1881 George Enescu – Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher (d.1955); his most popular compositions are the two Romanian Rhapsodies (1901–2); the village in which he was born, Liveni, has been renamed ‘George Enescu’ in his honor.
1947 Gerard Schwarz – American conductor (75 years old); music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2011; noted for championing American composers, past and present.
1952 premiere of Alberto Ginastera's ballet Estancia in Buenos Aires; written in 1941, but waited 11 years for its stage debut; an estancia is a large cattle ranch on the pampas in Argentina.
1957 premiere of West Side Story in its pre-Broadway run in Washington DC; music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and conception and choreography by Jerome Robbins; opened in New York at the Winter Garden on September 26; nominated for six Tony Awards, but the Best Musical award that year went to Meredith Willson's The Music Man.
1968 Jon Nakamatsu – American pianist (56 years old); won the Gold Medal at the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1997.