The New York Philharmonic on the air

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

If, on today’s date in 1930, you happened to be flipping through the pages of the New York Times, you would have seen several ads for radios, including one that argued that purchasing a radio was a good investment.

This was only one year after the infamous 1929 stock market crash, so New Yorkers might have been a little leery of investing in anything, and disposable income for most Americans was severely limited during the Great Depression that followed.

Still, that same October 5 edition of the Times announced that the New York Philharmonic would commence live nationwide broadcasts of its Sunday afternoon concerts that very day, with visiting German conductor Erich Kleiber leading the orchestra. The rest of the Philharmonic’s 1930-31 season, led by the orchestra’s new music director, Arturo Toscanini, would also be broadcast live on subsequent Sunday afternoons.

For music lovers, that radio purchase started to look like a pretty good investment after all.

And over the following decades, in addition to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, the New York Philharmonic’s radio audiences coast-to-coast were introduced as well to new works of American composers like Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 39; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60973

Roy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 3; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60594