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Composers Datebook®

with host John Birge

Pizzetti in New York

For most music lovers, the phrase “Italian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries” means first and foremost OPERA composers. But during the 1920s and 1930s, when the great Italian opera conductor Arturo Toscanini was music director of the New York Philharmonic, American audiences heard many...Episode details...

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John Birge takes over as host of 'Composers Datebook'

John Birge is the new host of 'Composers Datebook,' the award-winning program about this day in classical music history. A well-known name at Classical Minnesota Public Radio, he will take over from retiring and longtime host John Zech on May 1.

Viktor Kalabis

Today’s date marks the birthday of a 20th century Czech composer you perhaps have never heard of. Viktor Kalabis was born in 1923 and by age 6, was giving public piano performances. All the signs pointed to a brilliant career. But first Kalabis had to face – and surmount–two major political...Episode details...

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Who’s who and what’s what is our specialty at Composers Datebook. Take 2 minutes to make a gift today, to help us continue to share this musical education experience.

Chopin debuts in Paris

On today’s date in 1832, the Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin made his concert debut in Paris at the Salle Pleyel. Among the enthusiastic audience members was another composer-pianist by the name of Franz Liszt, who would rapidly become Chopin’s close friend and advocate. Chopin...Episode details...

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Michael Daugherty's "Brooklyn Bridge"

“Pssst… Hey buddy–wanna buy a bridge?… No? Well, how about a Clarinet Concerto, then?” As most of us know, the Brooklyn Bridge is not for sale, but this New York icon has reputedly been sold to many unsuspecting visitors. After its opening in 1883, Harper's Monthly wrote, "The wise man will not...Episode details...

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Rorem's "Our Town"

It’s a play that both Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein wanted to make into an opera, but the playwright always said, “No.” We’re talking about “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder, a nostalgic but bitter-sweet look at life and love and death in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, set in the early...Episode details...

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Danny Elfman at Carnegie Hall

The American composer Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is best known for writing the opening theme of The Simpsons and for scoring movies directed by his friend Tim Burton. But on today’s date in 2005, Elfman had, for him, a rather unusual experience—namely, hearing some of his music played live at...Episode details...

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Before you go...

Who’s who and what’s what is our specialty at Composers Datebook. Take 2 minutes to make a gift today, to help us continue to share this musical education experience.

Lowell Liebermann

In recounting the life story of many composers, it’s a familiar and perhaps Romantic cliché that their work will be—as a matter of course—NOT appreciated by their contemporaries, and that the composer in question will have to toil for years in obscurity before his or her music is appreciated by...Episode details...

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Cowell for winds

Henry Cowell was one of the most prolific of all 20th century American composers. Some of his works are aggressively experimental in nature, while others tap into folk traditions and world music. The range and variety are quite remarkable. Cowell wrote so many works, in fact, that even the...Episode details...

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