© 2024 Ideastream Public Media

1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216) 916-6100 | (877) 399-3307

WKSU is a public media service licensed to Kent State University and operated by Ideastream Public Media.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

March 15

1807 first public performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 in Vienna conducted by the composer in a benefit concert at the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz.

1835 Eduard Strauss – Austrian composer (d.1916); member of the musical dynasty with his brothers Johann Strauss Jr and Josef Strauss.

1864 Johann Halvorsen – Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist (d.1935); best-known works today are the Entry March of the Boyars and the Passacaglia & Sarabande, duos for violin and viola based on themes by George Frideric Handel.

1900 Colin McPhee – Canadian composer and musicologist (d.1964); first Western composer to make an ethnomusicological study of Bali, and wrote music influenced by that study decades before such compositions became widespread.

1908 first performance of Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole (Spanish Rhapsody), in Paris by the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne, conducted by Édouard Colonne.

1911 first performance of Alexander Scriabin’s Symphony No. 5 ‘Prometheus: Poem of Fire’ in Moscow, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky and with the composer performing the solo piano part.

1926 Ben Johnston – American composer (d.2019); composer of contemporary music in ‘just intonation’; in 1990 American critic John Rockwell called him "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer."

1928 Nicolas Flagello – American composer and conductor (d.1994); best known for his oratorio The Passion of Martin Luther King (1968), premiered in 1974.

1961 Fabio Biondi – Italian violinist and conductor (63 years old); in 1989, founded Europa Galante, an Italian ensemble specializing in baroque music.

2000 premiere of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan at Carnegie Hall, by soprano Sylvia McNair and pianist Martin Katz; an orchestrated version of this song-cycle premiered in Minneapolis on October 23, 2003, with soprano Hila Plitmann and the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano.