Composers Datebook Podcast
1) Pendercki's Symphony No. 6
SynopsisIn all, Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki completed eight symphonies, and in 2013, to celebrate his 80th birthday, there appeared a box set of recordings billed as his “complete symphonies,...Show More
2) New 'Variations on a Theme by Purcell'
SynopsisThe year 2002 marked the 10th anniversary of BBC Music Magazine and to celebrate the magazine’s editor asked British composer Colin Matthews to coordinate a bold commissioning idea: a set of s...Show More
3) Mackey's 'Lost and Found'
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1996, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Lost and Found, a five-minute toccata for orchestra. Its composer was Steve Mack...Show More
4) Bolcom's 'Five Fold Five'
SynopsisYoung composers who came of age in the 1960s found themselves faced with a question: should they adopt the intellectually fashionable post-serial, atonal style of composition developed by Arno...Show More
5) The long and the short of it
Synopsis“Time is a funny thing,” as one of the more philosophically-inclined Viennese characters so wisely observed in Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier.Der Rosenkavalier had its premiere in 19...Show More
6) Blue Danube in NYC
SynopsisToday we note the American premiere of just one of dozens of symphonic masterworks introduced to these shores by German-born conductor Theodore Thomas, arguably the most important figure in th...Show More
7) Britten's 'Cantata Academica'
SynopsisOne way composers help make ends meet is to accept commissions for occasional pieces — works written for some special occasion, a private or public celebration or anniversary of some event, la...Show More
8) Tomaso Albinoni
SynopsisFor some composers, what made them popular in their own day is not always what makes them popular today. Take, for example, Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who was born in Venice on ...Show More
9) Claudette Sorel and Tania León
SynopsisClaudette Sorel was a pianist, educator and passionate advocate for equal rights for women in music, especially composers and performers. In 1996, she founded the Sorel Organization to expand ...Show More
10) Maxwell Davies at a wedding (with sunrise)
SynopsisIn 1970, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies moved to the remote and rugged Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. At first, he said, the natives thought he was just some weirdo ...Show More