Today we have a “Tale of THREE Cities” to tell: Boston, Minneapolis, and Seattle — and the coast-to-coast saga of a symphony by the American composer David Diamond.
On today’s date in 1944, Diamond’s Second Symphony was given its first performance by the Boston Symphony, with the legendary...Episode details...
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.
Today’s date marks the original Columbus Day, honoring the Spanish explorer who for decades was unquestioningly described as the man who “discovered America.” In recent years Native American leaders have pointed out that indigenous peoples had been living on the continent for thousands of years,...Episode details...
On today’s date in 1928, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen conducted the first public performance of his new Clarinet Concerto in Copenhagen.
“The clarinet,” said Nielsen, “can, at one and the same time seem utterly hysterical, gentle as balsam, or as screechy as a streetcar on badly greased...Episode details...
In James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” the thoughts of its major characters keep shifting from the sights and sounds they encounter in and around Dublin to their private, non-stop interior monologues. This narrative technique came to be called “stream of consciousness” writing.
In music, something...Episode details...
John Lennon was born on today’s date in the year 1940, in Liverpool, England — during a German air raid on that city, as it happened. With three other young lads from Liverpool, Lennon would eventually become world-famous, courtesy of the band he helped formed in 1959 called the Beatles.
The...Episode details...
1991 was a big year for American composer John Corigliano. The Metropolitan Opera premiered his opera “The Ghosts of Versailles” and the 53-year old composer won two Grammys and the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No. 1. Corigliano was increasingly recognized as one of the leading American...Episode details...
On today’s date* in 1909, “The Golden Cockerel,” the last opera of the Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, had its premiere in Moscow. Rimsky-Korsakov had died the previous year, after a bitter battle with government censors who objected to the opera’s thinly disguised satire against the...Episode details...
The first performance of the “Liebeslieder — or the “Love Song” Waltzes — for piano four-hands by Johannes Brahms took place on today’s date in 1869. The performers were two distinguished soloists: Clara Schumann, widow of composer Robert Schumann, and Hermann Levi, a famous conductor of his day....Episode details...
