This week’s show will present works of that distinguished conductor, Sir John Barbarolli. Barbarolli had an exceptional career, conducting the major symphony orchestras throughout Europe., as well as a reknown operatic conductor.
The Music Treasury is hosted by Gary Lemco, and airs from 19:00 – 21:00 PDT, with concurrent streaming: kzsu.stanford.edu. This week’s show will feature classical, romantic, and 20th century composers. Works will include Sidney Foster performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3, and Benny Goodman with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.
Sir John Barbirolli, Conductor
Sir John Barbirolli, (2 December 1899 – 29 July 1970), né Giovanni Battista Barbirolli, was a British conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 1943 and conducted for the rest of his life. Earlier in his career he was Arturo Toscanini‘s successor as music director of the New York Philharmonic, serving from 1936 to 1943. He was also chief conductor of the Houston Symphonyfrom 1961 to 1967, and was a guest conductor of many other orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, with all of which he made recordings.
Born in London of Italian and French parentage, Barbirolli grew up in a family of professional musicians. After starting out as a cellist, he was given the chance to conduct, from 1926 with the British National Opera Company, and then with Covent Garden‘s touring company. On taking up the conductorship of the Hallé, he had less opportunity to work in the opera house, but in the 1950s he conducted productions of works by Verdi, Wagner, Gluck, and Puccini at Covent Garden with such success that he was invited to become the company’s permanent musical director, an invitation he declined. Late in his career he made several recordings of operas, of which his 1967 set of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for EMI is probably the best known.
Both in the concert hall and on record, Barbirolli was particularly associated with the music of English composers such as Elgar, Delius and Vaughan Williams. His interpretations of other late romantic composers, such as Mahler and Sibelius, as well as of earlier classical composers, including Schubert, are also still admired. [from Wikipedia]
His New York Philharmonic debut on November 5, 1936, featured a program of works by Berlioz, Arnold Bax, Mozart, and Brahms. Barbirolli’s colorful and poetic interpretations earned the respect of musicians and connoisseurs, but his reserved English demeanor contrasted with Toscanini’s flamboyant virtuosity, and the wider New York public was slow to embrace it. Furthermore, the circumstances of his engagement as Music Director — Wilhelm Furtwängler had been offered the post, then withdrew after protests against his associations with the Nazi regime in Germany — caused Barbirolli to begin his tenure under the cloud of being “second choice.”
Barbirolli introduced Philharmonic audiences to much new music by British and American composers, including the world premieres of Britten’s Violin Concertoand Sinfonia da Requiem.
Given the enthusiastic reception of the Sidney Foster tribute on The Music Treasury, we have included in tonight’s program Foster’s debut with the New York Philharmonic, on 23 March 1941.
Sir John Barbirolli,
by Paolo Monti
Program List:
Mendelssohn: Scherzo from Octet in E-flat, Op. 20
Wagner: Rienzi Overture
Creston: Threnody
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37 (w/S. Foster)
Menotti: Overture to The Old Maid and the Thief
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 (w/Benny Goodman)
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Lament
Debussy: Iberia
