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 accessible music related to each.
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 3 days 20 hours 54 minutes
Shostakovich gets on first
On this date in 1926, a 19-year old composer and sometime silent film piano accompanist named Dimitri Shostakovich saw his First Symphony performed in style by the Leningrad Philharmonic. It must ...
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 angst; Strauss was a placid soul, self-confident...
Barrington Pheloung and Inspector Morse
The late Australian composer Barrington Pheloung’s music might not be familiar to concertgoers, but If you watch public television’s “Mystery” series, you’ve probably heard a lot of his work. Phel...
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 composers of a number of pieces presented without att...
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 near Washington, D.C. This was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss....
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 entitled “The Ordering of Moses,” inspired by the Biblical Book of Ex...
Rautavaara's "Angels"
Do you believe in Angels? Apparently the mystical Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did. He produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like "Angels and Visitations" or "An...
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 and premiered at Columbia University in New Yor...
Virgil Thomson reviews Elliott Carter
On today's date in 1953, at New York's 92nd Street "Y," Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult First String Quartet of American composer Elliott Carter. In Carter's 45-minute Quartet, the four...
Bloch's "Greatest Hit"
Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of the Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose "Hebrew rhapsody—Schelomo," for cello and orchestra, premiered a...