Composers Datebook
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Composers Datebook
Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessi...
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Bach's two- and three-part Inventions
As kids, many of us received home-made presents: a sweater or pair of socks, perhaps, or — if you were unlucky — a crocheted bow tie you were forced t...
Brahms breaks the rules
The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms received its premiere public performance on today’s date in 1859 with the Hanover Court Orchestra under the directi...
Poulenc's 'Gloria'
On today’s date in 1961, French composer Francis Poulenc was in Boston for the premiere of his new choral work. It was a setting of a Latin text “Glor...
'Truth Tones' for MLK
Each January, Martin Luther King Day is observed on the third Monday of the month, and in 2009, MLK day fell on January 19.
To celebrate, the di...
Bernstein for young people
On today's date in 1958, Leonard Bernstein asked, “What does music mean?” He posed the question to an audience of kids assembled at Carnegie Hall for...
George Walker's Trombone Concerto
In Rochester, New York, on today’s date in 1957, there was a concert at the Eastman School of Music, conducted by the school’s famous director Howard...
Prokofiev's 'Scythian Suite'
In 1916, Imperial Russia was still using the old Julian calendar. In Russia, as Hamlet might have put it, “time was out of joint,” lagging 13 days beh...
The Mozarts in Vienna
In the fall of 1784, Mozart and his wife moved into an elegant apartment near St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The house belonged to the Camesina br...
Puccini's shocker
On today’s date in 1900, Tosca, a new opera by Giacomo Puccini had its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Rome was, in fact, the opera’s setting...
'Hello, Mr. Addinsell?'
Today’s date in 1904 marks the birthday of Richard Addinsell, a versatile British musician who became one of the most famous film score composers of h...
Dvořák's 'American Quintet'
Composers and publishers don’t always see eye to eye. Simrock, the German publisher of Dvořák’s music, irritated the patriotic Czech composer by issui...
A Kernis premiere wins the Pulitzer
On today’s date in 1998, the Lark Quartet gave the first performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. Like much of h...
Bartok's 'Contrasts'
In January of 1939, famous jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was playing each night at New York’s Paramount Theater. On today’s date that year, he also a...
William Bolcom and William Blake
If the late 18th century is the Classical Age, and the 19th The Romantic, then perhaps we should dub our time “The Eclectic Age” of music. These days,...
'Statements' from Copland
In 1935 Aaron Copland finished a new orchestral work that was to be premiered by the Minneapolis Symphony and its young conductor Eugene Ormandy.
Concertos by Poulenc and Carter
American composer Ned Rorem liked to classify music as being either French or German — by “French,” he meant music that is sensuous, economical and un...
Ravel left and right
On today’s date in 1932, Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for Piano Left Hand received its public premiere in Vienna. It was one of several concertos for pian...
Schuller and the MJQ
On today’s date in 1961, the New York City Ballet presented a new work scored by 35-year old composer Gunther Schuller, who was conducting the pit orc...
H.K. Gruber
In Austrian culture there is a theatrical tradition that pokes fun at anything somber and serious. Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute taps into this in th...
Dvořák reviewed
In 1885, 20-year old violinist Franz Kneisel came to America to become concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. That same year he formed the Kneisel Quar...
Late-night 'Parsifal'
Okay, raise your hand if you have ever stayed up til midnight to attend the premiere showing of a new film — extra points if you attended in costume a...
Antheil's 'Joyous Symphony'
On New Year’s Eve, 1948, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the American composer Georg...
A Lehar premiere in Vienna
On this date in 1905, Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár conducted the first performance of his new operetta, The Merry Widow. He was sure it would...
Quartets by Debussy and Ravel
While hardly twins, the String Quartets of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are often linked in the minds of music lovers and record companies. Admire...
Humperdinck for the Animal Channel?
On today’s date in 1910, the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new opera by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, already famous for his opera Hansel an...
Airs and poems by Kernis and Chausson
In the hands of a great performer, the violin can sing with the personality and intensity of a great opera singer. Pyrotechnics may dazzle, but nothin...
A $400 finale for Sibelius
On this day in 1926, Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony in the first performance of the last major orchestral work of Finnish composer Je...
Toscanini and Vivaldi
On today’s date in 1937, as a Christmas gift to the nation, the NBC radio network broadcast the first NBC Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Artu...
Safe passage for Rachmaninoff
Okay, how’s this for a movie scene worthy of Doctor Zhivago:
It’s October 1917 and Lenin has overthrown the Tsarist government of Russia. A comp...
Humperdinck's 'Into the Woods'?
On today’s date in 1893, the opera Hansel and Gretel by 39-year-old German composer Engelbert Humperdinck received its premiere performance at the Cou...
Puccini's birthday
Opera fanatics are a passionate lot. “It’s an addiction,” they say. “Something to die for.”
Now, if opera is an addiction, then today’s date ma...
Diamond's First
In all, American composer David Diamond wrote 11 symphonies, spanning some 50 years of his professional career. The last dates from 1991, and the firs...
Mozart in Salzburg, Bloch in America
In the spring of 1775, shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and the sparks of the American Revolution burst into flames at the Ba...
Wendy Carlos synthesizes Purcell and Bach
The Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange opened in New York City on this date in 1971. The music was composed, and in some cases re-composed, by We...
Contrasting premieres by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich
It’s strange to read the doubts Tchaikovsky expressed in letters about many of his greatest musical works, which he first would dismiss as failures, o...
'Leif' insurance for Schubert?
There’s an old joke that Schubert wrote two symphonies: one unfinished, and the other endless — the reference being to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony...
On Beethoven, Saint-Saens, and fossil-hunting
He was dubbed the French Beethoven, and like Ludwig van, was famous as both a composer and a pianist. Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835, a...
Dvořák's 'Toy Story?'
On today’s date in 1893, Anton Seidl conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 (From the New Wor...
Roumain's 'Ghetto Strings'
From its founding in 1986 the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet has both commissioned new works and arranged old ones for their ensemble of four virtuoso gui...
Mahler and Schoenfield at the Vaudeville?
On today’s date in 1895, Gustav Mahler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in the first complete performance of his own Symphony No. 2.
Mahler’s S...