Benjamin Johnson Lang

Benjamin Johnson Lang (December 28, 1837 – April 3 or 4, 1909) was an American conductor, pianist, organist, teacher and composer.

He introduced a large amount of music to American audiences, including the world premiere of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.

Benjamin Johnson Lang was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of a piano maker, music teacher and organist.

From 1860 to 1870, Lang built a piano and organ teaching career of great success; he was considered a very thorough teacher and his pupils included William F. Apthorp, Arthur Foote, Ethelbert Nevin, Carrie Burpee Shaw, and his own children, Margaret and Malcolm.

[1] His debut as a conductor was on May 3, 1862, when he gave Boston's first performance with orchestra of Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, which he presented twice in the same concert.

He is perhaps best remembered now for being the conductor of the world premiere of the original version of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.

George Whitefield Chadwick, who attended the performance, recalled in a memoir years later: "They had not rehearsed much and the trombones got in wrong in the ‘tutti' in the middle of the first movement, whereupon Bülow sang out in a perfectly audible voice, The brass may go to hell".

[1] Other first performances he conducted were: With his experience and credentials, it surprised many that Lang was not named conductor of the newly formed Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO).

[7] In 1891, at great personal expense he brought the entire New York Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra to Boston to present the first performance in Boston of Wagner's Parsifal, conducted by Anton Seidl, who had assisted Wagner in the first complete performance of the Ring in 1876 and who in 1889 he led the first complete Ring in America.

Most of these were performed, however the only published work was by Chadwick who used a "melodic motive" of Lang's in the first of his "Drei Walzer fur das Pianoforte".

His last appearance as a conductor was on February 12, 1909, when he conducted the BSO and a chorus for a commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.