Mountains can have unforeseen consequences on the imagination, it seems.
For Philadelphia-native Melinda Wagner, serving as a composer-in-residence at a musical festival in Vail, Colorado, this resulted in the composition of a new Trombone Concerto, a piece tailor-made for Joseph Alessi, the...Episode details...
Composers Datebook, the award-winning program about this day in classical music history, is giving away a copy of the acclaimed 'Beethoven: Complete Edition'! The lucky winner can choose the 85-disc boxed set or a digital download of this mega-collection.
On today’s date in 1929, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi completed his trilogy of symphonic tone poems based on Roman scenery and history with the premiere performance of his “Roman Festivals.”
Unlike the first two installments in this series, “The Fountains of Rome” from 1917 and “The...Episode details...
Today marks the birthday of the British composer Ruth Gipps, who lived from 1921 to 1999, and rates among the more prolific of UK composers, having written five symphonies, and dozens of concerto, chamber works, and vocal scores.
Gipps always said she found it “difficult to understand young...Episode details...
In February of 1794, the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn arrived in England for his second visit, and the premiere performances of some of his newest symphonies, beginning with one in E-flat Major that we know as his Symphony No. 99.
Haydn would write 104 symphonies in all—an astonishing...Episode details...
In a creative life that spanned over 60 years, the American composer Howard Hanson never wavered in his belief that music should be tonal in nature and fundamentally Romantic in style, with strong and clear melodic lines.
By the mid-1950s, many other European and American composers were...Episode details...
The American composer Elliott Carter has a reputation for writing some of the thorniest, most abstract and most technically difficult orchestral scores of the 20th century.
But for a few moments at least, during the opening of Carter’s “Symphony of Three Orchestras,” which had its premiere...Episode details...
Today’s date marks the birthday in 1938 of the American composer John Corigliano, and also, in 2005, of the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 3, a work scored for large wind ensemble. The premiere performance was given in Austin, Texas, by the University of Texas Wind Ensemble led by Jerry...Episode details...
Between 1908 and 1950, the Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky composed 27 symphonies. One of them his Symphony No. 19 for military wind band, premiered on today’s date in 1939 at the Cominterm Radio Station in Moscow, and was dedicated to the Red Army.
The Red Army’s bandmaster had asked...Episode details...
