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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Chadwick and Salonen go Greek
In the early years of the 20th century, a hauntingly beautiful piece of Grecian sculpture — a bust of the head of the goddess Aphrodite — was donated...
Finger finishes fourth
LAUGH-IN was a popular TV comedy sketch program in the late 1960s and one of their recurring alliterative gag lines referred to “the fickle finger of...
Currier's 'Time Machines'
When you listen to classical music like Bach or Mozart, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical musi...
Well-travelled Zwilich
On today’s date in 1988, the New York Philharmonic gave a concert in a city then called Leningrad and in a country then called the Soviet Union.
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Melinda Wagner's Pulitzer premiere
On today’s date in 1998, in Purchase, New York, the Westchester Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new flute concerto by 41-year old comp...
Bach arrives (literally)
On today’s date in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach began his formal duties as the new Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, a city that would remain...
Stravinsky's 'Riot' of Spring?
Today’s date marks the anniversary of one of the most famous — and notorious — premieres in the history of classical music, that of Stravinsky’s Le Sa...
The Hindemith case
On today's date in 1938, Matthias the Painter, an opera by the German composer Paul Hindemith, had its premiere performance in Zurich, Switzerland.
David Wilde's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo'
On today’s date in 1992, during the bloody civil wars that shattered the former Yugoslavia, a hand grenade was thrown into the midst of a bread line i...
John Rutter at Carnegie Hall
For many years now MidAmerica Productions has been organizing concerts in New York City and enlisting choral ensembles from the U.S. and abroad to com...
A belated Webern premiere
This lush, late-Romantic score, composed in 1904, had to wait until 1962 for its premiere performance, when, on today’s date that year, the Philadelph...
Beethoven's 'Bridgetower Sonata?
On today’s date in 1803, violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, 33, and pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, 32, gave the first performance in V...
Brahms the perfectionist
Some famous composers were notorious perfectionists — and then there was Johannes Brahms, the perfectionist of perfectionists. He spent 14 years tinke...
A new patron for Richard Strauss
German composer Richard Strauss wrote his first song at 6, and his last at 84, a year before his death in 1949. Four of his last songs were for sopran...
The Panufniks
At Westminster Abbey on today’s date in 1998 a haunting new setting of the Latin mass written by British composer Roxanna Panufnik received its premie...
A Becker premiere in Saint Paul
These days composer John J. Becker is almost totally forgotten, but back in the 1930s his name was linked with Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowel...
Ursula Mamlok
On today’s date in 2013, a new work by 90-year old German-born American composer and teacher named Ursula Mamlok received its premiere performance in...
Heggie Writes a Choral Opera
In Costa Mesa, California, on today’s date in 2014, the Pacific Chorale premiered a new choral opera. And what exactly is a choral opera you ask? Good...
Debussy and the persistence of Elisa Hall
Today, a tip of the hat to the persistence of Elisa Hall, who lived in Boston from 1853 to 1924.
Hall was a Francophile and championed the best...
Mozart made to order
Today we have a letter to read, written by Mozart in the middle of May in the year 1778. Mozart was in Paris, 22 years old, and had this to say to his...
Verdi's Requiem
If you Google “Verdi” and “Royal Albert Hall,” you’ll probably be directed to a fine Italian restaurant named after the famous Italian opera composer...
Emilie Mayer
Today marks the birthday of one of the most prolific 19th century women composers. Emilie Luise Friderica Mayer was born May 14, 1812 in the German to...
A less-than-magnificent reception for Bach's 'Magnificat'
On today’s date in 1875, American conductor Theodore Thomas, a passionate advocate for both old and new music, led the Cincinnati May Festival in the...
Shostakovich gets on first
On this date in 1926, 19-year old composer and sometime silent film piano accompanist Dimitri Shostakovich saw his Symphony No. 1 performed by the Len...
Richard Writes to Gustav
Although contemporaries, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss were two very different human beings. Mahler was tormented by self-doubt and existential an...
Barrington Pheloung and Inspector Morse
Australian composer Barrington Pheloung’s music might not be familiar to concertgoers, but if you watch public television’s Mystery series, you’ve pro...
Ravel plays 'guess who' in Paris
On today’s date in 1911, the Independent Music Society of Paris sponsored an anonymous concert at which the audience was invited to guess the composer...
Stravinsky's 'Dumbarton Oaks Concerto'
On today’s date in 1938, a musical soirée was held at Dumbarton Oaks, a magnificent house on the crest of a wooded valley in Washington, D.C. This wa...
Dett's 'The Ordering of Moses'
On today’s date in 1937, the NBC radio network was carrying a live broadcast from the Cincinnati May Festival of a new oratorio The Ordering of Moses,...
A Mahler festival
As far as anniversary gifts go, the one Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg received in 1920 was pretty spectacular. To celebrate his 25th year as Music...
Rautavaara's 'Angels'
Do you believe in angels? It seems Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did — and produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like...
Britten in America
Benjamin Britten was the most famous English opera composer of the 20th century, but ironically his first opera, Paul Bunyan, had an American theme an...
Virgil Thomson reviews Elliott Carter
On today's date in 1953, at New York’s 92nd Street YMCA, the Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult String Quartet No. 1 by American composer Ell...
Virgil Thomson reviews Elliott Carter
On today's date in 1953, at New York’s 92nd Street YMCA, the Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult String Quartet No. 1 by American composer Ell...
Bloch's greatest hit
Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose Hebrew Rhapsody: Sche...
Higdon's 'Splendid Wood'
The marimba is a percussion instrument of tuned bars, usually made of wood, arranged like the keys of a piano. These bars are struck with mallets to p...
"Citizen Kane" scores big
For American conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann, 1940 was a busy year. On the East Coast, he had been appointed chief conductor of the CBS Radio...
Thomas' 'Sun Threads'
At New York’s Alice Tully Hall on today’s date in 2003, the Avalon Quartet gave the first complete performance of a new four-movement string quartet,...
Mozart and Strinasacchi in Vienna
On today’s date in 1784, Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi gave a concert in Vienna and had the good sense to commission a new work for the occasi...
Meyerbeer's 'African Maid'
On today’s date in 1865, the hottest ticket in Paris was for the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s long-awaited grand opera L’Africaine, or The African...