Original, printed concert programme insert for two concerts given in New York

John Barbirolli conducted the World premiere of the piano concerto by Castelnuovo-Tedesco with the composer as soloist, and after the interval, the America premiere of his Twelfth Night overture

The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, 98th Season, 1939-1940

Carnegie Hall, New York 3538th and 3539th Concerts

2 November 1939, Wednesday Evening at 8.45pm
3 November 1939, Friday Afternoon at 2.30pm

Elgar Introduction and Allegro for Strings (Quartet* and Orchestra), Op. 47
Castelnuovo-Tedesco Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 First performance anywhere
Castelnuovo-Tedesco Overture to 'Twelfth Night' First time in America
Tchaikovsky Overture-Fantasy, 'Romeo and Juliet'

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco piano
*M. Piastro, Z. Kurthy, S. Barozzi, J. Schuster

[New York Philharmonic] manager Arthur Judson, assistant manager Bruno Zirato

John Barbirolli conductor

Programme notes by Pitts Sanborn

Future concerts with Barbirolli : a third performance of this programme with Castelnuovo-Tedesco; a Schubert programme; Sigurd Rascher in the New York premieres of saxophone works by Debussy and Ibert

8 pages, centre stapled; 9 x 6 inches (23 x 15cm)

Condition : Very good; very minimal handling wear. A nice copy

I will package carefully and am happy to post worldwide : UK £1.50 Europe £4.50 Worldwide £6 (Postage combined and reduced for multiple purchases posted together)

Concerts program programm programmes new york philharmonic programmheft 1940s 1940's nineteen forties 40s 40's legendary conductors
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (April 3, 1895 – March 16, 1968) was an Italian composer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he migrated to the United States and became a film composer for MGM Studios for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next fifteen years. He also wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.

Biography

Born in Florence, he was descended from a prominent banking family that had lived in the city since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was first introduced to the piano by his mother, and he composed his first pieces when he was just nine years old. After completing a degree in piano in 1914 under Edgardo Del Valle de Paz (1861–1920), well-known composer and pianist pupil of Beniamino Cesi, he began studying composition under renowned Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti, and received a diploma in composition in 1918. He soon came to the attention of composer and pianist Alfredo Casella, who included the young Castelnuovo-Tedesco's work in his repertoire. Casella also ensured that Castelnuovo's works would be included in the repertoires of the Societa Nazionale di Musica (later the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche), granting him exposure throughout Europe as one of Italy's up-and-coming young composers. Works by him were included in the first festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music, held in Salzburg, Austria, in 1922.

In 1926, Castelnuovo-Tedesco premiered his opera La Mandragola, based on a play by Niccolò Machiavelli. It was the first of his many works inspired by great literature, and which included interpretations of works by Aeschylus, Virgil, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Miguel de Cervantes, Federico García Lorca, and especially William Shakespeare. Another major source of inspiration for him was his Jewish heritage, most notably the Bible and Jewish liturgy. His Violin Concerto No. 2 (1931), written at the request of Jascha Heifetz, was also an expression of his pride in his Jewish origins, or as he described it, the "splendor of past days", in the face of rising anti-Semitism that was sweeping across much of Europe.

At the 1932 festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music, held in Venice, Castelnuovo-Tedesco first met the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia. The meeting inspired Castelnuovo-Tedesco to write for the guitar, beginning with his Variazioni attraverso i secoli (Variations à travers les siècles), Op. 71 (1932), and later his Guitar Concerto No. 1 (1939). All in all, he wrote almost one hundred compositions for this instrument, which earned him a reputation as one of the foremost composers for the guitar in the twentieth century. Some of them were written and dedicated to Segovia, who was an enthusiast of his style.

The following year the Italian fascist government developed a program toward the arts, which were viewed as a tool for propaganda and promotion of racial ideas.[citation needed] Even before the Italian government promulgated the Italian Racial Laws in 1938, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was banned from the radio and performances of his work were cancelled. The new racial laws, however, convinced him that he should leave Italy. He wrote to Arturo Toscanini, the former musical director of La Scala, who had left Italy in 1933, explaining his plight, and Toscanini responded by promising to sponsor him as an immigrant in the United States. Castelnuovo-Tedesco left Italy in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

In the meantime, he wrote his Cello Concerto in G minor, Op. 72, for Gregor Piatigorsky. It was premiered with the dedicatee under Arturo Toscanini in New York in 1935. For Piatigorsky he also wrote a Toccata (1935), and a piece called Greeting Card, Op. 170/3, based on the spelling of Piatigorsky’s name.

Like many artists who fled fascism, Castelnuovo-Tedesco ended up in Hollywood, where, with the help of Jascha Heifetz, he landed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a film composer. Over the next fifteen years, he worked on scores for some 200 films there and at the other major film studios. Rita Hayworth hired him to write the music for The Loves of Carmen (1948), produced by Hayworth for her Beckworth Productions and released by Columbia Pictures.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a significant influence on other major film composers, including Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein and André Previn. Jerry Goldsmith, Marty Paich and John Williams were all his pupils, as was Scott Bradley, who studied privately with him while both were on staff at MGM. His relationship to Hollywood was ambiguous: later in life he attempted to deny the influence that it had on his own work, but he also believed that it was an essentially American artform, much as opera was European.

In 1946 he became a U.S. citizen, but he remained very close to Italy, which he frequently visited. In 1958 he won the Concorso Campari with the opera The Merchant of Venice, which was first performed in 1961 at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the baton of Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

In 1962 he wrote Les Guitares bien tempérées for two guitars, a set of 24 preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, for the duo-guitarists Alexandre Lagoya and Ida Presti. This was inspired by The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco revered.

In the United States, Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed new operas and works based on American poetry, Jewish liturgy, and the Bible. He died in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 72. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

The Library of Congress in Washington DC hosts the Mario Castelnuovo Collection, a collection of manuscripts of the composer, donated by the family in 2000. The catalogue is accessible online.

In 2005 the autobiography of the composer (Una vita di musica: un libro di ricordi), written shortly before his death, was published in Italy.

Sir John Barbirolli, CH (2 December 1899 – 29 July 1970) was a British conductor and cellist. Barbirolli was particularly associated with the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, which he conducted for nearly three decades. He was also music director of the New York Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony, and conducted many other orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic. He was particularly associated with the music of English composers such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He also developed a strong reputation as a conductor of the music of Gustav Mahler.

Early years 1899-1937
Giovanni Battista Barbirolli was a Londoner, from a musical family. His father and uncle were violinists in London theatre orchestras, notably the Leicester Square Empire, though they had also played at La Scala, Milan, under Arturo Toscanini. Thus the young John Barbirolli (as he became known) was destined to be a string player, a specialist in British music, and to have a love of Italian opera.
Barbirolli won a scholarship to study at Trinity College of Music, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music where the Sir John Barbirolli Collection of photographs and memorabilia is now archived. As a young cellist he made some acoustic records, played in the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), notably at the first performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, and was soon after the soloist in the second performance of the work. In the 1920s he turned to conducting and formed a chamber orchestra which recorded new works for the National Gramophonic Society, notably Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, which may have been responsible for His Master's Voice avoiding the work until after Elgar's death.
Between 1929 and 1933 he conducted opera at Covent Garden. From 1933 to 1936 he conducted the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow.
Barbirolli became known for his ability to secure effective performances at short notice, and in the 1930s made many recordings with the LSO and London Philharmonic, accompanying concerti with leading soloists such as Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, most of which remain classics today.

Conductor of New York Philharmonic 1937-1942
In 1937 Barbirolli achieved a coup when he was invited to succeed Arturo Toscanini as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, a tremendously prestigious post. Although his five seasons there were a musical triumph, as surviving recordings show, he was under constant attack from the hostile New York press, notably the critic Olin Downes, who was a strong champion of Toscanini. Barbirolli also had to cope with rivalry from the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra, also based in New York, which was conducted by Toscanini and paid higher salaries.

Work in later years 1942-1970
In 1942 Barbirolli was invited to renew his contract but to do so would have had to become a US citizen, which he was unwilling to do. At this point, an invitation to take up the post of chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra transformed his career.
The increase in scope for concerts had prompted the Hallé to end the increasingly unsatisfactory arrangement of sharing half their players with the BBC, which had saved them in the slump years, and to engage a top-rank conductor. Only four of the shared players chose to join the Hallé, so when Barbirolli arrived he had to rebuild the orchestra in weeks, a task he fell to with enthusiasm. His "new Hallé" recorded symphonies by Arnold Bax and Vaughan Williams, made in wartime Manchester. There was also a series of highly-acclaimed stereo recordings released by Pye in the United Kingdom and by Vanguard Records and Angel Records in the United States.
Barbirolli conducted the orchestra for 25 years in many cities, including at the Cheltenham Festival, where he premiered many new works. He also conducted the BBC and other London orchestras in concert and on record, and towards the end of his life renewed his association with EMI, which produced a legacy of fine recorded performances, many of which have been available continuously.
His last two concerts were held in the St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn, as part of its 1970 Festival. Despite collapsing from ill-health during the Friday afternoon, he produced magnificent renderings of Elgar's Symphony No 1 and Sea Pictures. The last work he conducted was Beethoven's Symphony No 7 on the Saturday before his death.
Barbirolli is remembered as an interpreter of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Mahler, as well as Schubert, Beethoven, Sibelius, Verdi and Puccini, and as a staunch supporter of new works by British composers, in which his advocacy rivaled those of conductors Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Henry Wood. Vaughan Williams bestowed the nickname "Glorious John" on Barbirolli as a sign of esteem. He was a mentor to the extraordinarily gifted cellist Jacqueline du Pré.
He was knighted in 1949 and made a Companion of Honour in 1969.

Family
His first marriage was to singer Marjorie Parry. His second marriage from 1939 to his death was to the British oboist Evelyn Rothwell, born 1911 at Wallingford, England, who became Lady Barbirolli. She died at the age of 97 in January 2008.

Notable premieres
•Benjamin Britten, Violin Concerto with Antonio Brosa as soloist, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 28 March 1940
•Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 30 March 1941
•Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sinfonia antartica, Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, 1953
•Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 8, 1956

Legacy
Barbirolli Square in Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, England is named in his honour, with a statue of him by Byron Howard (2000). The square includes the modern concert venue, the Bridgewater Hall.
The Barbirolli Hall is the main hall in St Clement Danes School in Chorleywood, formerly St Clement Danes Grammar School, of which Barbirolli was a student when it was located in Houghton Street, London. The Elgar Cello Concerto has since been performed twice in the hall by cellist John Brennan and St Clement Danes student Thomas Isherwood.
A commemorative blue plaque was placed on the wall of the Bloomsbury Park Hotel in Southampton Row, Holborn, London in May 1993 to mark Barbirolli’s birthplace.