# A premiere of your choice!



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

What premiere of a new work (other than opera) do you most wish you could have attended? If you know something of the real premiere, a few words about that would be nice.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I think the Brahms Piano Concerto #1. Very coldly received. Second performance probably worse received, with hissing. Just too strange for the solid burghers. I would have leaped to my feet and started shouting "Genius!" at the top of my lungs (and been carried off as a madman). Third performance went somewhat better.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

The *Symphony No.* 8 in E-flat major by *Gustav Mahle*r is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer did not sanction that name. The work was composed in a single inspired burst, at Maiernigg in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Gotta be _The_ _Rite of Spring_ premiere in Paris in 1913. What an event! I could have seen just how much of a riot took place. I imagine I would have either been thrilled or horrified-Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Nijinsky all there, the primordial rhythms, the human sacrifice, the mood and wildness of the audience, the chaos of it all-What's not to love?


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Probably Mahler 2 just to see him conduct it.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

The first go at the Beethoven 9th.


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

Have seen several premieres: Two, Edo de Waart conducting John Adams' Harmonielehre (San Francisco) and Lutoslawski conducting his Fourth Symphony (Los Angeles), come most readily to mind. Both were really exciting events. The Lutoslawski work was even given press in the LA Times, in its featured editorial, of all places, something I don't recall ever seeing for a new music premiere. Meanwhile, the Adams work generated huge enthusiasm, the audience exited Marion Davies Hall as if carried aloft.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Wasn't Beethoven's Emperor premiered with the 5th and 6th Symphonies
Now that would have been something


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Yhe first performance of the badly under-rehearsed performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto at the Queen's Hall in London.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Get me to Carnegie Hall in 1894 to see Antonín Dvorák conduct his 9th symphony. Up until that day, what was the greatest premiere in North America? Something by Gottschalk? Victor Herbert?


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

Any of Mahler's symphonies.

But maybe more than that, the premiere of Abrahamsen's recent _let me tell you_, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra. Would've been incredible to witness one of my favourite pieces becoming alive for the first time, as opposed to it happening _while I was unforgivably somewhere else_.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Maybe a little small-scale compared to other choices, but I would have to choose a Bach organ recital. Everyone who heard Bach play the organ proclaimed him the greatest ever and to hear him play one of his own pieces for the first time would have probably been quite the experience.


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

Terry Riley - In C 
Must have been an amazing experience, unlike anything that had gone before. I can’t find the exact date of its première but presumably 1964 - 5 when I’d have been 24 and ready for anything!


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## cougarjuno (Jul 1, 2012)

waldvogel said:


> Get me to Carnegie Hall in 1894 to see Antonín Dvorák conduct his 9th symphony. Up until that day, what was the greatest premiere in North America? Something by Gottschalk? Victor Herbert?


Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 premiered in Boston in 1875. That would have been an interesting premiere


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Another choice; another piano concerto. 16 December 1921, Chicago, CSO with Frederick Stock. Sergei Prokofiev would have blown my mind with the Piano Concerto No. 3, a most wonderful piece of music.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Rite of Spring: Exhilarating music, sexy dancing, and I could get drunk and boo to my heart's content at the end just to fit in (then complain to my friends about the morons who didn't "understand" the work weeks later after I'd read the expert opinions in the papers). That's my idea of a good time. 



p.s. Should have known someone would beat me to it--hope you saved a ticket for me, Larkenfield!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A premiere I should enjoy but probably woudn't: the huge all-Beethoven concert at the Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808. The long program saw no fewer than four major premiers (in bold below).

Part 1
*Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral", Op. 68*
Ah! perfido, concert aria for soprano solo and orchestra, Op. 65
Gloria, from the Mass in C major for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, Op. 86
*Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58*
Part 2
*Symphony No. 5, Op. 67*
Sanctus, from the Mass in C major, Op. 86
Extemporised fantasia for solo piano
*Choral Fantasy for piano soloist, vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, Op. 80*

The small orchestra was liberally sprinkled with amateurs and the performance was ratty: A review said that it "could be considered lacking in all respects." And it was very, very chilly in the unheated theater. A friend who joined Prince Lobkowitz in his box wrote, "There we sat, in the most bitter cold, from half past six until half past ten, and confirmed for ourselves the maxim that one may easily have too much of a good thing."

Sometimes it's better to be able to put the CD on pause, adjust the thermostat, and grab a beer from the fridge...


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

KenOC said:


> A premiere I should enjoy but probably woudn't: the huge all-Beethoven concert at the Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808. The long program saw no fewer than four major premiers (in bold below).
> 
> Part 1
> *Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral", Op. 68*
> ...


Someone asked upthread if the Emperor Concerto was premiered at this Concert, which it wasn't. The Emperor was premiered in newly occupied Vienna and a French officer was said to declare that the piece reminded him of Napoleon....before the latter diasterous invasion of Russia.
I would have liked to be at the premiere of the Franck Violin Sonata, where the sunlight faded in the Museum and the musicians had to play the wonderfully passionate music in the dark


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The 1808 concert was the last time Beethoven played one of his piano concertos in public. Deafness was catching up with him. Looks like the Emperor was premiered by Archduke Rudolf at Lobkowitz's palace in 1811, and first played publically by Carl Czerny (likely a much better pianist) in 1812.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Mahler 8 seems to have been quite the event and I wanted to hear it live anyway. 

Also recitals of Scriabin playing nothing but his own music. No doubt there were some magical moments in there.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Tchaikovsky 6. Would love to see how the unconventional structure plus the raw emotion affected the audience.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

London, 5th October 1938. A concert in honour of Henry Wood's 50 years as a conductor.
World premiere of Vaughan Williams' _Serenade to Music_. I would love to have been there. As a bonus, Rachmaninoff was soloist in his 2nd Piano Concerto in the first half of the concert. 
Not a bad gig to have attended!


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Bruckner's Eighth Symphony*: 
Premiered on 18 December 1892, Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
-->Given the pains he endured in revising the work after Levi's rejection (and then to have it published, which was anything but easy), I would've love to see Bruckner's expression after witnessing what was in the end, a successful performance (some left during the event, but most stayed on). A hard-earned victory indeed.

*Myaskovsky's Sixth Symphony*:
Premiere on 4 May 1924, Nikolai Golovanov conducting the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra & chorus.
-->It was the occasion where the audience was overwhelmed with emotion after the work was performed (after years of the Revolution, the First World War, the Civil War, Collectivization resulting in famine, it is not hard to see why). Myaskovsky himself had to take bowson stage at least thrice.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

KenOC said:


> A premiere I should enjoy but probably woudn't: the huge all-Beethoven concert at the Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808. The long program saw no fewer than four major premiers (in bold below).
> 
> Part 1
> *Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral", Op. 68*
> ...


I was right with the two symphonies but got the piano concerto wrong with my contribution earlier in this thread
Well two out of three and a near miss with the other ain't bad


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Haydn's 102nd Symphony. Not only is it my favourite of his, but I could take my mother-in-law and place her under the chandelier...


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun in Paris on 22 December 1894. I also would've enjoyed seeing Nijinsky dancing to this music.


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## licorice stick (Nov 24, 2014)

No one here wishes they could have been in midst of fisticuffs at the 1913 Skandalkonzert in the Musikverein? I am genuinely curious to know how well Schoenberg's supremely difficult (and ingenious!) First Chamber Symphony was executed prior to the fracas that erupted in the middle of the Berg.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I also would have love to be at the premiere of: Verdi's La Traviata, March 6th

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_traviata#Performance_history


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## Genoveva (Nov 9, 2010)

Two performances that must have caused quite a stir when audiences first heard them are:

_Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610_. It's not entirely clear when/where the first full public performance was given but likely to be 1613 in either Mantua, Venice, or Rome.

_Schubert's Symphony No 9 ("Great")_. This work was written between 1825-28, but was probably not given its first public performance until 1839 by the Leipzig Gewandhaus under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Le Nozze Di Figaro Vienna Premiere.


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