1881 first performance of Richard Strauss’s Symphony in d in Munich, the 16-year-old composer’s first major orchestral work; an amateur orchestra was conducted by one of the leading German conductors of the day, Hermann Levi, who would lead the premiere of Wagner's Parsifal the following year.
1951 first performance of Walter Piston's Symphony No. 4 by the Minneapolis Symphony (now Minnesota Orchestra) conducted by Antal Doráti; commissioned by the University of Minnesota to mark its centennial.
1952 Maggie Cole – American-born English keyboard artist and teacher (71 years old); Bach's Goldberg Variations are one of her specialties.
1955 Margaret Fingerhut – English pianist (69 years old); she has a fascination for exploring lesser-known repertoire.
1959 Sabine Meyer – German clarinetist (65 years old); her appointment as one of the Berlin Philharmonic’s first female members caused controversy in 1982; Herbert von Karajan had hired her, but the players voted against her at the conclusion of her probation period by a vote of 73 to 4; many observers, including Karajan, believed that her gender was the issue.
2000 first performance of John Corigliano’s Phantasmagoria (Suite from the opera The Ghosts of Versailles) in Minneapolis by the Minnesota Orchestra, Giancarlo Guerrero conducting.