Charles Martin Loeffler was a household name in his time, but you’ve likely never heard of him today.
In fact, he was the most performed composer of his time — around the turn of the 20th century — both in America and in Europe. The German-born composer and violinist was very self-critical, though, and withheld most of his music from publication, revising it over and over.
He lied when he came to the United States, telling people he was French. And that might be one of the reasons he’s been hard to pin down in classical music history and isn’t very well known today, according to Graeme Steele Johnson.
Johnson is a clarinetist who often writes program notes for chamber music festivals around the country. A few years ago, he came across a mention of an octet written by Loeffler. One, it turns out, had not been performed in more than 125 years.
Now, you can hear it performed for the first time since, in Phoenix on Friday at the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival at Central United Methodist Church. The Show spoke with Johnson about how it came to be.
