Schoenberg and Sheng

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Today’s date marks the premiere of two works written by émigré composers: one Austrian, the other Chinese.

On Nov. 4, 1948, the Albuquerque Civic Symphony gave the first performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, a powerful piece for narrator, chorus and orchestra. Schoenberg had met some survivors of the Nazi pogroms in the Warsaw ghetto. He was profoundly moved as they recounted their harrowing experiences, so he set their recollections to music, utilizing a twelve-tone theme which is revealed only at the end of the work, where it supplies the traditional melody of a Jewish prayer of comfort and hope.

On today’s date in 1993, Boulder, Colorado, was the venue for the premiere of the String Quartet No. 3 by Chinese composer Bright Sheng.

“It was inspired by the memory of a Tibetan folk dance which I came across about 25 years ago when I was living in a province on the border between China and Tibet,” he recalled. At that time, Madame Mao’s Cultural Revolution was in full force, and that explains why a teenage pianist from Shanghai ended up on a remote Chinese frontier. Eventually, Sheng was able to enroll in the Shanghai Conservatory, and in 1982 came to New York.

Music Played in Today's Program

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): A Survivor from Warsaw; Simon Callow, narrator; London Symphony; Robert Craft, conductor; Koch 7263

Bright Sheng (b. 1955): String Quartet No. 3 (Shanghai Quartet) BIS 1138