On this Day: April 2015
April 1
What’s gonna happen when I’ve done a year of these? I guess it’ll retire. April 28 1948 – Igor Stravinsky conducted the premier of his American ballet, Orpheus, in New York City at New York City Center. Births: 1715 – Franz Sparry, Austrian composer (d. 1767) 1848 – Ludvig Schytte, Danish composer, pianist, and teacher (d. 1909) 1906 – Paul Sacher, Swiss conductor (d. 1999) 1943 – Yoav Talmi, Israeli conductor and composer 1943 – Jeffrey Tate, English musical director and conductor No deaths of note. April 29 Births: 1842 – Carl Millöcker, Dutch composer and conductor (d. 1899) 1879 – Thomas Beecham, English conductor (d. 1961) This guy’s pretty important, but he seemed like kind of … Continue reading Week of April 28, 2014
This series seems not to be as interesting for others as it is to me; then again, almost all of this is for my own personal edification, so enjoy what you wish. I also end up learning about a lot of other non-music-related events while scanning the entries for calendar days on Wikipedia. April 21: No events Births 1730 – Antonín Kammel, Czech violinist and composer (d. 1788) 1874 – Vincent Scotto, French composer (d. 1952) 1889 – Efrem Zimbalist, Russian-American violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1985) 1933 – Easley Blackwood, Jr., American pianist, composer, and educator Deaths: 1991 – Willi Boskovsky, Austrian violinist and conductor (b. 1909) … Continue reading On this day: Week of April 21, 2014
Here we are again. I’m still baffled that there isn’t some list or library or something of premiere dates for all these famous pieces that people love and adore collected somewhere. It seems that would be terribly useful. Let’s begin with something not so musically related. April 14 1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40 (sinks morning of April 15th). This isn’t at all musically related, but it did happen today. Also, nothing else musically happened, so it’s nice to have something. We work with what we’ve got here at FFT Births: 1913 – Jean Fournet, French conductor (d. … Continue reading On this day: week of April 14, 2014
Here we are again for more exciting history stuff, like composers I don’t know and non-comprehensive lists of events, apparently. Here we go. April 7 1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s St John Passion BWV 245 at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig. 1805- The premiere of Beethoven’s third symphony is given in Vienna‘s Theater an der Wien on 7 April 1805 with the composer conducting I’m satisfied with those two events. Births: 1713 – Nicola Sala, Italian composer and theorist (d. 1801) 1763 – Domenico Dragonetti, Italian bassist and composer (d. 1846) What a cool last name. 1899 – Robert Casadesus, French pianist and composer (d. 1972) 1970 – Leif Ove Andsnes, Norwegian pianist Deaths: 1858 – Anton Diabelli, Austrian composer (b. … Continue reading On this day: Week of April 7, 2014
We’re coming back to another installment of history and dates. Last week was a good week of some new features on the site (see ‘Resources’) and I hope there is more of that to come. Also, I’m realizing that not ALL premieres and events that ever happened in the history of ever are actually included in these Wikipedia date entries, but a few google attempts do not show me any compendiums of premiere dates of symphonies or anything of the like. So some of that will be manual. Let’s see what we have for this week. March 31 1913 – The … Continue reading On this day: Week of March 31, 2014