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new flute concerto by 41-year old composer Melinda Wagner.Her concerto won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1999 — a gratifying mark of recognition for Wagner, who claims she had developed 20 years of calluses from all the rejections that are the common experience of most young composers in America. Along with the bumps and scrapes, Wagner had picked up a number of other honors along the way, including awards, grants, and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer and ASCAP, to name just a few.“Composition is like writing a kind of love letter to performers. They will be interpreting something that is incredibly personal, so it feels like a love affair. As for the audience, to try to try to second-guess them to figure out what they’re going to like, and write that, would be an insult to them. I just hope they can plug into the communication that’s happening between the performers and me,” she said. Music Played in Today's ProgramMelinda Wagner (b. 1957): Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion; Paul Lustig Dunkel, flute; Westchester Philharmonic; Mark Mandarano, conductor; Bridge 9098

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach began his formal duties as the new Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, a city that would remain his home for the next 27 years.A newspaper item datelined Leipzig had appeared the previous day, noting: “This past Saturday at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Cöthen; they belonged to the former Princely Cappelmeister Johann Sebastian Bach, now called to Leipzig as Cantor. He himself arrived with his family on two carriages at 2:00 and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”Bach was not the first choice for the appointment, and it’s clear from the proceedings of the Leipzig Town Council that they were more concerned with Bach as a teacher rather than Bach as a composer. Providing quality music for services at St. Thomas Church might have been foremost in Bach’s mind, but the council seemed to think that was definitely not as important as teaching Latin to the young students of the St. Thomas School.One council member, a certain Dr. Steger, after reluctantly voting for Bach, even wanted it on record that in his opinion, “Bach should make compositions that were not theatrical.” It’s not on record what poor Dr. Steger thought of Bach’s intensely dramatic St. Matthew Passion, or the hundreds of brilliant crafted cantatas that Bach would provide, week in and week out, for the next 20 years.Music Played in Today's ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685-1750): Cantata No. 73; Leonhardt Consort; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; Teldec 44279

SynopsisToday’s date marks the anniversary of one of the most famous — and notorious — premieres in the history of classical music, that of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), in Paris on May 29, 1913.From its first note — sounded by the bassoon at the extreme end of its highest register — Stravinsky’s score signaled the start of something radically different. It’s also remembered as the occasion of one of the most emotional reactions by any audience: catcalls and insults were hurled between the composer’s supporters and detractors, fistfights broke out and finally the police were called.There were those, including Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the premiere, who felt the reactions were occasioned more by the dancing and the stage picture than by the music itself.Years later, when Monteux was asked what he thought of the original production, he confessed to everyone’s amusement that he actually never saw it, because his eyes were glued to the score. “On hearing this near riot behind me, I decided to keep the orchestra together at any cost … I did, and we played it to the end absolutely as we had rehearsed it in the peace of an empty theatre,” he wrote.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Georg Solti, conductor; London 436 469

SynopsisOn today's date in 1938, Matthias the Painter, an opera by the German composer Paul Hindemith, had its premiere performance in Zurich, Switzerland.This work had been scheduled to be premiered in 1934 at the Berlin Opera by the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, but the newly-installed Nazi regime canceled the performance.In protest, Furtwangler performed a concert suite from Hindemith’s opera at a Berlin Philharmonic concert, resulting in a loud pro-Hindemith demonstration on the part of the audience. The Nazi press responded with attacks on both Hindemith and Furtwangler. By the end of 1934 it was clear to all in Germany that the Nazis would brook no opposition when it came to cultural matters.So how had the quintessentially German Hindemith offended the new regime? In 1929 Hitler had attended the premiere of another Hindemith opera, News of the Day, and hated it — labeling it “degenerate.” Furthermore, his wife and many of his closest musician friends were Jewish. Hindemith became persona non grata in Nazi Germany, and, shortly after the Zurich premiere of his new opera, he and his wife emigrated to the U.S., where he taught at Tanglewood and Yale, becoming an American citizen in 1946.Music Played in Today's ProgramPaul Hindemith (1895-1963): Mathis der Maler; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Orchestra; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; EMI 55237

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1992, during the bloody civil wars that shattered the former Yugoslavia, a hand grenade was thrown into the midst of a bread line in Sarajevo. Twenty-two people died. To most around the world, it appeared to be just one more senseless act of violence amidst the thousands of such acts took place in that unhappy part of the world.One Sarajevo resident thought otherwise. At 4 p.m. every day after the incident, despite the danger, Vedran Smailovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera, went to the site of the bombing in full evening dress and played his cello in memory of the dead. A New York Times reporter wrote of the cellist’s moving act of courage and faith in art and humanity — and the world took notice.English-born composer David Wilde read about the cellist while riding a train in Germany. “As I sat in the train, deeply moved, I listened; and somewhere deep within me a cello began to play a circular melody like a lament without end,” he later recalled. That theme developed into The Cellist of Sarajevo, a piece dedicated to Vedran Smailovic, and which cellist Yo-Yo Ma was soon performing around the world.Music Played in Today's ProgramDavid Wilde (1935-2025): The Cellist of Sarajevo; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Sony 64114

SynopsisFor many years now MidAmerica Productions has been organizing concerts in New York City and enlisting choral ensembles from the U.S. and abroad to come to the Big Apple to perform at prestigious Manhattan venues.On today’s date in 1990, choirs from Arkansas, Connecticut, Minnesota and Texas were on stage at Carnegie Hall for the world premiere of John Rutter’s Magnificat, specially commissioned by MidAmerica, and with the British composer himself on hand to conduct.“The chorus numbered over 200 voices, every one of them happy and excited at the prospect of joining forces in the magnificent setting of Carnegie Hall … [so] I wanted to write something joyous because that would reflect the mood of the performers … the Magnifcat is known as the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin, and it is mainly in the sunny southern countries — Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico — that Mary is most celebrated … this led me to conceive the music as a bright, Latin-flavored fiesta,” he recalled. Despite composing and conducting religious music, Rutter confessed during a 2003 interview that he was not particularly religious — just a composer deeply moved and inspired by the spirituality of sacred verses and prayers.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Rutter (b. 1945): Magnificat; Elizabeth Cragg, soprano; Choirs of St. Albans Cathedral; Ensemble DeChorum; Andrew Lucas, conductor; Naxos 8.572653

SynopsisThis lush, late-Romantic score, composed in 1904, had to wait until 1962 for its premiere performance, when, on today’s date that year, the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy performed it in Seattle during an international festival devoted to its composer, Anton Webern.For most music lovers, the Austrian composer is a shadowy, vaguely mysterious figure. If they know anything at all about him, it is that he was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, that he wrote a small body of short, condensed atonal scores, and that in 1945 he was shot by accident by an American soldier in the tense days following the end of World War II.The early orchestral score that received its belated premiere on today’s date in 1962, In the Summer Wind, was completed when Webern was just 19. It’s very much in the style of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and early Schoenberg.To earn a living, Webern worked as a conductor of everything from Viennese operettas to worker’s choral unions. His conducting career came to a halt when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, and until his untimely death in 1945, Webern lived by doing routine work for a Viennese music publisher.Music Played in Today's ProgramAnton von Webern (1883-1945): Im Sommerwind; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; London 436 240