MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Now Playing: San Antonio Express-News
Topic: NEWS performers
In the early 1930s, the great composer, conductor and concert pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff performed in San Antonio. According to "Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music," by Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda (first published in 1956, reissued in 2001 by Indiana University Press), Rachmaninoff was suffering from a bad back and had to be assisted onto the stage. Since he did not want his condition to be a distraction, he asked that the curtain be raised and lowered while he was at the piano. Where was the performance held, when did it occur, who sponsored it, was it a solo recital or was an orchestra involved, and which works were on the program? Were there any reviews? 
WILLIAM Boughton, founder and principal conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed as principal conductor of the prestigious New Haven Symphony Orchestra in the USA. Boughton beat off over 70 applicants for the coveted job. The orchestra boasts a concert hall with a capacity of 3,000. Boughton and his family are moving during July from their home in Wycombe, having left Malvern after over 25 years at the helm of the ESO. 
1807 First Performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 4, in Vienna. 
Magdalena Kozena has a mesmerising vocal range, lives with Simon Rattle, and is about to debut in London. Michael Church meets the mezzo with all the right moves. 
Canadian pianist, Arpin, known as the "Chopin of Ragtime" by jazz great Eubie Blake. Arpin died of cancer 8 NOV 2007 in Toronto. He was 70. Born in Port McNicoll, Ont., on Dec. 3, 1936, Arpin graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music and then studied music at the University of Toronto. Arpin was music director and accompanist to Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester for many years and recorded many albums with her.
1942 Birth of Russian cellist Natalia GUTMAN in Kazan. 
13 NOVEMBER 1937 First broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Pierre Monteux conducting. Toscanini's first broadcast with the NBC Symphony was on Christmas Day, 1937. 
A splendid DVD from Deutsche Grammophon, Rafael Kubelík: A Portrait, reminds us that multiple tyrannies can govern a conductor’s life. Kubelík (1914 –1996) was a mightily gifted Bohemian-born conductor, scion of a legendary musical family (his father was the superstar violinist Jan Kubelík). Rafael Kubelík was music director of the Brno Opera when the Nazis shut the company down in 1941. A year later they executed the Opera’s administrative director, Václav Ji?íkovský (1891-1942), who had smuggled Jews out of Occupied Prague. Small wonder that Kubelík states in a 1970’s documentary (which is reprinted along with brilliant performances of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bruckner on the new DVD), “A conductor should be a guide, not a dictator. I could never stomach dictatorships.” When he was named wartime conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, he declined to perform Wagner, and would not give German notables the Nazi salute as required, nearly causing him to be arrested. A stunning interpreter of Mozart, Beethoven, Smetana, and Dvo?ák, Kubelík helped establish the Prague Spring Festival in 1946, but finally was driven from his homeland by the 1948 Communist coup. 
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.” Copland was also a composer of film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.” Copland’s music achieved a difficult balance between modern music and American folk styles, and the open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. He incorporated percussive orchestration, changing meter, polyrhythms, polychords and tone rows. Aside from composing, Copland taught, presented music-related lectures, wrote books and articles, and served as a conductor. 