Today we note the American premiere of just one of dozens of symphonic masterworks introduced to these shores by German-born conductor Theodore Thomas, arguably the most important figure in the development of American symphony orchestras in the 19th century.

In 1864, Thomas began a series of summer concerts, first in New York City, and later in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago. It was in New York City, on today’s date in 1867, that Thomas gave a concert at Terrace Gardens, a brand-new entertainment complex that included a five-story hotel, a concert hall, ballroom, banquet rooms, and big, beautifully-planted outdoor gardens, all located on East 58th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenue. In 1867, this address was still relatively green and quiet, perfect for an open-air garden concert, so under a blue July 4 sky the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss, Jr., was performed for the first time in America — and less than five months after its world premiere performance in Vienna!

The price for a ticket to the Terrace Garden concert was 25 cents — and alongside the new music by Johann Strauss Jr., audiences would have heard pieces by Weber, Gounod, Suppe, Offenbach and Verdi among others.

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899): By the Beautiful Blue Danube; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 46710

The piano became the dominant keyboard instrument in Mozart’s lifetime in the late 18th century. Before that, the harpsichord had ruled. But for more than a hundred years after Mozart’s day, the harpsichord seemed as dead as the dodo, and even the great harpsichord works of Bach and other early 18th century masters were always played on the piano — that is, until Wanda Landowska came on the scene.

This indomitable woman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, and single-handedly brought the harpsichord back to life. It was on today’s date in 1927 that she inaugurated a historic series of harpsichord concerts at her summer home near Paris — and, two years later, in 1929, Landowska premiered the Concert Champêtre, by Francis Poulenc, a brand new harpsichord concerto written specially for her.

Very much in the spirit of Landowska, the contemporary composer and performer Barbara Harbach is in the vanguard of today’s advocates for the harpsichord.

A passionate advocate for new music, she has recorded several compact discs of 20th Century Harpsichord Music for the Gasparo label, featuring works by American composers from Samuel Adler to Ellen Taafe Zwillich.

J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Little Prelude; Wanda Landowska, harpsichord; Pearl 9489

Barbara Harbach (b. 1946): Cante Flamenco, from Tres Danzas para Clavecin; Barbara Harbach, harpsichord; Gasparo 290

Under the old Julian calendar in use in Czarist Russia, on today’s date in 1861, Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in Novgorod. If you prefer, you can also celebrate Arensky’s birthday on July 12 — the same date under the modern Gregorian calendar, but Arensky was such a Romantic that the Old Style date seems, well, more appropriate somehow.

Arensky studied with Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and admired the music of Tchaikovsky. Arensky taught at the Moscow Conservatory and published two books: Manual of Harmony and A Handbook of Musical Forms. His own students included a number of famous Russian composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Glière.

Arensky wrote three operas, two symphonies, concertos, chamber works and suites for two pianos — but it’s his Piano Trio in D minor that gets performed and recorded more often than any of his other works.

A victim of tuberculosis, Arensky spent the last years of his life in a Finnish sanatorium. He died young — at just 44 — in 1906.

Anton Arensky (1861-1906): Piano Trio No. 1; Rembrandt Trio; Dorian 90146

The reign of the Roman emperor Nero, notorious for his horrific deeds, was chronicled by the historian Tacitus. His account of the rise of the courtesan Poppea from Nero’s mistress to his empress, provides the plot of one of the operas written by the 17th century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea was first performed in Venice at the Teatro Sanctae Giovanni e Paolo in the autumn of 1643.

The first performance of Monteverdi’s Poppea in modern times had to wait until 1913, when the French composer Vincent d’Indy presented his arrangement of Poppea in Paris. In America and Britain, Poppea was first staged in 1927, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Oxford University in England. It wasn’t until today’s date in 1962 that a full professional staging of Poppea occurred at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, in a version prepared and conducted by Raymond Leppard.

Monteverdi did not prescribe specific vocal ranges for the characters, and since there was no standardized orchestra in the 17th century, it was customary back then to simply give a list of some suggested instruments and leave it to the performers to decide who played what and when. Therefore, any modern performance of a Monteverdi opera is always somebody’s “version” of the surviving notes, based on educated guesswork and the available performers.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): L’Incoronazione di Poppea; soloists; Vienna Concentus Music Vienna; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Teldec 42547

A decidedly un-politically correct opera had its premiere at London’s Covent Garden on today’s date in 1905: L’Oracolo or The Oracle by the Italian composer Franco Leoni. Here’s a witty one-sentence précis of the opera prepared by Nicolas Slonimsky for his chronology Music Since 1900:

“L’Oracolo, an opera in one long act, dealing with multiplex villainy in San Francisco’s Chinatown, wherein a wily opium-den keeper kidnaps the child of the uncle of a girl he covets, kills her young lover, and is in the end strangled by the latter’s father, with a local astrologer delivering remarkably accurate oracles; an Italianate score tinkling with tiny bells, booming with deep gongs, and bubbling with orientalistic pentatonicisms.”

Another wag described L’Oracolo as “Puccini-and-water,” suggesting that if Puccini were whisky, Leoni music was definitely a less potent brew.

But when a touring Italian opera company announced a performance of L’Oracolo in San Francisco in 1937, the city’s Asian residents protested, demanding they cut the most racially offensive scenes or, better yet, stage a different opera altogether. A compromise was reached, whereby the House manager preceded the performance with a speech assuring the capacity audience that the opera’s locale and action were pure fiction, and bore no resemblance to San Francisco’s Chinatown past or present.

Franco Leoni (1864-1937): L’Oracolo; Tito Gobbi, baritone; National Philharmonic; Richard Bonynge, conductor; London OSA-12107; LP

According to Emerson, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Well, we’re not sure if composer Arnold Schoenberg ever read Emerson, but we think the 20th-century Austrian composer must have shared this principle with the 19th-century American essayist. Just when many people had Schoenberg comfortably pigeon-holed as an atonal composer, he went and wrote a big tonal piece, resolutely set in the key of G minor.

In the 1940’s, Schoenberg’s publisher asked him to write a piece for high school or amateur wind band. The work Schoenberg finished during the summer of 1943 was entitled “Theme and Variations,” and was described by its composer — with his customary modesty — as “one of those compositions which one writes in order to enjoy one’s own virtuosity and… to give a certain group of music lovers something better to play.”

Schoenberg’s music proved a little too difficult for high school bands, however, so its first performance was given on today’s date in 1946 by the Goldman Band, America’s top wind ensemble of that day, at a Central Park concert in New York City conducted by Richard Franko Goldman, an enthusiastic supporter of new works for band.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Theme and Variations; Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Harlan D. Parker, conductor; Naxos 8.570403