Dr. Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma
When the Joachim Quartet came to Vienna for the last time in March 1907, giving the complete Beethoven Quartets in five concerts, the event was appreciated all the more in the wake of three recent concerts of Schoenberg’s works, including the premiere of the String Quartet in D minor, op. 7. The conservative critic writing … Read more
The Brahms Double Concerto was set up to be a success: there were plenty of well-wishers eager for another orchestral work from the famous composer. It featured the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, who had premiered Brahms’s Violin Concerto some years earlier, and Robert Hausmann, who had premiered Brahms’s Cello Sonata in F major the year … Read more
From: Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms. Bd. 4,1 (1886-91) (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1914, 2nd ed.), 61-67. This is the handout for my talk, “The Problem of Genre and the Power of Narrative: the Case of the Double Concerto” for the conference “The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms,” UC Irvine, 1-3 February 2019. First Movement The plummeting … Read more
Arthur M. Abell (1868-1958) lived in Europe from 1890 to 1918. Starting in 1893 he was a Berlin correspondent for the Musical Courier. After the War he returned to New York and wrote for the New York Times and other outlets. Abell’s musical credentials included his training as a violinist. In 1895 he advertised for students … Read more
Richard Strauss accompanied his own lieder on the piano as part of an all Strauss concert on 14 February 1907 in the Beethovensaal. On the same day there was a “Mahler Abend” at the Künstlerhaus, where the composer himself accompanied Johannes Messchaert’s recital of a total of eighteen lieder: “Kindertotenlieder,” “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen,” four Rückert … Read more
Premiere in Berlin of the Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, 14 January, Gustav Mahler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Decadence (E.E. Taubert in Die Musik) That Mahler is a brilliant virtuoso in the treatment of the orchestra is known–to me he is even bolder than Richard Strauss in that respect. He strikes an entirely new … Read more
The pianist Harold Bauer (1873-1951) played a recital in Berlin on Oct. 31, 1907. A little more than a year later, on 18 December 1908, he gave the world premiere performance of Debussy’s piano suite Children’s Corner in Paris. The reviewer in the Signale lamented the small audience and was generally very appreciative of Bauer’s program of Schumann, … Read more