Composers Datebook podcast

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22:42

Bob Stobener , a seasoned leader celebrated for his adept communication skills, has a unique perspective on improving communication as a means to foster understanding and collaboration. Drawing from his creative background in cartooning and strategic advertising at a successful comedy club, Stobener believes that effective communication is essential not only for resolving conflicts but also for enhancing personal and professional growth. He emphasizes the importance of listening and forming genuine connections, demonstrating how these practices can lead to positive outcomes, as seen in his ability to guide team members toward fulfilling career paths. By advocating for open and honest dialogue, Stobener illustrates how strong communication skills can support individual success and organizational excellence across various industries. (00:01:52) Communication Skills: Comedy Club to Corporate Success (00:14:21) Transparent Interactions: The Foundation of Leadership Success (00:14:21) Transformative Impact of Transparent Leadership Communication (00:19:41) Mastering Communication Skills for Multifaceted Success Hosted by Larry Wilson Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions Producer: R. Scott Edwards Sponsored by: The Wilson Method **Check out NEW upgraded website with FREE offer !! Visit: https://theWilsonMethod.com Link: TheWilsonMethod.com…

Composers Datebook

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Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.

107 episodes

Composers Datebook

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updated 11 days ago

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107 episodes

#Music #American Public Media

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Composers Datebook

1
Gounod's 'Faust' 2:00

11 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis The opening of Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence , takes place at New York’s old Academy of Music in the early 1870s, during a performance of Gounod’s Faust , a French opera based on a German play by Goethe. At the time specified in Wharton’s novel, Gounod’s opera was still “new” music, having premiered about a dozen years earlier in Paris on today’s date in 1859. Gounod’s Faust became a worldwide success, and was quickly translated into many languages. In Wharton’s fictional New York performance, for example, the real-life Swedish diva Christine Nilsson sang the role of Marguerite, the German maiden seduced and abandoned by Faust. As Wharton put it: “She sang, of course, ‘m’ama!” and not “he loves me,’ since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.” Nilsson, again singing in Italian, sang Marguerite at the 1883 gala opening night performance of Faust at New York’s newly built Metropolitan Opera House. Faust was performed so often there that the building was soon dubbed the “Faust-spielhaus,” a pun on Wagner’s “Festpielhaus” or “Festival Theater” in Bayreuth. Music Played in Today's Program Charles Gounod (1818-1893): Faust Ballet Music ; St. Martin’s Academy; Neville Marriner, conductor; Philips 462 125…

Composers Datebook

1
Mobberley's Piano Concerto 2:00

12 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis All artists, including composers, are frequently urged to “write what they know.” Well, if that’s the case, then any new and sleep-deprived parent can relate to music which depicts a late-night session with a newborn baby. It’s the middle movement of a piano concerto that was given its premiere on today’s date in 1994 by the Kansas City Symphony, with Bill McGlaughlin conducting and pianist Richard Cass. This new Concerto was by Kansas City composer James Mobberley, who wrote: “The piece is in three movements, each of which reflects a different emotional side of parenthood. The first movement represents the excitement and hysteria of forthcoming childbirth. The middle movement begins with amazingly soft moments following childbirth but leads into the period of sleeplessness and total chaos that inevitably follows. The final movement represents the wonderful fun and unpredictable interactions that start to happen, beginning with the child’s first smile.” Mobberley was born in Iowa in 1954, raised in Pennsylvania, and balances teaching duties at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, with his composition work, which includes a wide range of concert and theatrical pieces, some combining electronic and live performing elements. Music Played in Today's Program James Mobberley (b. 1954): Piano Concerto; Richard Cass, piano; Czech National Symphony; Paul Freeman, conductor; Albany 335…

Composers Datebook

1
Loeffler and Anderson in Boston 2:00

13 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis Today we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Boston (where else?), noting two musical premieres that occurred in that Celtic city. The first premiere was in March 1922, when Pierre Monteux conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of three of the Five Irish Fantasies by German-born American composer Charles Martin Loeffler. These were settings for solo voice and orchestra of poetry by William Butler Yeats, and, for their Boston premiere, the vocalist was none other than great Irish tenor John McCormack. The second premiere dates from 1947, when the Eire Society of Boston commissioned another American composer, Leroy Anderson, to write an Irish Suite for its annual Irish night at the Boston Pops. Anderson used six popular Irish tunes, ranging from the sentimental to the exuberant, for his suite, skillfully arranging them into an immediate hit and lasting success. Arthur Fiedler conducted the premiere and the work soon became a staple item for St. Patrick’s Day concerts in Boston and concert halls all across the United States. Music Played in Today's Program Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935): Five Irish Fantasies ; Neil Rosenshein, tenor; Indianapolis Symphony; John Nelson, conductor; New World 332 Leroy Anderson (1908-1975): Irish Suite ; Decca studio orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductor; MCA 9815…

Composers Datebook

1
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco 2:00

14 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 1968, 72-year-old Italian-born American composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco died in Beverley Hills. As a young man, he was already known as a rising composer, concert pianist, music critic and essayist. In 1939 he left Mussolini’s Italy and came to America, and like a lot of European musicians of the time, he found work writing film scores for major Hollywood studios. Castelnuovo-Tedesco became an American citizen, and eventually taught at the Los Angeles Conservatory, where his pupils included many famous names from the next generation of film composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Andre Previn, Nelson Riddle and John Williams. In addition to film scores, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed a signifigant body of concert music, including concertos for the likes of Heifetz and Segovia. A number of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s works are directly related to his Jewish faith, including Naomi and Ruth , a choral work from 1947. The composer’s mother was named Naomi, and he claimed the faithful Ruth in the Biblical story reminded him of his own wife, Clara. “In a certain sense,” he wrote, “it was really my symbolic autobiography, existing before I decided to write — to open my heart — in these pages.” Music Played in Today's Program Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968): Naomi and Ruth ; St. Martin’s Academy and Chorus; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor; Naxos 8.559404…

Composers Datebook

1
Rorem's 'After Reading Shakespeare' 2:00

15 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis For their February 2013 cover story, the editors of BBC Music Magazine, came up with a list of the 50 most influential people in the history of music. Bach was on it, as you might expect — but so was Shakespeare. Any music lover can see the logic in that, and cite pieces like Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Tchaikovsky’s Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet , or all the great operas based on Shakespeare’s plays, ranging from Verdi’s Falstaff to a recent setting of The Tempest by Thomas Adès. And speaking of The Tempest , in New York on today’s date in 1981, Sharon Robinson premiered After Reading Shakespeare , a new solo cello suite she commissioned from American composer Ned Rorem. “Yes,” Rorem said, “I was re-reading Shakespeare the month the piece was accomplished… Yet the experience did not so much inspire the music itself as provide a cohesive program upon which the music be might formalized, and thus intellectually grasped by the listener.” Rorem even confessed that some of the titles were added after the fact, “as when parents christen their children.“ After all, as Shakespeare’s Juliet might put it, “What’s in a name?” Music Played in Today's Program Ned Rorem (1923-2022): After Reading Shakespeare ; Sharon Robinson, cello; Naxos 8.559316…

Composers Datebook

1
Previn's Violin Concerto 2:00

16 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 2002, a new violin concerto received its premiere by the Boston Symphony and German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, with the new work’s composer, Andre Previn conducting. Previn was born in Berlin, came to the United States in 1939, and became an American citizen in 1943. His concerto reflects a homecoming of sorts in its third movement, “From a Train in Germany.” In 1999, while riding on a German train, Previn had telephoned a birthday greeting to his manager, who suggested that the new composition he was planning for Boston might reflect that return to the country of his birth. And so its third movement ended up incorporating a German children’s song suggested by Anne-Sophie Mutter, one Previn had known as a child. Autobiographical inferences throughout the concerto are also suggested by an inscription from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets , which reads: “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/will be to arrive where we started/and know the place for the first time.” And, as if to underscore the autobiographical interplay of life and art, Mutter and Previn were married on August 1, 2002, five months after the premiere of “their” Concerto. Music Played in Today's Program André Previn (1930-2019): Violin Concerto; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; Boston Symphony; André Previn, conductor; DG 474500…

Composers Datebook

1
Rochberg in Chicago 2:00

17 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis In 1986, the city of Chicago celebrated its 150th anniversary, and an anonymous music patron was willing to back the commission of a big new orchestral work for the pride of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its superstar conductor back then, namely George Solti. The manager of the Chicago Symphony approached American composer George Rochberg about writing something, suggesting that the patron specifically wanted a concerto for brass and orchestra. Not that surprising, since the Chicago Symphony then and now has special reason to be proud of its brass section. Rochberg’s counter-proposal was that he would write a symphony, reassuring the orchestra’s manager: “When I write my new symphony, I will not neglect the brass.” Some months later, the composer met with Solti to outline his revised plans for the Chicago commission. When Solti requested extra brass and percussion, Rochberg recounted the story of the anonymous patron’s commission of a Concerto for Brass , to which Solti, smiling broadly, replied: “Oh, that was me!” — and readily agreed to a symphony instead of a concerto. Rochberg’s brassy Symphony No. 5, was premiered by Solti and the Chicago Symphony on today’s date in 1986. Music Played in Today's Program George Rochberg (1918-2005): Symphony No. 5; Saarbrucken Radio Symphony; Christopher Lyndon-Gee, conductor; Naxos 8.559115…

Composers Datebook

1
Ernesto Cordero 2:00

18 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis The University of Puerto Rico is the main public university system in the island commonwealth, with 11 campuses, over 4000 faculty members, and some 40,000 students. In 2003, to celebrate the centennial of its founding on March 12, 1903, the University commissioned a new work for guitar and orchestra, to be premiered by virtuoso Pepe Romero and the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. The composer was Ernesto Cordero, an accomplished guitarist, whose Carnegie Hall debut as both performer and composer was praised by The New York Times, who described his technique as “impeccable” and his compositions as “a healthy combination of skill, sensitive invention, and sound musical effect.” Cordero was born in New York City in 1940, but studied at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and the Madrid Royal Conservatory in Spain, followed by study with the Italian composer Roberto Caggiano in Rome and with the Cuban composer Julian Orbón in New York. Cordero’s 2003 Concierto Festivo was his fourth guitar concerto, and was dedicated to Pepe Romero, who declared the new work “brilliant,” and described it as “wonderful bridal feast where the extraordinary knowledge of the guitar and the divine inspiration of the singular composer Ernesto Cordero wed.” Music Played in Today's Program Ernesto Cordero (b. 1946); Concierto Festivo ; Pete Romero, guitar; I Solisti di Zagreb; Naxos 8572707…

Composers Datebook

1
Haydn encored 2:00

19 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis These days if someone goes to all the trouble to write a symphony, they’re lucky to hear it performed once — and it might be years before a second hearing. But in 1791, when Haydn paid his first visit to England, Londoners were so enthusiastic about his new symphonies they asked for repeat performances as soon as possible. On today’s date in 1791, the work we know as Haydn’s Symphony No. 92 had its London premiere, and, “by particular desire,” as they phrased it back then, was repeated a week later and again the following month. And when Haydn paid a visit to Oxford University that summer to receive an honorary doctorate, he led a performance of this same symphony at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. Ever since, this particular English favorite has been nicknamed Haydn’s Oxford Symphony . Haydn, being a politically astute sort of chap, didn’t publicize to his British fans that one of their favorite symphonies was actually commissioned by a French Count who had sponsored a series of Haydn concerts in Paris some five years earlier. One wonders how the music-loving Count fared during the French Revolution, which was well underway in 1791. Music Played in Today's Program Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1808): Symphony No. 92 ( Oxford ); Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra; Adam Fischer, conductor; Nimbus 5269…

Composers Datebook

1
Paine in Boston 2:00

20 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis Following the successful premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in 1876, New England composer John Knowles Paine finished a second, which he gave a German subtitle: Im Fruehling or In Springtime . In 19th century America, “serious” music meant German music, and “serious” musicians like Paine all studied in Germany. Returning home, Paine became the first native-born American to win acceptance as a symphonic composer, and, accepting a teaching post at Harvard, became that school’s first professor of music. On today’s date in 1880, when Paine’s Spring Symphony was premiered at Sanders Theater, the normally staid Bostonians went nuts. One critic who was present, recalled that “ladies waved their handkerchiefs, men shouted in approbation, and the highly respected John S. Dwight, arbiter in Boston of music criticism, stood in his seat frantically opening and shutting his umbrella as an expression of uncontrollable enthusiasm.” Paine’s music remained tremendously popular in his own day. In 1883 George Henschel, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony, was sent the following poetic suggestion about his programming: Let no more Wagner themes thy bill enhance And give the native workers just one chance. Don’t give that Dvořák symphony a-gain; If you would give us joy, oh give us Paine! Music Played in Today's Program John Knowles Paine (1839-1906): Symphony No. 2; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor; New World 350…

Composers Datebook

1
Pachelbel and his Canon 2:00

21 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 1706, German composer and organist Johann Pachelbel was buried in Nuremberg, the town where he was born 53 years earlier. In his day, Pachelbel was regarded as an innovative composer of Protestant church music and works for harpsichord and organ. He was acquainted with the Bach family, and was, in fact, the teacher of the teacher of J.S. Bach, and served as godfather to one J.S. Bach’s older relatives. Pachelbel would be pretty much forgotten by most music lovers until late in the 20th century, when an orchestral arrangement of a little canon he had written would suddenly become one of the best-known classical themes of our time. In 1979, American composer George Rochberg even included variations on Pachelbel’s famous Canon as the third movement of his own String Quartet No. 6. Like Bach, some of Pachelbel’s children also became composers, and one of them, Karl Teodorus Pachelbel, emigrated from Germany to the British colonies of North America. As “Charles Theodore Pachelbel,” he became an important figure in the musical life of early 18th century Boston and Charleston, and died there in 1750, the same year as J.S. Bach. Music Played in Today's Program George Rochberg (1918-2005): Variations on the Pachelbel Canon ; Concord String Quartet; RCA/BMG 60712…

Composers Datebook

1
International Women's Day 2:00

22 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis As today is International Women's Day, we thought we’d tell you about a wonderful French composer you may or may not have heard of before. Mélanie Hélène Bonis, or Mel Bonis as she preferred to be called, was a prolific composer of piano and organ works, chamber music, art songs, choral music, and several orchestral pieces. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where her teachers included César Franck. She was born in 1858 and died in 1937, so her lifetime spanned the age of Hector Berlioz to Alban Berg. In the 1890s, Bonis reconnected with her first love, a man she had met while still a student, who had encouraged her musical talent. So she left her husband, who did not encourage her, to devote herself full-time to her music. Initially performed and admired in Paris, after World War I her music was neglected, and she became bedridden from arthritis. Despite everything, she continued to compose up to the time of her death at 79. Among her works are seven piano portraits of women, collectively titled Femmes de Légende , or Legendary Women — some of which, like Salomé , she arranged for full orchestra. Music Played in Today's Program Mel Bonis (1858-1937): Salomé ; Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse; Leo Hussain, conductor; Bru Zane BZ-2006…

Composers Datebook

1
Persichetti's 'Pageant' 2:00

23 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 1953, Pageant , a new work for symphonic winds premiered with the University of Miami Band. It was written by American composer Vincent Persichetti, who conducted the performance, as he did the work’s New York City debut later that same year with the Goldman Band, then America’s premiere professional wind ensemble, who had commissioned the work. It might seem odd that an amateur, student ensemble should premiere a work commissioned for professionals, but in the 1950s, when the U.S. college system was rapidly expanding, the savvy Mr. Persichetti was ready and willing to supply both students and professionals with more than a dozen new wind band scores to perform. He put it this way: “I find wonderful performances in the universities around the country. They may be students, but … they’ll find something there that you maybe didn’t quite even dream of, and make something of it, whereas sometimes the professional orchestras don't always get it as quickly. [The student musicians] have to work harder, but they do this all through high school and college, and by the time they get to the end of college they know what music is about and can phrase and shape it with some conviction.” Music Played in Today's Program Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987): Pageant ; Winds of the London Symphony Orchestra; David Amos, conductor; Naxos 8.570123…

Composers Datebook

1
'The Handmaid's Tale' opera by Ruders 2:00

24 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 2000, the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen gave the premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale , a new opera based on the dystopian novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. The book and opera tell of a nightmarish future: following a nuclear disaster in the United States, infertility rates have soared, and a religious sect has staged a military coup, enslaving the few fertile women who remain as breeders, or “handmaids,” for the military and religious commanders of their sect. Said Atwood, “There is nothing new about the society I depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before — more than once, in fact.” Despite its grim subject matter, Danish composer Poul Ruders said he saw “huge operatic potential” when he first read the book back in 1992. The original production in Copenhagen was sung in Danish, but Ruders says he conceived the work in English. The opera was staged in that language first in London at the English National Opera, and subsequently, at the opera’s American premiere, in St. Paul by The Minnesota Opera, to great critical acclaim. Music Played in Today's Program Poul Ruders (b. 1949): The Handmaid’s Tale ; Royal Danish Orchestra; Michael Schonwandt, conductor; DaCapo 9.224165-66…

Composers Datebook

1
Shostakovich and his 'Leningrad Symphony' 2:00

25 days ago2:00