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
Richard Strauss, hero
I believe Oscar Wilde gets credit for the line, "But enough about me — what do YOU think about me?" Roughly a century ago, this portrait of the self-absorbed ego not only got laughs on the London s...
Worthington's Dream
Recordings can be an effective calling card for composers – but the expense of recording an orchestral work in the U.S. is rather daunting, so composers often work with record labels that use orche...
Prokofiev's Cello Sonata
Composer Serge Prokofiev and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich first met in 1947 when Prokofiev was 56 and already ailing, and Rostropovich, a fresh, skinny 20-year-old, was just at the start of his ca...
Rorem's "Book of Hours"
Happy Leap Year! Once every four years we have the opportunity to wish the great Italian opera composer Giacomo Rossini a happy birthday—he was born on February 29th in 1792—and to note some othe...
"Tombeaux" by Ravel and Daugherty
Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin" was premiered in Paris this day in 1920. It had started out as a suite of solo piano pieces, intended as a tribute to the great French Baro...
Timely music by Beethoven and Leroy Anderson
On this date in 1814, Ludwig van Beethoven conducted the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 8 in F Major. As the scherzo movement of his new symphony, Beethoven recycled a tune he originally ...
Symphonies by Bizet and Harris
Two interesting symphonies had their premieres on today's date just eight years apart. Oddly enough, they were composed nearly ninety years apart. The first was the Symphony in C by George Bizet, ...
Opening of Royal Albert Hall
In London on today’s date in 1871 an audience gathered in the newly-finished Royal Albert Hall to attend the first-ever concert to be performed there. This occurred a month BEFORE the official open...
"The Wound Dresser" by John Adams
It's quite possible that you or someone you know is the caregiver for an ill or aging relative or friend. If so, you know the emotional rewards—and heavy emotional toll—that caretaking involves. O...
Deems Taylor and David Del Tredici in Wonderland
In February of 1919, members of the New York Chamber Music Society gave the premiere performance of this music—an instrumental suite by the American composer Deems Taylor, titled "Through the Looki...