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
Henry Brant's Northern Lights
If you’ve ever witnessed a spectacular display of the Northern Lights, you’ll know the feeling: jaw-dropping wonder at the powerful forces unleashed in the vast spaces of the night sky. The Ameri...
A ghost story by Henry James and Benjamin Britten
Do you enjoy a good ghost story? The American novelist Henry James did, but liked to give the ones he wrote an extra twist – another “turn of the screw” you might say. In fact, one of his classic ...
Bernstein meets Wharton
On today's date in 1993, the first gala preview screening of a new film, "The Age of Innocence," based on the novel by Edith Wharton, took place at the Ziegfield Theater in Manhattan, as a benefit...
Reisenberg and Mozart
During her lifetime, pianist Nadia Reisenberg was regarded as one of this country’s finest concert artists. She performed at Carnegie Hall 22 times, often with the New York Philharmonic. But she ...
Hanslick and Thomson, critics at large
Today we take the unusual step of honoring that frequent bane of composers, the music critic. Specifically, Eduard Hanslick, born on this date in Prague, in 1825. He’s remembered today as the arc...
Berlioz and the Parisian prudes
We tend to think of Paris as the most sophisticated and worldly of European capitals – a city whose residents are unlikely to be shocked by anything they see or hear. Ah, but that’s not always th...
Edward Burlingame Hill
Today is the birthday anniversary of the American composer and teacher Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. Hill studied at Harvard, which was not surprising, since h...
Bernstein's "Mass"
On today’s date in 1971, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was inaugurated with a gala performance of a new work by Leonard Bernstein. Entitled “Mass,” this w...
Hymnus Paradisi by Herbert Howells
“The Three Choirs Festival” is one of England’s oldest musical traditions. Established around 1715, it showcases the cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester, and Herford, and presents both chora...
Henry Kimball Hadley
Works by Henry Kimball Hadley rarely shows up on concert programs anymore, but in the early years of the 20th century, he ranked as a major and very popular American composer. In 1910, Gustav Mahle...