If ABC can blow-out its annual broadcast of “The Ten Commandments” 25 days before Passover, I can reflect on Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “The Prophets,” which was always a staple of my Passover playlist over the decades I enjoyed doing a live radio air shift. The second of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s violin concertos was given its first performance at Carnegie Hall in 1933, with Jascha Heifetz the soloist and Arturo Toscanini on the podium. Its three movements are named for the Biblical figures Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah.

But nevermind the Passover association. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a composer for all seasons. His music is well-crafted, ingratiatingly tuneful, and a joy to listen to.

Furthermore, anyone who loves film music owes an incalculable debt to him. He wrote scores for some 200 movies (including “And Then There Were None,” with Barry Fitzgerald, and “The Loves of Carmen,” with Rita Hayworth), and as a teacher, his students included André Previn, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco was yet another refugee displaced by fascism in Europe who enriched the American cultural landscape. We can thank Toscanini for sponsoring his passage to the United States in 1939. He got out just in the nick of time. Already Italian Jewish citizens had been stripped of many basic human rights. Well before the imposition of Italian racial laws in 1938, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music had been banned from radio and public performances of his works had been cancelled.

Internationally, his works were embraced by top-flight musicians such as Heifetz, Andrés Segovia, and Gregor Piatigorsky.

The first piece of his I ever heard was the Guitar Concerto No. 1. I remember listening to it on the radio on my first drive to WWFM, the day before my job interview, in 1995, undertaken on a Sunday afternoon to be sure I knew the route from Philadelphia. There’s a lot for me wrapped up in this composer.

Thank you, and happy birthday, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco!

Violin Concerto No. 2 “The Prophets”

Segovia masterclass on the Guitar Concerto No. 1

Radio interview with Segovia and the composer

Toscanini conducts an adventurous program, including Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Overture to a Fairy Tale” (later known as the “Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture”)