Imagine that YOU are playing "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and the $64,000 question is as follows: "Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 had its world premiere performance in what city:

a) Moscow

b) St. Petersburg

c) Budapest

d) Boston?"

Is that your final answer? If you chose d) Boston, you would have been a winner!

Tchaikovsky finished scoring his First Piano Concerto in the early months of 1875, and the work received its very first performance on October 25th that year at the Music Hall in Boston. The orchestra was a freelance group, mostly members of the Harvard Musical Association — the Boston Symphony wouldn't be founded until six years later. The conductor of the Tchaikovsky premiere was one B.J. Lang -- hardly a name most classical music lovers would recognize today -- but the soloist was definitely world-class: the famous German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow.

In his day, Bülow was one of the great champions of new music, performing and conducting major works by his contemporaries, Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms. Tchaikovsky dedicated his new Piano Concerto to Bulow after his one-time teacher, Nicolai Rubinstein, a famous Russian concert pianist and conductor in his own right, had said the piece was unplayable. Von Bülow proved him wrong, and was able to telegraph Tchaikovsky from Boston that his new concerto had been a big success.

In the year 1929, October 24th fell on a Thursday, and, ever since, that particular date has the dubious honor of being dubbed "Black Thursday" — for it was on that fateful day that the New York Stock Exchange crashed. A full-blown financial panic ensued, leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s. For many who saw their fortunes wiped out overnight, it must have seemed like the end of the world.

Meanwhile, in Charleston, West Virginia, a baby boy was born on "Black Thursday" who would grow up to become one of America's most original composers. By the 1970s, George Crumb was acknowledged as a masterful creator of impressionistic and mysterious soundscapes, with evocative titles like "Dream Sequence," "Night of the Four Moons," and "Eleven Echoes of Autumn."

Most of Crumbs' pieces are for small ensemble, but he's also composed large scale works, including one from 1977 entitled "Star Child." It's scored a vocal soloist, antiphonal choirs, bell ringers, and a large symphony orchestra positioned for surround-sound effect at various points in the concert hall. Crumb says it traces a "progression from darkness and despair to light or joy and spiritual realization." A recording of "Star Child" was issued to celebrate Crumb's 70th birthday in 1999 — a year, curiously enough, in which the stock market enjoyed an all-time high, just before taking yet another downward plunge!

On today's date in 1913, composer Frederick Delius was in Leipzig for the first performances of two orchestral works destined to become among his most popular pieces. These were "On hearing the first Cuckoo in Spring" and "Summer Night on the River." Both were premiered by the world-famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led by one of the most charismatic conductors of that time, the legendary Artur Nikisch.

In a letter to his wife, Delius reported that the orchestra was "splendid" — as for Nikisch, Delius had this to say: "He played the first piece (Spring) MUCH too slow, but very expressively. The second piece (Summer Night) he played most beautifully — perfect!"

Eighty-four years later, on October 23, 1997, another atmospheric orchestra work received its first performance when conductor Zdenek Macal led the New Jersey Symphony in "Celestial Night," a work by the American composer Richard Danielpour.

This piece is a two-movement symphony, says its composer: "Part of the inspiration for Celestial Night came to me while star-gazing in New Hampshire and reflecting on the contrast inherent in my life: between summers in rural places where all the driven, frenetic life that I lead in New York City is temporarily suspended and I have a period of peace… [and] the possibility of personal transformation. There must be a moment of the 'aha' — of discovering something beyond one's own immediate environment or experience in order to grow."

On today's date in 1942, Bruno Walter conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of the Second Symphony of the American composer John Alden Carpenter.

Like Charles Ives before him, Carpenter led a double life as a composer and a successful businessman. He was born into a wealthy family, and from 1906 until his retirement in 1936, served as Vice President of George B. Carpenter and Co., his father's railroad and shipping supply company.

Carpenter studied music at home and abroad, and even took composition lessons from Sir Edward Elgar. In 1914, Carpenter scored a national success with his first big orchestral work, a whimsical symphonic suite titled "Adventures in a Perambulator," and in 1921 wrote a very popular jazz-inspired ballet titled "Krazy Kat," based on a wildly popular newspaper comic strip of the day.

By the 1940s, Carpenter's works were being performed by America's leading orchestras and famous maestros like Bruno Walter and Fritz Reiner. To celebrate his 75th birthday, the newly-formed National Arts Foundation promoted performances of his music in the U.S, Australia, and Europe.

But in the decades following his death in 1951, much of Carpenter's work has been forgotten. This first-ever recording of his Symphony No. 2 was released by Naxos of America in 2001 — 59 years after the work's 1942 premiere.

In the year 1858, the Parisian composer Jacques Offenbach was, as usual, busy writing his next operetta and avoiding his creditors. He found it expedient to work in hotel rooms rather than at home, where he ran the risk of being cornered by bill collectors. Offenbach hoped that maybe, just maybe, one big box office success might clear his debts — and enable him to reupholster the tattered seats in his theater, Les Bouffes-Parisiens.

On today's date in 1858, the audience in those tattered seats saw the premiere performance of Offenbach's latest work — a farcical send-up of an old Greek myth. "Orpheus in the Underworld" was, in fact, a modest success, and ran well for several weeks.

But just as the production would in the normal course of events be closing, an important Parisian music critic attended a performance, and was shocked, SHOCKED that Offenbach and company made fun of something so noble and edifying as Greek mythology. His outraged review appeared and soon generated a lively debate, especially when Offenbach slyly inserted direct quotes from the review into the operetta itself!

Suddenly "Orpheus in the Underworld" was the hottest ticket in Paris.

And even better than paying for new upholstery, one tune from the show, an infectious 'Infernal Galop" would, as M. Offenbach's celebrated "Can-Can," become a world famous melody practically synonymous with Paris itself.

If you say “Dvořák” and “string quartet” to most classical music lovers, they will immediately think of Dvořák’s “American” Quartet in F Major, composed during the summer of 1893 in Spillville, Iowa, where the composer and his family were vacationing after his first year as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City.

Now, the “American” Quartet is an irresistible, tuneful masterwork – but it’s a little sad that its popularity with music lovers doesn’t extend to the 13 other string quartets that Dvořák composed, like his joyful and exuberant String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, published as his Opus 105.

That quartet, too, was begun in America, in March of 1895, less than a month before Dvořák left America, and completed in December of that year after he had returned to Prague. In the last decade of his life, Dvořák devoted himself mostly to composing tone poems and operas based on Czech folk legends, so this quartet in A-flat Major proved to be the last he completed.

Its premiere performance took place in Prague on today’s date in 1896, given by the famous Rosé Quartet of Vienna, whose 1st violinist was Arnold Rosé, the concert master of the Vienna Philharmonic in those days.

From the first millennium of the Common Era to the present day, the Mass have been chanted and sung to music both simple and complex. Most Mass settings are in the original Latin, since that liturgical language, after so many centuries, has the advantage of being very familiar and eminently suitable for singing.

On today's date in 2010, the Kansas City Chorale gave the premiere of a brand-new "Mass for Double Choir" by the American composer René Clausen.

Now, Clausen is an established and well-regarded composer of choral works and for some 25 years has been the director of the renowned Choir of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. But even so, writing a Mass can be a daunting task, and Clausen's "Mass for Double Choir" was his first such attempt.

"Let's say it was a new challenge to set a text which has historically been set probably more than any other," says Clausen. "When composing choral music, I tend to be rather text-content driven, nearly always attempting to express the meaning and mood of the words. In the longer movements of the Mass, especially the Credo, it was challenging to express all the text, yet keep the music structurally integrated and proportioned."

René Clausen's new "Mass for Double Choir" was well-received at its American premiere, and subsequently recorded by the Kansas City Chorale for the British Chandos label. That recording won three Grammy Awards in 2013, including one for "Best Choral Performance."

On this day in 1904, in Cologne, Germany, Gustav Mahler conducted the first performance of his Fifth Symphony. It was not a success. Applause was light, with loud hissing from some in the audience. Even Mahler's wife, Alma, complained so much about the orchestration after the first rehearsals that Mahler kept tinkering with the score until the very last year of his life. Despite this inauspicious beginning, today Mahler's Fifth has become a popular showpiece for virtuoso symphony orchestras around the world. The symphony's slow movement, marked Adagietto, is supposedly a musical love letter to his wife, Alma, and has become one of Mahler's best-loved pieces. The American composer Jerome Moross also had a symphony premiered on today's date. The year was 1943, Moross was 30 years old, and Sir Thomas Beecham conducted the Seattle Symphony. Unlike Mahler, Moross wrote only ONE symphony, and the slow movement of his was inspired by the American hobo tune "The Midnight Special." Jerome Moross is perhaps better known for his work in Hollywood. His 1958 score for "The Big Country" was nominated for an Academy Award. Moross also wrote the music for "Wagon Train," a popular TV Western series. As Moross once said: "a composer must reflect his landscape and mine is the landscape of America. I don't do it consciously, it is simply the only way I can write."

On this date in 1831, the 21-year old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a concert in Munich consisting entirely of his own works – a concert that included the premiere performance of his Piano Concerto in G Minor, with its composer as the soloist.

Mendelssohn was in high spirits and wrote these lines to family:

"It is a glorious feeling to waken in the morning and to know that you are going to write the score of a grand allegro with all sorts of instruments and various oboes and trumpets, while bright weather holds out the hope of a cheering, long walk in the afternoon. On the evening of the October 17th at half-past six, think of me, for then I will dash off with thirty violins and two sets of wind instruments. The first part closes with my new concerto in G minor. Every morning I have to write, correct and score till one o'clock, when I go to Scheidel's coffee house in Kaufinger Gasse, where I know each face by heart and find the same people every day in the same position: two playing chess, three looking on, five reading the newspapers, six eating their dinner — with me making up the seventh."

Unfortunately for posterity, Mendelssohn never said if he recognized any of that coffeehouse crowd sitting in the audience for the performance of his new concerto!

On today's date in 1988, a new chamber work for viola and piano by Minnesota composer Stephen Paulus received its premiere performance in that state. Entitled "Five for the Flowers near the River," it was written for violist Cynthia Phelps, who was then principal violist with the Minnesota Orchestra, but who now holds that post with the New York Philharmonic.

The work's title was inspired by a poem of the 8th century Chinese poet Tu Fu that Paulus had read in translation. "The movement titles are phrases taken from various sections of the poem," said Paulus. "My intent was to create something colorful and evocative, romantic, and also technically challenging. This poem about flowers provided the perfect phrases to conjure up both images and emotions."

The opening movement, for example, is entitled "The riverside flowers are driving me crazy," and the last, "You flowers have pity on a white-haired man."

In addition to a body of chamber works, Paulus has written orchestral scores, operas, and a sizeable body of choral pieces, large and small, that have proven especially successful, and many of these are collaborations inspired by poets from our own time.

One choral work by Paulus, “Pilgrim Jesus,” setting a text by Kevin Crossley-Holland, was premiered during the 1996 “Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols” BBC live broadcast from King’s College Chapel in England, and marked the first time that an American composer had been commissioned to contribute a new carol to that famous Christmastime service.