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Synopsis

American composer Virgil Thomson was fond of writing what he called \u201cportraits\u201d: musical sketches of people he knew. When asked how he did this, Thomson replied: \u201cI just look at you and I write down what I hear.\u201d

One of these works \u2014 a portrait in disguise \u2014 premiered on today\u2019s date in 1954 at the Venice Festival in Italy.\xa0Identified simply as his Concerto for Flute, Strings, Harp, and Percussion, Thomson later confessed it was in fact a musical portrait of Roger Baker, a handsome young painter he had recently befriended.

Thomson was born in Kansas City in 1896, studied music at Harvard, lived in Paris through much of the 1920s and 30s, and in 1940 became the music critic of The New York Herald-Tribune, a post he held until 1954. He once defined the role of music critic as one who \u201cseldom kisses, but always tells.\u201d

But in 1954, he decided fourteen years as a music critic was enough, and it was time to concentrate on his own music for a change. Perhaps not by coincidence, one of the friends who encouraged him to do so was Roger Baker, the artist portrayed by Thomson in his 1954 concerto.

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989): Flute Concerto; Mary Stolper, flute; Czech National Symphony; Paul Freeman, conductor; Cedille 046