In the late 20th century, Bernstein’s Overture to his opera Candide was the most performed piece of contemporary classical music, or so the secretary at ASCAP told me in the 1980s when I was sent to go pick up the

Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury (b. 1957- ) studied in Lebanon before continuing musical studies in Paris at the École Normale de Musique de Paris “Alfred Cortot” in 1979. A 1983 broadcast celebrating the centenary of the Lebanese-American writer and philosopher

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) came of age as a composer just as Russia was having a resurgence of national feeling in music. In 1861, he met Mily Balakirev, a composer who would be the founding spirit of the later group known

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) may be better known today for his keyboard exercises but in his day, he was a noted performer and composer. Born in Rome, he was discovered by an English visitor and brought to England at age 13.

During his lifetime, Louis Spohr (1784-1859) was considered the greatest composer after Beethoven. The fact that he’s so little known today speaks volumes about changes in taste. Famous primarily as a violinist, then as a composer, his reputation did not

Pianist Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950) is best known as one of the leading pianists of the 20th century but less for his compositions. This dual life of composer / pianist had been his since childhood where he was a wunderkind on

In 1939, in the middle of writing his opera Die Liebe der Danae, Richard Strauss wrote a work that’s rarely performed but commemorates an event few countries can claim. His Japanische Festmusik was written for the 2,600th anniversary of the

Composers love mysteries, particularly when they can hide something in plain sight in their music. Starting with Johann Sebastian himself, hiding words and letters became a thing to do. When you convert the scale into letters and use German, you