Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Today’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post takes a different tack than usual. Rather than prescribing/recommending a particular CD (or DVD, or book), today’s post will feature a series of links to various video performances of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony, interviews with people who knew him, and audio recordings of a very few of his legendary temper tantrums! Instant Fame The story of Toscanini’s rise to almost instant fame is the stuff of legend. At…
We mark the birth on March 25, 1867 – 157 years ago today – of the cellist and conductor Arturo Toscanini, in the city of Parma, in what was then the Kingdom of Italy. He died, at the age of 89, on January 16, 1957, at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx,…
We begin where we left off in yesterday’s Music History Monday post, with what was the closing statement: “It’s a fact: the very history of twentieth century Russian, Russian expatriate, and Soviet composers starts with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), whose own roots trace back through The Five to Glinka and the awakening of Russian musical nationalism…
We mark the birth of the Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov on March 18, 1844: 180 years ago today. Born in the Russian town of Tikhvin – roughly 120 miles east of St. Petersburg – Rimsky-Korsakov died at the age of 64, on June 21, 1908, on his estate near the Russian town of Luga,…