1879 first performance of Antonín Dvorák's String Sextet Op 48 in Berlin; his first work to be premiered outside Bohemia.
1881 first performance of Johannes Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 in Budapest by the National Theater Orchestra with the composer as the soloist; the four-movement work was considerably longer than most other concertos of the time, but with typical modesty Brahms sent the score to a friend, describing the work as "some little piano pieces."
1901 first performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in Moscow with the composer as soloist and his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting; composer had been clinically depressed for several years and the immediate and lasting success of this concerto confirmed the cure of Nikolai Dahl who had used hypnotherapy to restore Rachmaninoff's self-confidence.
1907 Burrill Phillips – American composer, teacher, and pianist (d.1988); of his first important work, Selections from McGuffey's Reader (1933) --based on poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.--the composer said "I don't think anybody had written such 'American-sounding' music before. On the first night, the students said it was corny. And it was. But I didn't care, because it was a huge success."
1940 first performance of Joaquín Rodrigo's concerto for guitar and orchestra Concierto de Aranjuez in Barcelona; inspired by the gardens at Palacio Real de Aranjuez, the spring resort palace built by Philip II in the last half of the 16th century; the music attempts to transport the listener to another place and time through the evocation of the sounds of nature.
1965 Bryn Terfel (born Bryn Terfel Jones) – Welsh baritone (59 years old); came in second behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the 1989 Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition but won the Lieder Prize.