1857 first performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Weimar, with the composer conducting and as soloist, his pupil Hans von Bronsart, to whom it was dedicated; drafts of this work had been sketched in 1839 and 1840, but Liszt revised the manuscript repeatedly, not really completing it until 1861.
1899 Francis Poulenc – French composer and pianist (d.1963); his early works are marked by high spirits and irreverence, but a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards; pianist Pascal Rogé commented in 1999 that both sides of Poulenc's musical nature were equally important: "You must accept him as a whole. If you take away either part, the serious or the non-serious, you destroy him. If one part is erased, you get only a pale photocopy of what he really is."
1917 Ulysses Kay – African-American composer (d. 1995); nephew of the classic jazz musician King Oliver; the last of his five operas, Frederick Douglass, was mounted in April 1991 at the New Jersey State Opera.
1943 Richard Armstrong – English conductor (81 years old); noted opera conductor, working early in his career at Covent Garden and from 1993 to 2005, was Music Director of Scottish Opera.
1955 first performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Symphony No. 6 ‘Fantaisies symphoniques’ by the Boston Symphony, with Charles Munch conducting; written for the 75th anniversary of the Boston Symphony.
1955 Marian Anderson makes her Metropolitan Opera debut as Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in mascera, the first African-American singer to perform as an opera soloist on the Met stage; subsequent distinguished African-Americans who performed as members of the Met company included Robert McFerrin, Sr. (Bobby McFerrin Jr.’s father), Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman.
1978 Janine Jansen – Dutch violinist and violist (46 years old); quite a musical family: her father and both her brothers are instrumentalists; her mother is a classical singer and a sister of the bass Peter Kooy.