Most of the music on this program was written by teenagers: Mendelssohn was seventeen years old when he composed his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rachmaninoff completed his First Piano Concerto and Strauss his First Horn Concerto at age eighteen, and nineteen-year-old Shostakovich submitted his First Symphony as a graduation exercise from the Petrograd Conservatory. The Overture to Rienzi and Fireworks, early triumphs for Wagner and Stravinsky, complete the program.
Composers’ Early Successes
Young Rachmaninoff sitting at the piano. (Photo: http://www.senar.ru/photos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Playlist
Wilhelm Richard Wagner: Overture to Rienzi
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
Richard Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 11
Dale Clevenger, horn; Daniel Barenboim, conductor
Igor Stravinsky: Fireworks, Op. 4
Pierre Boulez, conductor
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1
Byron Janis, piano; Fritz Reiner, conductor
Felix Mendelssohn: Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21 (excerpt)
Jean Martinon, conductor
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10
Leonard Bernstein, conductor
