The modern French composer Olivier Messiaen played the piano part in one of the strangest premiere performances of the 20th century on today’s date in 1941. As the composer put it: “My Quartet for the End of Time was conceived and written during my captivity as a prisoner of war and received its...Episode details...
Some instruments seem to have all the luck—or at least all the concertos!
If you play piano or violin, you have hundreds of concertos to choose from. But if your instrument is the harp—and you will forgive the pun—the pickings are rather slim.
This hardly seems fair to one of mankind’s oldest...Episode details...
On today’s date in 1945, Sergei Prokofiev conducted the Moscow State Philharmonic in the premiere performance of his Fifth Symphony. Written when the tide of the Second World War was turning in the favor of the Allies, the premiere in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory came one day after...Episode details...
On today’s date in 1961, a new work by the German-born composer Ingolf Dahl received its premiere performance in Los Angeles. The new work was entitled “Sinfonietta for Concert Band,” and was commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association, who were eager to expand their repertory...Episode details...
It was a matter of some debate as the year 1999 drew to a close whether—chronologically speaking—the new Millennium really began in 2000 or 2001. As far as the musical world was concerned, why wait? The shift from 1999 to 2000 proved to be the occasion for hundreds of celebratory concerts and...Episode details...
Franz Berwald was a Swede who lived in the early 19th century and who made his living first as an orthopedic surgeon and later as the manager of a saw mill and glass factory. But these days, nobody cares very much about all that.
Berwald was born in Stockholm into a family that had been...Episode details...
On this day in 1947, Pierre Monteux led the San Francisco Symphony in the premiere performance of the Second Symphony by American composer Roger Sessions, who was then 50 years old. Prior to this symphony, Sessions had written in a more broadly accessible style, but his Symphony No. 2 proved...Episode details...
Today’s date marks two rather macabre anniversaries in the history of music.
The first was a fatal moment for Jean-Baptiste Lully, the 17th-century Superintendent of Music for King Louis XIV of France. In late 1686, King Louis became gravely ill, but surprised everybody by recovering...Episode details...
The fairy-tale opera “Sadko” by the Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov had its first performance in Moscow on today’s date in 1898. This opera is still staged in Russia, but rarely anywhere else—even though some of its wonderful melodies have proven extremely popular.
One of the opera’s...Episode details...
