by Marvin J. Ward

Northampton, MA, 6 & 7 November 2009. Most Americans think that Sergei Rachmaninoff made his American début premièring his 3rd piano concerto in concert with the NY Symphony Society, under the baton of Walter Damrosch, in NYC’s New (later Century) Theater on 28 November 1909, performance that was memorably repeated in Carnegie Hall with the NY Philharmonic under the baton of Gustav Mahler in January 1910.  In fact, however, his 1st performance, not only on American soil, but also in solo recital, occurred on Thursday, 4 November 1909, in Smith’s College Hall here, played on a Mason and Hamlin piano.

by Marvin J. Ward

Holyoke, MA, 18 October 2009. It is entirely appropriate that a program of French music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as might have been played in the Paris salon of the Princesse de Polignac, née Winaretta Singer, should take place in Belle Skinner’s Music Room at her Holyoke home Wistariahurst.  Belle, too, had spent some time, and some of her inherited fortune in France: she sponsored the reconstruction of an entire village after WW I.

by Marvin J. Ward

Worcester, MA, 16 October 2009. Music Worcester, the heir of the Worcester Music Festival, founded in 1858, the oldest music festival in the nation, traditionally held in the fall, opened its 150th – there was a hiatus in 1918 due to the influenza epidemic, which explains why this is not the 151st – season this evening in Mechanics Hall.

by Marvin J. Ward

Ashburnham, MA, 11 October 2009. Minneapolis, MN-based pianist Gail Olszewski made her 3rd appearance in a Frederick Collection Historical Piano Concerts series this afternoon, playing a program of favorites on the Tröndlin piano made in Leipzig in 1830.  She offered Schubert’s Four Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899, from 1827, split in 2 pairs to open each half of the program.  The 1st half featured Beethoven’s Sonata in E, Op. 109, from 1820, and the 2nd half, Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 in g, Op. 22, from 1838, whose tempo markings, such as “So rasch wie möglich – Schneller – Noch schneller” (As fast as possible – faster – still faster), and  “Presto – Prestissimo – Schneller und schneller,” must scare many away from attempting it.