167 years ago, Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto was performed for the first time in Leipzig.

The Concerto is is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour. Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although… (more)

Listen to the composer’s Violin Concerto in E minor performed by Janine Jansen:

Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwängler, 1929.

Gioachino Rossini would be 220 years old today.

He was an italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname “The Italian Mozart”. Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history… (more)

Händel’s Messiah manuscript, 1741.

George Frideric Händel would be 327 years old today.

He was a german-british baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music. He received critical musical training in Halle, Hamburg and Italy before settling in London (1712) and becoming a naturalised British subject in 1727.[1] By then he was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition… (more)

Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake received its première performance at the Bolshoi Theatre 135 years ago.

The piece was composed in 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger… (more)

Download “A Portrait of Mendelssohn” here: http://goo.gl/79PQL.

Felix Mendelssohn’s death mask, 1847.

Felix Mendelssohn, one of the greatest figures of the early romantic period, would be 203 years old today… (more)

Listen to Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch:

Download “Schubert: A Biography” here: http://goo.gl/PSClc.