Classical Music | Orchestral Music

Emanuel Leplin

Symphony No. One Mvt 4  Play

San Francisco Symphony/Enrique Jorda Orchestra

Recorded on 12/31/1969, uploaded on 03/02/2013

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Leplin's Symphony No. One was commissioned by Agnes Albert and other friends of the San Francisco Symphony for its 50th Anniversary season. SFS premiered it, with Enrique Jorda conducting, on 3, 4, 5 of January 1962. Subtitled  Of the Twentieth Century, it has a title for each movement: Illumination, Consternation, Contemplation and Adaptation. For the premier, Leplin, who had been paralyzed by polio, painted four pictures with a brush clamped in his teeth. The polio epidemic did not boast a lot of paralyzed painters. Many people paint with a mouth brush these days, but Leplin was among the first people to paint this way, and local newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle ran stories about his dual capabilities. The symphony received favorable reviews from the Chronicle’s music reviewer Alfred Frankenstein and from Robert Commanday, music reviewer of the San Francisco Examiner.