# Composer Performances



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'm curious, in all centuries, is it common for composers to perform other composers works during a performance or do they stick to their own music?

Thanks,
Very curious.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mozart, for a concert in Linz, programmed Michael Haydn's 25th Symphony in addition to his 36th Symphony, the "Linz.". This later led to confusion, since he had copied out M. Haydn's 25th ymphony in his own hand, leading later musicologists to identify it as his 37th Symphony. It wasn't.

Schumann included the Knack's "My Sharona" in a concerto of his own lieder, with spectacular and unfortunate results. Woodduck can tell the story...


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Cover versions have always been around. I reckon if Beethoven were alive today he'd 'knock out a great version of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'. Shame he wouldn't be able to hear it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Mahler, of course, performed many other works as director of Vienna opera.

Liszt invented the piano recital as we know it

Beethoven played Mozart's K466 at a benefit concert for Mozart's widow

Rachmaninoff played other music than his own and recorded some like Schumann's Carnival and Chopin's sonata 2. He wanted to record the Beethoven sonatas but RCA reckoned in their wisdom or otherwise they would be uncommercial.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Modern composers, some, have enormous discographies of the works of others. Check out Boulez, whose Stravinsky I was listening to earlier.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Mahler, of course, performed many other works as director of Vienna opera.
> 
> Liszt invented the piano recital as we know it
> 
> ...


I do think that he did the same as guest conductor in Amsterdam .


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

I think Mozart played Haydn in his concerts as well.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Prokofiev, during his brief stay in the USA after he left Russia and was concertizing as a pianist, played Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Chopin along with a small bit of his own material. Being Prokofiev though, he didn't much like it, but was persuaded by the various impresarios who booked his concerts that the audiences needed to be placated by the more familiar works.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Leonard Bernstein, whether as pianist or conductor, performed works of other (contemporaneous) composers, especially Americans, such as Diamond, Ives, Copland, David del Tredici, Harris, Schuman.

Yevgeny Svetlanov, Bernstein's Soviet counterpart, performed works of fellow Soviets (Eshpai, Weinberg, Taktakishvili, Shostakovich). 

Going back even earlier, it was not uncommon for composers to perform works of other composers. For instances, Rimsky-Korsakov performed works of Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, et al. as conductor. Mahler conducted works of Wagner, Goldmark, you name it. Kurt Atterberg performed works of Nielsen, Alfven, and what not.

I think there's a plethora of such an example.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Mendelssohn was a noted conductor of other composers' music - he conducted the first performance of St Matthew Passion since Bach's lifetime


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Mendelssohn was a noted conductor of other composers' music - he conducted the first performance of St Matthew Passion since Bach's lifetime


Mendelssohn also conducted and restored to the repertoire Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto, which had been in oblivion since their first and only performances. Also, he rediscovered Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and added it to his organ performance programs.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> "Bach's" Toccata and Fugue in D minor


*cough cough cough*


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well, until somebody tells me who actually wrote it, it's Bach's as far as I'm concerned. But I also think Haydn's Op. 3 quartets were actually written by Haydn, not that Hoffstetter guy. I mean, Hoffstetter? Really??? :lol:


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Wagner adored Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and he conducted it on many occasions, the first of which famously occurred on Palm Sunday in 1846. The entire process - studying, rehearsing and performing the work - had a profound effect on Wagner's own compositional style (as the musicologist Christopher Reynolds observes in his book _Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth_).


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Well, until somebody tells me who actually wrote it, it's Bach's as far as I'm concerned. But I also think Haydn's Op. 3 quartets were actually written by Haydn, not that Hoffstetter guy. I mean, Hoffstetter? Really??? :lol:


Not sure if serious...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> Not sure if serious...


http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurb...iletype=About this Recording&language=English


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurb...iletype=About this Recording&language=English


Yes, I know Haydn's authorship is dubious, just like Bach's in the Toccata, so?


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Percy Grainger was a handy Chopin interpreter by all accounts.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> Yes, I know Haydn's authorship is dubious, just like Bach's in the Toccata, so?


Then I guess I misunderstood you. What are you "unsure" about?


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Then I guess I misunderstood you. What are you "unsure" about?


Whether you really couldn't believe that Haydn didn't write those quartets.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Every concert given by Mozart & Beethoven that I know of, seemed to exclusively offer their own music and no other composers' music. And those concerts could be really, really long!!!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> Whether you really couldn't believe that Haydn didn't write those quartets.


Yes, I seriously believe the Op. 3 quartets are by Haydn. They were included in not one but two early 19th-century surveys of Haydn's works, the later one prepared under the direct supervision of Haydn himself. The other, assembled a bit earlier by Pleyel, stated that the works had been "avowed by the author."

Also, as noted in the link I gave, "…none of the authentic [Hoffstetter] quartets possesses the melodic charm and sureness of touch of movements like the famous 'Serenade' from Op. 3, No. 5. On the evidence we possess, Op. 3, if indeed it is the work of Hoffstetter, represents his finest set of quartets."

I call it game, set and match for FJ.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Yes, I seriously believe the Op. 3 quartets are by Haydn. They were included in not one but two early 19th-century surveys of Haydn's works, the later one prepared under the direct supervision of Haydn himself. The other, assembled a bit earlier by Pleyel, stated that the works had been "avowed by the author."
> 
> Also, as noted in the link I gave, "…none of the authentic [Hoffstetter] quartets possesses the melodic charm and sureness of touch of movements like the famous 'Serenade' from Op. 3, No. 5. On the evidence we possess, Op. 3, if indeed it is the work of Hoffstetter, represents his finest set of quartets."
> 
> I call it game, set and match for FJ.


I don't really have a strong opinion on the op. 3 quartets. They could well be very early works by Haydn. Same thing with the Bach Toccata I suppose, although the evidence for his authorship of that piece seems to be scantier. But ultimately we can't really be sure at present.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Every concert given by Mozart & Beethoven that I know of, seemed to exclusively offer their own music and no other composers' music. And those concerts could be really, really long!!!


I can't think of an exception for Beethoven, but I think Mozart programmed others' works at concerts he put on. At a Linz concert, for example, the one that he organized and that introduced his 36th Symphony, he programmed Michael Haydn's 25th Symphony.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

_Well, I don't know who they were, but Wikipedia says this about Copland conducting:_

By the 1950s, he was also conducting the works of other composers, and after a televised appearance where he directed the New York Philharmonic, Copland became in high demand. He placed a strong emphasis in his programs on 20th-century music and lesser-known composers, and until the 1970s rarely planned concerts to feature his music exclusively.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Paul Hindemith from http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Hindemith-Paul.htm

The following year, he began to work as an organizer of the Donaueschingen Festival, where he programmed works by several avant garde composers, including Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

I don't think (although I'm not certain) that Sibelius ever conducted the work of any composer other than himself. Unfortunately there is only one recording of him conducting and it is approximately six minutes long.


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