On today’s date in 1947, the German composer Hans Eisler, who had been living in the United States since 1938, was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
This was some years before Joseph McCarthy headed such investigations, but one member of the committee was a...Episode details...
It was on today’s date in 1835, that the great Romantic opera composer Vincenzo Bellini died at a country home near Paris. He was only 34 years old, but had achieved great fame in his brief lifetime.
The long, elegant melodic lines Bellini spun out in his greatest operas were imitated by many...Episode details...
Today we celebrate the birthday of Leonardo Balada, an American composer born in Barcelona, Spain, on Sept. 22nd, 1933.
After studying at the Barcelona conservatory, the 20-something composer came to New York on a musical scholarship.
Balada recalls his arrival as both a cultural and climatic...Episode details...
“Are people still writing concertos for harpsichord?” you ask. Well, even if it’s not the most pressing question that has sprung into your mind today, we do have an answer, which is “Yes!”
On today’s date in 2002, for example, this new Concerto for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra by Philip...Episode details...
When we think of Russian music in Paris, the name Sergei Diaghilev comes first to mind. In the early years of the 20th century, that famous Russian impresario saw to it that not only the new music of Stravinsky was performed in the French capital, but also a historical panorama of earlier Russian...Episode details...
During his later years, the German composer Johannes Brahms was a frequent visitor to the town of Meiningen, where the Grand Duke had a fine orchestra that gave stellar performances of Brahms’ music.
Early in 1891, Brahms heard one member of that orchestra, the clarinetist Richard Mülhfeld,...Episode details...
The American composer Virgil Thomson was fond of writing what he called “portraits”—musical sketches of people he knew. When asked how he did this, Thomson replied: “I just look at you and I write down what I hear.”
This music by Thomson was a portrait in disguise. It premiered on today’s date...Episode details...
In 1871, one year after the premiere in Munich of Richard Wagner’s opera “Die Walküre,” a German-born American conductor named Theodore Thomas wrote to Wagner asking if he might perform some excerpts of this new work in the United States. Wagner turned him down, probably worried that loose...Episode details...
There’s a fun little book entitled “Great Operatic Disasters,” which chronicles some of the humorous—and some of the harrowing—mishaps that have befallen opera singers and productions over the last few centuries… and September 16th seems to have been a particularly unlucky day in the history of...Episode details...
