Synopsis

On today’s date in 1950, the famous oboist Marcel Tabuteau gave the premiere performance of this “Pastorale” for solo oboe, harp, and strings, with his colleagues from the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The music was by Howard Hanson, who dedicated the piece to his wife Peggy.

Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska in 1896. As a talented teenager, Hanson recalls a German-born musician in New York asking him: “Well, now, Hanson, why do you waste your time at futile efforts in composition when you could became a great concert pianist?” This, said Hanson, from someone who had never heard one note he had written. “In the true German tradition,” Hanson recalled, “he figured that nobody from Nebraska could possibly write good music. It took 40 years to get rid of that kind of thinking in the U.S. – and we’re not over it yet.”

Hanson was a successful composer, conductor, and educator in his early 80s when he made those comments, but retained his sense of humor, as evidence by this comment from the octogenarian: “Peggy will say to me, ‘What are you going to do now?’ and I’ll say, ‘I’m going upstairs to waste my time in futile efforts at composition.’”

Music Played in Today's Program

Howard Hanson (1896 – 1981) — Pastorale (Randall Ellis, oboe; Susan Jolles, harp; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, cond.) Delos 3105