The exceptional Polish violinist Bronisław Huberman never tired of asking Erich Korngold for a violin concerto. Huberman had been an old family friend from their days in Vienna, but having been forced into exile to Southern California, Korngold was determined

When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s Symphony No. 4 in F minor premiered at a Russian Musical Society concert in Moscow on 10 February 1878, it represented a veritable breakthrough in terms of emotional depth and complexity. This symphonic hybrid, which subsequently

Béla Bartók did not see the premiere of his 3rd Piano Concerto. After completing the score—he wrote the Hungarian words “the end” after the last measures of this concerto—Bartók was transferred to a West Side hospital where he died four

Hector Berlioz published his famous handbook on the art of orchestration, his Traîté d’instrumentation, in January 1844. It remains, even today, a landmark in the history of the symphony orchestra. It is a concise and brilliant historical document that details

Antonín Dvořák celebrated his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts by composing a symphony. He worked on his 8th Symphony for almost 3 months at his summer resort in Bohemia, and he conducted the premiere in

Alma Mahler severely took her husband Gustav to task for composing a series of orchestral songs on texts dealing with the death of children. Merely two weeks after the birth of their second child, Alma found it incomprehensible and feared

On 26 January 1911, Richard Strauss’ new creation Der Rosenkavalier exploded onto the world stage in the packed Semper Opera in Dresden. It caused nothing short of a sensation! One of the most anticipated musical and cultural events in the

Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 25 January 1817. Press reports were generally favorable, but the singers took a beating. Some critics even spoke of a “fiasco” because there was no applause during the