The odds of finding a lost manuscript by a famous composer are overwhelming. But it does happen, of course. The most celebrated example was the discovery in the 1860s by Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, and George Grove, the founder of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, of a cache of works by Franz Schubert that included two symphonies and the incidental music to Rosamunde. All of that and more were tucked away in a cupboard in a home in Vienna. Then there was the discovery last year, in an attic in a private residence in the Austrian province of Tyrol, of a piece for piano by a very young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

And now Hasse Borup can add his name to the exclusive list of people who have unearthed long forgotten works.

Vincent Persichetti (1915-87)

Through dogged perseverance and research, Borup, a violinist and professor at the University of Utah, uncovered a hitherto unknown sonata for violin and piano by the American composer Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987). The piece will receive its world premiere this Sunday in Libby Gardner Concert Hall as part of a recital program by  Borup and pianist and U. colleague Heather Conner.

As the Danish-born violinist tells it, he didn’t set out to find any lost works by Persichetti. It started because Borup was asked to put together a proposal for a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, a major foundation that supports modern American music, for a recording project. “It’s a big grant so I began by looking at different composers’ catalogues,” Borup said in an interview with Reichel Recommends.

He stopped his search when he came to Persichetti’s music. “I found out that none of his violin music had been recorded.” That piqued his interest. “I started rummaging around his catalogues and found anomalies in an index of his works.” In one of the catalogues, Borup came across a reference to a Fantasy, op. 15, a work that had never been published. “I started digging into it and contacted the Persichetti estate.” A family member he spoke with suggested he contact the New York Public Library. “I thought, ‘Now I have to get through all that bureaucracy.’”

After a few frustrating weeks Borup finally found a “compassionate librarian” who agreed to do some digging. “They found it in a corner of a storage room in some god forsaken place like Hoboken.” The librarian scanned the piece and emailed it to him. “When I opened the file I saw it was a fully finished piece in manuscript. This was exciting.”

Almost immediately Borup started the process of preparing a performance edition. “I enlisted a group of students [at the U.] to help prepare a critical edition,” an edition that  Borup and others could use for performance.

Borup also contacted a Persichetti scholar at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for some background information on the piece. “He doesn’t really know what happened to it. He thinks it might possibly have been played at a private concert,” after which Persichetti filed it away and forgot about it. “It’s an early work and luckily for us he didn’t destroy it like Brahms did with most of his early works,” Borup said.

Facsimile of Opening Page of Vincent Persichetti's Violin Sonata, op. 15

While it’s mislabeled as a fantasy in the catalogue, the work is actually a two-movement sonata dating from 1941, a time when Persichetti was still finding his own voice as a composer. “It’s a piece of quality, and worth having people know it,” Borup said.

Having obtained permission from the composer’s estate to play it, Borup is thrilled to be premiering this piece, which is now known as the Violin Sonata, op. 15. “This is a great opportunity,” he said.

In the years since Persichetti’s death his music has generally been neglected and Borup is eager to reintroduce his works to a wider audience. The program that he and Conner will play Sunday is devoted to all of the composer’s pieces for violin and piano as well as the six piano sonatinas. “It sounds like a lot of music, but the entire program isn’t more than 55 minutes,” Borup said.

A week after the concert, he and Conner will record the same program for the Naxos label. “Doing an album of music by one composer, especially of works that have never been recorded, is appealing for record companies,” Borup said. “And this program is a great document of an important American composer.”

• CONCERT DETAILS
• What: Sundays@7, Hasse Borup, violin, Heather Conner, piano
• Venue: Libby Gardner Concert Hall, University of Utah
• Time and Date: 7 p.m. Sept. 30
• Tickets: Free

*To view a promo video of Hasse Borup and Heather Conner discussing and playing Vincent Persichetti’s recently rediscovered violin sonata, click  here.