November 5 ELECTION DAY
1494 Hans Sachs – German poet and Meistersinger (Master Singer) (d.1576); the subject of German Romantic operas by Albert Lortzing (Hans Sachs, 1840) and Richard Wagner (Die Meistersinger, 1868).
1846 first performance of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 2 by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Felix Mendelssohn conducting; published in 1847 as Schumann's Symphony No. 2 Opus 61, although it was the third symphony he had completed.
1895 first performance of Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche) in Cologne; chronicles the misadventures of the German peasant folk hero; presented as a ballet with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1916.
1903 first concert by the ensemble known at the time as the Minneapolis Symphony, founded by Emil Oberhoffer; renamed Minnesota Orchestra in 1968; has a long history of commissioning and performing new music.
1935 Nicholas Maw – English composer (d.2009); best known for the orchestral pieces Odyssey (1987), The World in the Evening (1988) and a violin concerto (1993) written for Joshua Bell.
1938 first performances of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings & Essay for Orchestra No. 1, in a broadcast concert by the NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini; a recording of this performance of the Adagio was selected in 2005 for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.
1975 Orli Shaham – Israeli-born American pianist (49 years old); her brother is violinist Gil Shaham, and her husband is conductor David Robertson.