Word: first
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...favorite, Mozart. "Some so-called wizards of the baton," he wrote, "play Beethoven and Mozart finales as though they were riding a shying horse and had lost the reins." Strauss also felt that he himself had been badly dealt with by publishers, stage directors and actors. His father, first horn at the Munich court opera, had to contribute 1,000 marks ($238) to the printing cost of the F-Minor Symphony. "My fee for Don Juan," Strauss recorded, "was 800 marks ... for Eulenspiegel [one of his most frequently played works], 1,000 marks...
...vulgar monster with a horrible make-up and proletarian manners," as most bassos represented him, Strauss intended him as "a rustic beau, a Don Juan of some 35 years, but nevertheless a nobleman . . . Inwardly he is gross (ein Schmutzian), but outwardly he remains quite presentable . . . Above all, his first scene in the bedroom must be played with extreme delicacy and discretion, it must not be repulsive ... In short, Viennese comedy, not Berlin farce...
...Strauss's most difficult productions to get on the boards was his Salome, written in 1903. Asked to play the lead, Soprano Marie Wittich at first refused with the explanation: "I can't do this; I'm a decent woman." Even the composer's father had his doubts, the son remembered. "Mein Gott," he exclaimed, "what nervous music! It makes me feel as though my pants were full of grabbling May bugs...
...complete a viola concerto for William Primrose. In the University of Minnesota's Northrop Memorial Auditorium last week, a near-capacity crowd brought Violist Primrose back onstage six times with thunderous applause. With Conductor Antal Dorati's Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, he had given the first public performance of Bartok's tragic, lyrical swan song...
...Minneapolis audience welcomed the piece wholeheartedly, from the poignantly elegiac first movement to the brilliant and stirring folk dance at the end. Wrote Tribune Critic Norman Houk: "The Bartok concerto was a major success ... It was given an alert, keyed-up performance by a soloist, orchestra and conductor who had been working on the complex score for a strenuous week . . . A permanent and important addition to the viola repertory...