1766 Rodolphe Kreutzer – French violinist and composer (d.1831); Beethoven dedicated to him his Violin Sonata No. 9—now known as the Kreutzer Sonata—but Kreutzer apparently never played the work in public, declaring it unplayable and incomprehensible; career as a soloist was cut short by a carriage accident in 1810; composed about 40 operas and his 40 Études ou caprices remain standard exercises for the violin.
1861 first performance of Johannes Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 1 at a private read-through in Hamburg with Clara Schumann as pianist; a year later to the day, the work had its official premiere in Vienna with members of the Hellmesberger Quartet and the composer at the piano.
1895 Paul Hindemith – German composer, violist and conductor (d.1963); one of the most significant German composers of his time; became a US citizen in 1946, having emigrated in 1940; composed Gebrauchsmusik (Music for Use)—compositions intended to have a social or political purpose and sometimes written to be played by amateurs, a concept inspired by Bertolt Brecht; wrote a Scherzo for viola and cello (1934) during a series of recording sessions as a "filler" for an unexpected blank side of a 78 rpm album, and recorded immediately upon its completion, and Wir bauen eine Stadt (We’re Building a City), an opera for eight-year-olds (1930).
1900 first concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra with conductor Fritz Scheel; orchestra now based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts where subscription concerts are given in Verizon Hall; current Music Director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin; summer home is the Mann Center for the Performing Arts with summer residencies at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and since July 2007 at the Bravo Vail Valley Festival in Vail, Colorado.
1919 first performance of Charles Tomlinson Griffes's Poem for flute and orchestra, written for the famous French flutist Georges Barrère, who played it with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Society Orchestra.
1954 Donald Runnicles – Scottish conductor (68 years old); has served as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the San Francisco Opera from 1992 to 2009 among other posts in Europe and the US.