Tag: Gregor Piatigorsky

Earlier this week, I posted about the birthday of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, the Jewish Italian composer who was fortunate to make it to America before he could be packed off to a concentration camp.

Things had already been heating up at home for some time, with Castelnuovo-Tedesco being banned from radio and performances of his works being cancelled, well before the passage of Italian racial laws in 1938. He didn’t leave until 1939, when Arturo Toscanini (who was not Jewish, but had had enough of Mussolini by 1933) agreed to sponsor his immigration to the United States.

I always wind up playing Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Violin Concerto No. 2, subtitled “The Prophets,” during Passover. Written for Heifetz in 1931, its three movements are named for the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah. Of course, we hear his guitar pieces – many of them written for Segovia – all the time. But I always wondered what happened to his Cello Concerto.

The Cello Concerto, written for Gregor Piatigorsky, was given its premiere under Toscanini’s direction in 1935. I have read about it, but I have never actually heard it. Now I learn that the reason is because Piatigorsky had exclusive performance rights to the piece during his lifetime, much as Paul Wittgenstein held exclusive performance rights to the works he commissioned (which is why, for instance, a major work by Paul Hindemith, “Klaviermusik mit Orchester,” went unheard until its revival in 2004 – Wittgenstein didn’t like the piece and locked it up in a trunk).

Fascinatingly, the Castelnuovo-Tedesco concerto has reemerged in Texas, to be performed by the Houston Symphony over Easter weekend. Allegedly it will be the first time the work will have been heard since the 1930s. Hear excerpts, with lots of fascinating background, at the Houston Symphony’s website:

http://www.houstonsymphony.org/tickets/production/detail?id=7346&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social+media&utm_campaign=17CLS14&utm_content=17CLS14+FB+Ad+Brinton+Music+Clip+5

How many more of these musical treasures await rediscovery, I wonder, having been jealously guarded by performers who opted not to promote them, or who were given better offers for yet another whirl through that well-worn crowd-pleaser by Dvořák?