Piston's 'New England Sketches'

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, the Detroit Symphony, led by eminent French conductor Paul Paray, gave the first performance of new music by American composer Walter Piston. He had studied in Paris with famous French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and great French composer Paul Dukas, so perhaps this was an astute paring of composer and conductor.

In any case, to help celebrate the 100th Worcester Festival, Paray and the Detroit orchestra were on hand in Massachusetts for the premiere of Piston’s Three New England Sketches, an orchestral suite with three movements: Seaside, Summer Evening, and Mountains.

Piston didn’t intend these titles to be taken literally. “[They] serve in a broad sense to tell the source of the inspirations, reminiscences, even dreams that pervaded the otherwise musical thoughts of one New England composer,” he noted.

Piston certainly qualified as a bonafide New England composer. He was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1894, taught at Harvard, had a vacation home in Vermont, and died in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1976.

Even so, the most striking hallmark of his music remains its quite cosmopolitan style and neo-classical form — the lasting influence, perhaps, of his two famous French teachers.

Music Played in Today's Program

Walter Piston (1894-1976): Three New England Sketches; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3106