Today's the Day

[Petrushka]

Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Georg Szell: Schubert "Unfinished"; Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (with Richard Lewis & Janet Baker). [I can remember listening to both Music Weekly and this concert.]

I, too, remember listening to that Szell concert and recorded it on to cassette (long since gone, alas) from either the original or one of the two repeats it had in 1984 and 1986.

[Padraig]

The Battle of Moira begins in what is modern day County Down (637 - lasting around a week, it had the reputation of being the longest battle on the island of Ireland)

.Seamus Heaney's poem Sweeney Astray associated with this battle/

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 26th

Rat Catcher's Day in the town of Hamelin, Lower Saxony in Germany (as this is the date in 1284 that the Pied Piper was cheated by the burghers according to the Grimm brothers - 22nd July in Browning's poem). It might seem odd to commemorate the breaking of a business contract, let alone the abduction of children ... but the intention is to celebrate the work of vermin- and pest-controllers (the rats, not the children) worldwide.

It's also International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, and World Refridgeration Day.

Also on this Date: the election of Cardinal Petros Philargos as Pope Alexander V results in the Roman Catholic Church now having three living rival popes (1409); Richard III is crowned (1483); at the Battle of Fleurus, the French army becomes the first to use aircraft [hot air ballooons, used for reconnaissance] for military purposes (1794); George IV dies and is succeeded by his younger brother, William IV (1830); Hong Kong Island becomes a British Crown Colony "in perpetuity" (1843 - fifty years later, a subsequent agreement sets a lease of 99 years); the three-day uprising by French workers [whose minimum rights were being withdrawn] comes to a violent end, with the National Guard having killed or injured over 10,000 of them (1848); Wagner's Die Walkure is premiered at the Munich Royal Theatre, condicted by Bulow [because of the scandal with Cosima, Wagner himself cannot set foot in Munich] (1870); Edward VII introduces the Order of Merit (1902); the first Grand Prix race begins (1906); the Science Museum in London opens in its own building, away from the V&A (1909); Mahler's 9th is premiered at the Vienna Festival, with the VPO conducted by Walter (1912 - 13 months after the composer's death); the first American troops arrive in France (1917); Chaplin's The Gold Rush is released (1925); Janacek's Sinfonietta is premiered in Prague conducted by Talich (1926); the first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf FW61, makes its first flight (1936); the Nazis crush the largest uprising by the Polish Resistance at the Battle of Osuchy (1944 - on the same day, San Marino, a neutral country, is bombed by the RAF, who have "Intelligence" that German troops have occupied it - 35 civilians are killed); the Charter of the United Nations is signed by 50 countries in San Francisco (1945); Khruschev has his rival Beria arrested on charges of spying for the British (1953); Smaliland achieves independence from Britain and from Italy (1960); President Kennedy delivers his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in the Rathaus Schoneberg, West Berlin (1963 - the "doughnut" thing is fake news, sadly); Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio sells a packet of Wrigley's chewing - the first sale using the Universal Product Code [the "barcode"] (1974); seven weeks before his death, Elvis Presley gives his last concert (1977 - in Indianapolis); units of the Yugoslav People's Army leave their barracks in Croatia to move to the border with Slovenia, marking the beginning of hostilities in the 10-year-long Yugoslav Wars (1991); Investigative Crime journalist Veronica Guerin is murdered in her car by motorcyclist gunmen on the orders of Irish Drug Lords (1996); the US Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act [an attempt to control the availability of pornography on the internet] violates the First Amendment (1997 - on the exact same day in the UK, Bloomsbury - a small publishing company founded only a decade earlier - publishes Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone by unknown author, JK Rowling); the US Supreme Court rules that anti-Sodomy Laws are inconstitutional (2003); the US Supreme Court rules that restrictions on handgun and other firearms ownership violate the 2nd Amendment (2008); 35 people are killed in Xinjiang in North-West China when terrorists mount a knife attack on a police station (2013 - on the same day, the US Supreme Court [they seem to be busy on this date!] votes 5-4 that the Defense of Marriage Act, limiting the definition of "marriage" as "the union of one man and one woman" to be unconstitutional and in violation of the 5th Amendment: two years later to the day [2015], it rules [again 5-4] that same sex couples have the constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment); more than 400 people are murdered in unco-ordinated ISIL terrorist attacks in Kuwait [27 deaths], Syria [243 deaths], Somalia [70 deaths], and Tunisia [39 deaths] , and France [1 death] - more than 330 other people receive non-fatal injuries (2015); Theresa May is DUPed into giving £1billion funding to Northern Ireland in the belief that she is buying support for her policies (2017); and, on this date last year, the city of Quriyat in Oman recorded its lowest temperature of the day as 42.6 degrees C (108.7 F) - the highest Lowest Temperature ever recorded.

Birthdays Today include: Georg Brandt (1694); Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699); Charles Messier (1730); Leopold Koželuch (1747); Branwell Bronte (1817); William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824); Pearl S Buck (1892); Willy Messerschmitt (1898); Hugues Cuénod (1902); Peter Lorre (1904); Salvador Allende (1908); Tom "call me Colonel" Parker (1909); Maurice Wilkes (1913); Laurie Lee (1914); Giuseppe Taddei (1916); Violette Szabo (1921); Jacob Druckman (1928); Colin Wilson (1931); Claudio Abbado (1933); Georgie Fame (1943).

Final Days for: Francesco Piarro (1541); Gilbert White (1793); Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1810); Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1836); Adelaide Ames (1932); Ford Maddox Ford (1939); Nikolai Tcherepnin (1945); Alfred Döblin & Malcolm Lowry (both 1957); Andre Tchaikowsky (1982 - thereupon commencing a theatrical career as a member of the RSC); Henk Badings (1987); Richard Whiteley (2005).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 26th June, 1979 were:

Overture: Biber "Nightwatchman" Serenade; Dornel Trio Sonata in D; Pachelbel Canon & Gigue in D; Sweelinck Fantasia Chromatica; Mendelssohn String Symphony #13; Stuntz La Rappressaglia Ovt; von Wartensee Concerto for 2 Clarinets; Raff Ode to Spring; Civil Tarantango.
This Week's Composer: Tippett (Conc for Dbl Strng Orch; & Symph #1)
L'Ecole d'Orphee: Francois Couperin Concert Royal No 2, in D (Ordre No 17), Suite No 2, in A (Pieces de violes); Bach Sonata in a minor, for unaccompanied flute (BWV 1013), Trio-Sonata in G (BWV 1038), Sonata in c minor, for harpsichord and violin (BWV 1017).
Songs by Parry & Brahms performed by John Barrow (Baritone) & Wilfrid Parry (Piano).

[Petrushka]

That's an impressive list of premieres for a single date!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That's an impressive list of premieres for a single date!

- and interesting coincidence that Claudio Abbado "premiered" just seven years after the Janacek Sinfonietta (which he recorded - very well - twice).

[Edgy 2]

Andre Tchaikowsky (1982 - thereupon commencing a theatrical career as a member of the RSC)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3543481/Royal-Shakespeare-Company-to-stop-using-distracting-real-skull-in-Hamlet.html

[Edgy 2]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...in-Hamlet.html

Ah thanks

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 27th

The Feast Day of St Sampson the Hospitable - the 6th Century Orthodox saint, who wasn't killed in any horrible way, didn't perform any miracles during (or after) his life, but "simply" spent his life caring for the sick, turning his own home into a free clinic for anyone who needed medical care. He could have retired in luxury after successfully treating the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and being offered whatever he wanted in return - instead, he simply asked the emperor to build and fund a hospital for the poor, which became the largest in the Empire, and served the city for 600 years. My sort of saint.

And, in Germany, Seven Sleepers' Day - based around the legend of seven youths who hid in a cave to escape religious persecution (the myth appears in Islam as well as Christianity); after sleeping there, they emerged "the next morning" to discover that 300 years had passed. Like St Swithin's Day, it is one of those calendar events that are supposed to foretell what the weather is going to be like for the rest of the Summer (although, as has been pointed out, how this works with the Gregorian Calendar isn't quite clear).

Also on this Date: Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank, the leaders of the Cornish Rebellion against Henry VII's war tax, are hanged, drawn, & quartered as traitors on Tyburn Hill (1497); the Battle of Dettingen - the last in which a British monarch led his troops in battle (1743); founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum are shot dead by an angry mob as they are held in jail awaiting trial (1844); Annie Kopchovsky sets off on her trip to become the first person to travel around the world on a bicycle (1894 - she completes the trip 15 months later); Joshua Slocum completes the first solo circumnavigation of the world (1900 - the trip [in a ship] has taken over 3 years); Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin refuse to eat the maggot-infested borscht they have been served; the ship's second-in-command declares that he will shoot anyone who refuses to eat, and so triggers a mutiny (1905); Government forces in Romania launch a 10-day-long massacre of the Jewish population of the city of Iași (1941 - when they have finished, at least 13,266 unarmed men, women, and children have been murdered); the Canadian Citizenship Act distinguishes Canadian from British citizens (1946); the United States receives assurances from the Soviet Union that the latter will not take action against any US military action in Korea - President Truman therefore decides to send troops to aid South Korea (1952); the first nuclear power plant in the world opens in the city of Obninsk (1954); the first production of West Side Story comes to the end of its run after 732 performances (1959); Reg Varney becomes the first person to use an Automated Teller Machine at the Enfield branch of Barclay's Bank (1967); Nixon arrives in Moscow for his second visit to the Soviet Union (1974 - he is greeted by cheering crowds, which is a darn sight better than anything that greets him back home); Air France Airbus A300 is hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who order that it be taken to Entebbe in Uganda (1976); Djibouti gains independence from France (1977); members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult release sarin gas from a truck into a residential area of the city of Matsumoto in Japan, killing 8 people and over 500 others affected by the attack (1994); 10 years and 2 months after first being elected Prime Minister, Tony Blair resigns (2007 - and Gordon Brown finally achieves his lifelong ambition to become Prime Minister); military police shoot dead 19 people and injure several others living in low-income neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro as part of an operation against drug traffickers (also 2007 - a subsequent investigation reveals that eleven of those killed had nothing to do with the trafficking "whatsoever" [meaning that they weren't even users]); NASA launches IRIS, the Interface Region Imaging Spectroscope, to investigate the chromosphere of the Sun (2013);

Birthdays Today include: Charles Stewart Parnell (1846); Emma Goldman (1869); Helen Keller (1880); Eduard Spranger (1882); Guilhermina Suggia (1885); Antoinette Perry (1888);Catherine Cookson & Vernon Watkins (both 1906); ER Braithwaite (1912); Philip Guston (1913); George Walker (1922); Anna Moffo & Hugh Wood (both 1932); Shirley Anne Field (1936); Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941);Angela King (1944); Magnus Lindberg (1958); Simon Sebag Monteiore (1965); Tobey Maguire (1975).

Final Days for: Giorgio Vasari (1574); Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1729); Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1814); Sophie Germaine (1831); Robert Stolz (1975); AJ Ayer (1989); Milton Subotsky (1991); Jack Lemon, Joan Sims & Tove Jansson (all 2001); John Entwistle (2002); Christopher Russell Edward Squire (2015).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 17th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Marcello Oboe Concerto in d minor; Handel Lascia ch'io pianga (from "Rinaldo"); Mozart Divertimento in F, K138; Mendelssohn Ruy Blas Ovt; Novak Slovak Suite; Rossini String Sonata #4 in Bb.
Composer of the Week: Tippett (Little Music for Strings; Act 2 The Knot Garden; S4tet #4)
Trio Sonnerie: Corelli Sonatas in D and in d minor, Op 5 #1 & #12; Frescobaldi Toccata for violin and keyboard; Anon Paso e mezzo antico primo, secondo, terzo; Fusi pavana piana; Pass'e mezo nuovo primo, segondo, terzo; Dolce memori (Intavolatura nova).
Rebecca Clarke: Prelude, Allegro & Pastorale; Pno 3o
Piano Recital by Martin Roscoe: Grieg Poetic Tone Picture, Op3; Nielsen Suite Op45
BBCPO conducted by Matthias Bamert: Beethoven Prometheus (Ovt & Ballet Music); Mahler Symph #1

[Padraig]

Guilhermina Suggia (1885);

Is it tomorrow already? How time flies

Madame Suggia was a cellist who used to adorn an old music magazine of my childhood. She appeared on the page opposite Bach's Prelude in C and I became well acquainted with her as a result.

Madame Suggia was also a member of this board, if I remember correctly.

[gurnemanz]

70 today! And pleased to make it this far. The composer who wrote a lengthy opera in which my namesake appears died under strange circumstance in Venice a few months before his 70th. I've been enjoying a really excellent Spotify playlist entitled 70 after 70: Creativity and Longevity. 70 tracks written by composers after they reached that biblical landmark. Quite a few big beasts never made it that far, of course. JS didn't but CPE did.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many Happy Returns, gurne!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 28th

On this Date: Edward IV is crowned king of England (1461 - Henry VI is still alive); the Coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey (1838); Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle is premiered at the Salle Le Peletier, Paris (1841 - slightly distracting from the Music were the calls of the operators of the stage machinery, which could be heard clearly by the audience); Adolphe Sax patents the Saxophone (1846); Ned Kelly, wearing his bullet-proof body armour, opens fire on Australian lawmen trying to arrest him at Glenrowan in Victoria, laughing at them until one of them realises that the "body armour" doesn't cover the legs, so shoots him in the thigh and hip, which stops the laughter (1880); the US Congress passes the Spooner Act, authorizing President Theodor Roosevelt to acquire the rights to the Canama Panal (1902); the first known Martian meteorite known to have landed in Egypt falls in the village of Nakhla (1911 - it is also the first to suggest evidence of water in Mars' history); heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian crown, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sofie are murdered in Sarajevo (1914 - exactly five years later to the day, the Versailles Treaty is signed, bringing the War that resulted to an end - or, at least, a twenty-year pause); the Irish Civil War begins (1922); Louis Armstrong & his Hot Five record King Oliver's West End Blues (1928 - less tha three weeks after the composer's own recording); the Soviet Communist Party expels the Yugoslav Communist Party following Tito's criticism of Stalinist policies (1948); the murder of at least 60,000 [and possibly as many as 200,000) suspected Communists and Communist sympathisers by South Korean police and military begins (1950 - not wishing to be out-gitted, on the same day, the North Korean People's Army murders 700 doctors, nurses and patients at the Seoul National University Hospital, burying some of their victims alive); Polish factory workers go on strike in the city of Poznan, sparking nationwide protests against the Communist regime (1956 - the protests are suppressed by the Sedcurity forces, who kill up to 100 people and injure another 600); Malcolm X announces the creation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (1964); a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan sparks a series of riots which marks the beginning of the Gay Rights movement in the United States (1969); British and American mercenaries captured during the Angolan Civil War are sentenced to execution by firing squad, or long prison sentences (1976); Iraqi military aircraft drop mustard gas bombs on the village of Sardasht in Iran (1987 - the first time that chemical weapons have been targeted against civilians); Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield's ear during a boxing match (1997); Slobodan Milošević is extradicted to the Hague for trial for war crimes (2001).

Birthdays Today include: Henry VIII (1491); Cristofano Malvezzi (1547); Peter Paul Rubens (1577); John Wesley (1703); Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712); Robert Franz (1815); Joseph Joachim (1831); John Boyle O'Reilly (1844); Luigi Pirandello (1867); Stefi Geyer (1888); Richard Rodgers (1902); Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906); Jimmy Mundy (1907); Eric Ambler (1909); George Lloyd (1913); Georges Wolinski (1934); John Inman (1935); Kathy Bates (1948); Philip Fowke (1950); Lalla Ward (1951); .... Mel Brookes is 93 today, and it would have been Mazie Golin Ford's 113th birthday, had she not died just seven weeks ago!

Final Days for: Cyneweard (975); Antoine Forqueray (1745); Johann Christoph Vogel (1788); Velimir Khlebnikov (1922); Edward Carpenter (1929); Henry Balfour Gardiner (1950); Paul Dessau (1979); José Iturbi (1980).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Saturday, 28th June, 1969 were:

The Saturday Concert: Pt1 "Beethoven & his Contemporaries"; Pt2 Smetana Ma Vlast (VPO/Kubelik)
Jazz Record Requests presented by Steve Race
Dvorak Symphonic Variations (LSO/Davis)

( ... then the flanneled fools for over 6 hours)

[Pulcinella]

We've lost the date, ferney.
I was hoping that it would be the The Feast Day of St Sampson the Inhospitable, too!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We've lost the date, ferney.

Oops - duly added.

I was hoping that it would the The Feast Day of St Sampson the Inhospitable, too!