Antheil at Carnegie Hall

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” If George Antheil were asked that question in 1927, he would have answered that it was easy. After the scandalous Paris premiere of his aggressively avant-garde Ballet Mécanique, scored for eight pianos and lots of percussion, including airplane propellers, Antheil received a cable offering financial backing for a one-night only performance of the new work at Carnegie Hall.

Antheil was broke at the time, so the offer was hard to refuse. For his Carnegie Hall debut, he also programmed his new jazz sinfonietta — and hired the all-black W.C. Handy jazz band to accompany him at the piano — and remember, this was 11 years before Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall jazz concert famously presented a racially integrated ensemble on the same stage.

“The public paid scant attention,” Antheil later recalled. “They had come to see and hear the Ballet Mecanique. The new Jazz Sinfonietta which I composed specially for the occasion was played by a large Negro orchestra whose personnel contained a list of names later to become tremendously important in popular music … but the critics took almost no notice except to say that my Sinfonietta was reminiscent of Negro jazz and not as good.”

Music Played in Today's Program

George Antheil (1900-1959): A Jazz Symphony; Ivan Davis, piano; New Palaise Royale Ensemble; Maurice Peress, conductor; MusicMasters 67094