Radio City Music Hall of the Air

Some American composers who were featured on the program included Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and Edgar Stillman Kelley.

[2] On October 8, 1939, the program presented the world premiere of Eugene Zador's opera Christopher Columbus; a work written by its Jewish composer while fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany by sailing across the Atlantic.

[7] On December 3, 1939, the program featured the United States premiere of Erich Ziesel's "Little Symphony"; a work whose four movements were each based on a different painting by the Austrian artist Roswitha Bitterlich.

[5] RCMH impresario Samuel Roxy was credited with discovering the American tenor Jan Peerce who became a regular performer on the program from its earliest broadcasts in 1932.

[11] In Rapée's 1945 obituary in The New York Times the paper stated that the pinnacle of his artistic success as a conductor was achieved on the occasion of the 500th broadcast of Radio City Music Hall of the Air program on April 12, 1942, with a masterful performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.