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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Bizet and Menotti on TV in the 1950s
On this day in 1952, thirty-one theaters nationwide offered the first pay-per view Met opera telecast. This was a regularly-scheduled performance of B...
Morton Gould
Today's date marks the birthday anniversary of Morton Gould, a quintessentially American composer, conductor and advocate for music, who was born in R...
A sequel by Berlioz
These days, no one is surprised if a popular film generates a series of sequels or even prequels, but back in the 1830s the idea of a composer coming...
Beethoven and Kernis in a somber mood
On this date in 1813, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was played for the first time in Vienna. The occasion was a benefit concert in honor of the Austrian...
The New York Phil and Pearl Harbor
Maybe you’re one of those die-hard classical music fans who records your favorite orchestra’s radio broadcasts. Starting in the 1950s, home tape recor...
Brubeck's birthday
Today marks the anniversary of the birth of American composer and pianist Dave Brubeck. Born in Concord, California on December 6, 1920, he would beco...
Janáček's 'Glagolitic'
So what do you call a setting of the Latin mass that is not in Latin? Well, if you’re Moravian-born composer Leoš Janáček, you call it Glagolitic,...
Tchaikovsky and North endure unkind cuts
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was first performed on today’s date in 1881. The premiere took place in Vienna with Adolf Brodsky the violin soloist and...
Massenet (and Laurie Anderson)
On today’s date in 1885, the Paris Opera gave the first performance of Le Cid, the 11th opera written by the French composer Jules Massenet.
Le...
New York City 'firsts' of Rossini and Cole Porter
It was on this date in 1825 that the United States had its first date with authentic Italian opera. This was a performance of Gioacchino Rossini's The...
Rachmaninoff and Hanson get romantic
According to historians, the 19th Century was the great age of Romanticism — but tell that to Sergei Rachmaninoff and Howard Hanson! On today’s date,...
Spacey music by Strauss and Ligeti
Also Sprach Zarathustra, a tone poem by Richard Strauss, was first performed in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on this day in 1896, with the composer con...
A pre-premiere premiere by John Corigliano
On today’s date in 1997, violinist Joshua Bell and the San Francisco Symphony gave the premiere performance of an 18-minute Chaconne for Violin and Or...
Tailor-made music by Walter Piston
On today’s date in 1955, the Boston Symphony was celebrating its 75th anniversary season with the premiere performance of a brand-new symphony — the s...
Two Tchaikovskys, one skull
On today’s date in 1888, Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky premiered his Hamlet-Fantasy Overture. He had been asked to write an overture for a...
Colorful music by Scriabin and Torke
A question: do you see colors when you hear music? No, we’re not going psychedelic on you, and absolutely no controlled substances are involved in pre...
Roger Sessions' 'Kennedy Sonata'
American composer Roger Sessions is an acquired taste for most classical music fans, and, truth be told, his works don’t show up on concert recital pr...
Rehearsing Monteverdi and Reich
Today, a letter: written on this date in 1615 by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi to a friend at the court of the Duke of Mantua.
The letter...
Mahler's First in Budapest and New York
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 was first heard on this day in Budapest in 1889, with the 29-year-old composer conducting.
Originally billed as a...
Buda and Pest feted in music by Bartok and Kodaly
The modern Hungarian city we know as Budapest is really three older settlements merged into one: Buda, on the west bank of the Danube, was the royal s...
Toon-ful music by Carl Stalling
Today’s date marks the official birthday of a quintessential American form of 20th century music — for cartoons.
It was on November 18, 1928, th...
'To be Certain of the Dawn' by Stephen Paulus
On today’s date in 2005, the chancel of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis was transformed into a performance stage for vocal soloists, choirs, a...
Gluck sings the blues
On today’s date in 1777, the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck was baffled by Parisian audiences and wrote these lines to a friend:
“I a...
Kern's 'Show Boat' is launched in D.C.
Today’s date marks the anniversary of the first performance of Jerome Kern’s Show Boat, produced in 1927 at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. b...
An important date for Copland and Bernstein
If ever there was a red-letter day in American music, November 14 must surely be it. For starters, it’s the birthday of Aaron Copland, who was born in...
Casals and Copland at the White House
On this date in 1961, cellist Pablo Casals gave a chamber concert at the White House, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy. The concert was...
William Schuman writes a 'Symphony for Strings'
On today’s date in 1943, the Boston Symphony and conductor Serge Koussevitzky gave the first performance of a Symphony for Strings by American compose...
Hannibal Lokumbe's 'African Portraits'
At Carnegie Hall in New York City on today’s date in 1990, a new work by American composer and jazz trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe had its premiere perfor...
A cold welcome for Verdi?
On today’s date in 1862, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Forza del Destino (or The Force of Destiny) had its premiere at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersb...
Joaquin Rodrigo's popular concierto
The world’s most popular classical guitar concerto, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo, had its first performance on today’s date in 1940, i...
Musical tales from Stravinsky and Marsalis
On today’s date in 1919, a concert suite from Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale had its premiere in Lausanne, Switzerland — the same city in which...
'Starry Night' variations by McLean and Dutilleux
In 1971, after reading a book about Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, American pop singer Don McLean wrote the song, “Vincent,” which became a big hit t...
Mr. Sax's instrument and Ms. Perry's Quartet
The saxophone — whose flashing serpentine figure is now virtually synonymous with jazz clubs and wind bands — was the brainchild of woodwind craftsman...
Barber offers two for the price of one
On today’s date in 1938, two works by American composer Samuel Barber received their very high-profile premiere performances on a live, coast-to-coast...
A second wind for Reicha and Ward-Steinman?
Take one flute, one oboe, and mix well with one each of a clarinet, bassoon and French horn — and you have the recipe for the traditional wind quinte...
Middle-Eastern sounds from Rimsky-Korsakov and Reza Vali
On this day* in 1888, the orchestral suite Scheherazade, the most famous work of Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was first performed in St....
First — and last — orchestral pieces by Brahms and Harrison?
On today’s date in 1873, a new piece by German composer Johannes Brahms received its first performance by the Vienna Philharmonic. The piece, Variatio...
Copland breaks in a new pony
On today’s date in 1948, Maestro Efrem Kurtz led the first subscription concert of the newly reorganized Houston Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra was...
Olga Neuwirth's 'Lost Highway'
“Which is better — the movie, or the book it’s based on?”
On today’s date in 2003, at its premiere in Graz, Austria, a new multi-media opera as...
'What's in a name?' asks Aaron Copland
It was on today’s date in 1944 that Martha Graham and her dance company first performed the ballet Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. The premiere t...