Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Have you ever wondered what exactly goes on behind the scenes putting together an opera? Have you ever asked yourself how a director make decisions on how to interpret the libretto of an opera? Why do some productions look so completely different to others? What is "regie theater" and why it is so controversial? Well, all of these questions and more are answered by my guest today, the fantastic director, performer, and writer Tabatha McFadyen, who takes us through the process of directing an opera from first commission to first performance, a process that can take a few years of work! This was a fascinating conversationa and I myself learned a lot from it. Join us!

Clara Schumann, without a doubt, was one of the greatest pianists of all time. Schumann's playing didn't just leave critics and audiences in raptures, it also left other composers amazed that their music could sound so beautiful. Liszt called her the Priestess of the Piano, Chopin adored her playing, and Mendelssohn brought her over and over again to Leipzig to play concerts with the Gewandhaus orchestra. She toured practically her entire life while raising a family of 8 children, and taking care of her husband Robert, who dealt with a series of mental illnesses that ended in his tragic and untimely death. Simply put, Clara Schumann was a legend in her time. She was the first pianist to perform entire concertos and recital programs by memory, the first pianist to devote her work to both contemporary composers AND composers of the past, bringing Bach onto the recital stage. And on and on and on. But today I'm not going to focusing too much on Clara Schumann the pianist. I won't be mentioning Brahms or Robert Schumann all that much either, except in biographical details. That's because the focus of the show today is on Clara Schumann's compositions. She only published 23 pieces during her life, a result of many factors, but what we do have of her work shows a brilliant and underrated compositional talent. So today I'll tell you about Clara Schumann's turbulent and fascinating life story, and then take you through a few of her most wonderful pieces, including the piano trio and the 3 romances for violin and piano. We'll also talk about why her body of work is so small, and why what we have of her music is so precious. Join us!

Stefan Dohr is one of the greatest french horn players in the world today. He has been the Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world's greatest orchestras, since 1993. In this really fun interview, Stefan and I talked about how he switched to the horn after starting out on the viola, his most memorable performances, what's it like to actually play in the Berlin Philharmonic, how to blend sound between the different sections of the orchestra, and much much more. Stefan is one of the most engaging and fascinating musicians out there so I think you'll get a lot out of this conversation. Join us!

Brahms was only 20 years old when Robert Schumann wrote his famous Neue Bahnen(New Paths) article that proclaimed Brahms as the future of music and the heir of Beethoven. Beethoven had only been dead for 26 years at this point, and his shadow still loomed large over every single composer living in Germany, and beyond. Brahms knew that the most concrete way he would be compared with Beethoven would be through a symphony, and so…he studiously avoided writing one. It's not like he didn't try. Brahms began sketching symphonies only one year after the Neue Bahnen article, but he kept revising the sketches, or more often, burning them as inferior products. This would go on for 23 more years, until 1876. Brahms was 43 when he finally completed his first symphony, and it was worth the wait. What Brahms came up with would inspire symphonists to this day, and would carry on the tradition that Beethoven laid out with both a respectful and loving look back into the past, with a clear eye forwards into the future. Today we'll dissect this piece in detail, taking it down to its foundational elements in order to see how Brahms created this masterpiece of a first symphony. Join us!

Just one year before Debussy wrote his legendary Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, he completed another groundbreaking work. It was a string quartet, which he expected to be the first of many. But in the end, it would be the only one he would ever write. If you aren't familiar with Debussy's music, this quartet might be the perfect place to start. In the string quartet, Debussy mastered for the first time many of the things that would mark his later orchestral masterpieces, like La Mer, Images, and of course the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. It is full of the virtuosity and brilliance of a young composer, the experimentation of one of the true radicals of his time, and the sensual beauty from a composer who said that music should exist above all to give pleasure to the listener. Today I'll take you through the piece, discussing Debussy's Symbolist, NOT impressionist influences, his Brahmsian simultaneous embrace and destruction of musical form, and the vitality that carries you straight through one of the great string quartets of all time. Join us!

Martin Fröst very well may be the greatest living clarinetist. His brilliant sound, feats of virtuosity, eclectic taste, and amazing performing ability has made him a superstar in the classical music world. I recently worked with Martin in Spain and a month later we had time to sit down and record a conversation at his home in Stockholm. This was a fascinating and wide ranging conversation talking about Martin's early experiences with the clarinet, his view on concert programming and how classical music could change, and his inspiring look at his new venture in conducting. I had such a great time in this chat and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. Join us!

By as early as 1909, composers like Mahler knew that tonality was reaching its breaking point, and composers like Debussy were experimenting with colors and ideas a composer like Brahms wouldn't have dreamed were possible. Strauss was shocking the world in his own right with his erotic and disturbing opera Salome. Mirroring the roiling tensions all over the world, music was pushing and stretching at its boundaries in ways that it simply hadn't before. The years from 1900-1914 were a powder keg for the world and also for music, and you could argue that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was the musical version of the explosion of that powder keg. And it still has a profound impact on music today. So as we go through Part II of the Rite of Spring, The Sacrifice - the narrative section of the piece - we'll talk a little bit more about the riot that took place at its premiere, but also the reactions to the piece throughout the 20th century. We'll also look at the influence the piece had on composers from all across the musical spectrum. In just 30 minutes Stravinsky changed the world of music forever and it still causes controversy today. I once was at a performance of the Rite where two elderly patrons of the symphony sat behind me. As one particularly violent section of the piece blasted away, I heard one of them lean over to the other and say, "If they keep playing this modern music all the time, I'm cancelling my subscription." This took place more than a 100 years after the premiere. How does a piece remain modern for so long? Are there any other parallels in musical history? And how does Stravinsky build a narrative that slowly builds in intensity all the way to the sacrifice of the young girl and the beginning of spring? Join us!

The most famous thing about Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is the riot that took place at its premiere. Perhaps its overcompensating for classical music's reputation for being a bit stuffy, but musicians and musicologists LOVE talking about the riot at the Rite of Spring, and I'm no exception. But you might be surprised to know that the Rite Riot was by no means the only disturbance at a classical concert. There are myriad stories of chaos at concerts throughout musical history, but none of them are as famous as what happened on May 29th, 1913. We'll talk about the riot, why it happened, and its aftermath. We'll also discuss this groundbreaking piece, which was revolutionary in almost every way, while being more grounded in the past than you might think. As the great writer Tom Service says, "there's nothing so old as a musical revolution." Join us this week for part 1, the Adoration of the Earth!

If you listened to my show last week about Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird, you know that Stravinsky's life was never the same after the premiere of the ballet in 1910. Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes and Stravinsky's greatest collaborator, said just before the premiere, "this man is on the eve of celebrity." Diaghilev was absolutely right, as The Firebird made Stravinsky a Parisian household name practically overnight. Of course, immediately everyone wanted to know what was next. Stravinsky did too, and he was thinking that he needed to stretch himself even more, as even though the Firebird had caused a sensation, he still felt that it was too indebted to his teachers of the past like Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov and other Russian greats like Borodin or Mussorgsky. At first, Stravinsky dreamed of a pagan Rite, but quickly he changed course, wanting to write something that was NOT ballet music, and in fact would be a concerto for Piano and Orchestra. But instead of just a straight ahead abstract piece, Stravinsky had yet another story in mind. This time it was this: "In composing the music, I had in mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet." Diaghilev visited Stravinsky in Lausanne Switzerland expecting to hear more about the pagan rituals Stravinsky had been so excited about, but instead Stravinsky played him this strange piano concerto. But Digahliev, ever the visionary, saw the potential in this story and in this music for dance as well, and convinced Stravinsky to turn the piano concerto into a ballet, and Petrushka was born. Within a few months, Petrushka was written, performed, and was yet another sensation. Today, we'll talk all about the brilliant music that Stravinsky composed for the ballet, the integration of choreography and music, and the radical changes that this music heralded for the western music world.

In 1906, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev created a sensation in Paris with an exhibition of Russian Art. This was the first time a major showing of Russian art had appeared in Paris, and from this point forward, the city was obsessed with Russian art, literature, and music. Diaghilev, ever the promoter, then put together the Ballets Russes, the Russian Ballet, in 1909, a company based in Paris that performed ballets composed, choreographed, and danced, by Russians. Over the next 20 years, the Ballets Russes became one the most influential and successful ballet companies of the entire 20th century, and a young composer that Diaghilev plucked from obscurity named Igor Stravinsky had a lot to do with their success. The first season of the Ballet Russes relied on the big names of Russian music, like Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, but Diaghilev was always restlessly searching for something new. For many years, Diaghilev had wanted to bring not only new Russian art, but also new Russian music to the West, and now he had found the perfect combination - Diaghilev brought together the Russian artist and writer Alexandre Benoit and the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine to create a Russian nationalistic ballet based on Russian folk tales and mythology. He then took a risk, giving the commission for the music to Igor Stravinsky. The result? The Firebird, a ballet that provoked an ecstatic reaction, a score that would propel Stravinsky to worldwide popularity, 3 different orchestral suites played almost every year by orchestras all over the world, and a 19 year collaboration and friendship between Stravinsky and Diaghilev which only ended in Diaghilev's death and resulted in 8 original ballets, including The Rite of Spring and Petrushka. But, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. All of this had to start somewhere, so lets explore the Firebird, in all of its different versions and orchestrations, along with the folk tales and stories that go along with it. Join us!

This February, I have the great honor of joining the Indianapolis Symphony for the North American premiere of Pavel Haas' remarkable unfinished symphony. Pavel Haas, a Czech Jewish composer, wrote the existing music for his symphony between 1940 and 1941 before his deportation to the Terezin ghetto/concentration camp. He was a full participant in the well known cultural activities of the camp, but was unable to complete the symphony before he was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. What Haas did manage to complete is not just a piece that is worth hearing as a historical curiosity, but is one of the towering testaments of both the time in which it was written, and of the unique and innovative Czech symphonic tradition. We are left with 1 fully completed movement, one fully sketched movement, and a "torso" of a third movement. The symphony was completed by the Czech composer Zdenek Zouhar after World War II. The story of Haas' death, which we will learn about on the show today is, of course, devastating. Hearing his music reminds all of us of the individual voices that we have lost. The voices of the 6 million Jews, and 6 million others whom the Nazis murdered. But this music also reminds us of the proof that Pavel Haas lived. Haas was one of the truly unique composers of the 20th century, and while his tragic story cannot be detached from his music, the music itself transcends its time and acquires the universality of all great music. It Is truly an honor to be bringing this music to the North American stage for the first time, and at a time of rising Anti-Semitism around the world, I hope that his story, his music, and his voice, will reach far and wide. Join me to learn about this remarkable work.

Ask a non-classical music fan to name a piece of classical music. If they don't say Beethoven 5, or the Ode to Joy, they probably will say The Four Seasons. They might not know that it was written by Vivaldi, but the Four Seasons are a set of pieces that have made that leap into popular culture in a way that almost no other classical composition has. The Four Seasons have been remixed, reimagined, rearranged, and recycled so many times that most classical musicians barely suppress an eye roll when they see them programmed or hear them mentioned. For some classical musicians, especially the ones that disdain anything to do with pop culture, the Four Seasons represent kitsch in classical music, an overplayed and overrated set of violin concertos that could easily be put away forever. But that's a huge mistake on our part. For me, the Four Seasons are a masterpiece from a criminally underrated composer. They show a remarkable level of creativity, innovation, and ingenuity, and when you strip back the layers of accumulated traditions, all the remixes and "improvements" of them, you're left with pieces that are way way way ahead of their time, and as exciting and fresh to listen to as they must have been when Vivaldi first wrote them. So today I'm going to take you through the Four Seasons - we'll talk about Vivaldi's place in musical history, program music and what that meant in Vivaldi's time, and how music can portray nature. And I'll try to convince any skeptical listeners out there that these pieces, far from being overplayed cliches, are actually underplayed, at least in their original form. Join us! Recording: Janine Jansen with Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Link to video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzE-kVadtNw

You might be thinking, "Why on earth would anyone want to devote an entire podcast to etudes?" For most instrumentalists, etudes are the bane of our existence. They are studies, meant to develop technique on an instrument. Etudes are an essential part of any instrumentalists work, but they had never been known for their musical content. As a violinist, I had practiced dozens of etudes by Kreutzer, Rodé, Dancla, Sevcik, Schraideck, Kayser, Mazas, and more, lamenting the day I chose the violin as my instrument. But pianists have the same dreaded names, like Czerny for example. Chopin changed all of that. Chopin was the first composer to integrate musical content into his etudes, which meant that Chopin's etudes were both extremely difficult technical exercises, but they also were musically interesting enough to be performed live. LIke everything Chopin did on the piano, this was revolutionary, and Chopin's 27 etudes have been part of the piano repertoire ever since. We'll discuss some of these etudes today, along with the nature of virtuosity itself. We'll also spend a lot of time talking about Leopold Godowsky. Leopold Godowsky is not a name you've probably heard very often. But he was one of the great pianists of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with legions of admirers including legendary pianists like Josef Hoffman, Arthur Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Claudio Arrau, and the composer Ferrucio Busoni. Godowsky's pianistic gifts were well known, but what about his compositional ones? Well, to speak of one is to speak of the other. During the 1890s, when Godowsky was in his late 20s, he began making arrangements of famous piano works of Chopin and other composers music. Over the next 20 years, he became engrossed with Chopin's legendary etudes, or studies, and began writing his own arrangements of them. Now Chopin's etudes are extremely difficult just on their own, but Godowsky's studies are on another level of difficulty. In fact, Godowsky's transcriptions are so difficult that many pianists don't even dare to play them, though some, like the great Marc-Andre Hamelin, have made them an integral part of their repertoire. So today on the show, we'll take a look at some of the studies on Chopin's etudes, analyzing both the original Chopin etudes and then the changes that Godowsky makes to them. This will be a show as much about Chopin as it is about Godowsky, because you can't understand Godowsky's achievement without understanding the Chopin first. Join us!

In the late summer or early autumn of 1828, Schubert completed an extraordinary work, his String Quintet in C Major. 6 weeks later, he was dead. Nowadays this piece is considered to be one of the most sublime 50 minutes to an hour that exists in all of music. But when Schubert completed this quintet, he sent a letter to the publisher Heinrich Albert Probst, to ask him to publish it. Schubert wrote: 'Among other things, I have composed three sonatas for piano solo, which I should like to dedicate to Hummel. I have also set several poems by Heine of Hamburg, which went down extraordinarily well here, and finally have completed a Quintet for 2 violins, 1 viola and 2 violoncellos. I have played the sonatas in several places, to much applause, but the Quintet will only be tried out in the coming days. If any of these compositions are perhaps suitable for you, let me know.' The quintet was ignored by Probst, and we don't know if Schubert ever heard that rehearsal of his quintet. When Schubert died, it was utterly forgotten until 1850, over 20 years after Schubert had put these notes down on paper. The well known at the time Hellmesberger quartet discovered the quintet, began performing it, and finally, in 1853, the piece was published for the very first time. Slowly, as so many great works of art do, it caught on, until today it is one of the most beloved works in the entire Western Classical music universe. But it's not an easy piece to talk, or to write, about. Long associated with Schubert's impending death, though we have no evidence that he knew he was dying when he wrote the piece, it is often seen as a work full of shadows and shades, despite its C Major key and often ebullient character. Writers, thinkers, and podcasters I should add, have often found it difficult to put their finger on the fundamental character of this remarkable piece, which I actually find to be an asset, not a problem to be solved. Schubert's music is so beautiful because it speaks to everyone in a different way. Unlike Beethoven, who grabbed you and shook you and told you to listen to what he had to say, Schubert invites us in, has us sit down for while, and lets us take part in his remarkably complex emotional world. Today we'll explore why Schubert wrote a string quintet at all, how he uses that extra cello in such beautiful ways, Schubert's sense of melody, his expansive scope, and so much more. Join us!

Film music began as a solution to a problem. Early film projectors were really loud, therefore something was needed to cover up all the noise. In addition, silent movies apparently seemed a bit awkward without any musical accompaniment. Enter, usually, a pianist, who would improvise musical accompaniments to the events on the screen. None other than Dmitri Shostakovich got his first job as a cinema pianist, honing his improvisatory skills, and sometimes receiving cat calls and boos for his fantasy filled musings that tended to stray away from the action on the screen. Music in the silent film era had to help the audience in pointing out important moments to the audience, enhancing the emotional effects of the story, and most importantly, it had to give a certain musical line to every character, giving to them the emotional depth that the audience couldn't get since they weren't going to hear their voice. To do this, early film composers turned to the idea of the Leitmotif, an idea developed by the opera composer Richard Wagner. This idea would take hold even once "talkies" took over the screen, with composers such as Max Steiner, Charlie Chaplin, and others setting the stage for a century of brilliant music, by composers like Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Dmitri Shostakovich, Rachel Portman, Hans Zimmer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Christopher Willis, and dozens and dozens more. Today on the show we'll talk about this development of film music, and also hear some of the greatest and most recognizable film music ever written. We'll also talk about why film music is sometimes looked down upon in the classical music world, and how we might begin to change that perception. Join us!

Along with Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana, Leos Janacek is known as one of the three great Czech composers. He was born in Moravia, part of the Austrian Empire at the time, and became passionately interested in studying the folk music of his Moravian culture. After World War I, when the empire collapsed and Moravia became incorporated into the new country of Czechoslovakia, those nationalistic sentiments only increased, and Janacek was the perfect person to express those feelings through his music, seeing as his interest in the folk music of his homeland had been a lifelong passion for him. Enter the Sinfonietta, written in 1926, commissioned by none other than a Gymnastics festival! A sinfonietta is usually a smaller scale piece than a symphony, shorter, with a lighter orchestration and a lighter touch. But Janacek was always a rebel, and his Sinfonietta is a symphony in all but name, featuring an absolutely massive brass section that lustily performs the nationliaistic fanfares that Janacek gleefully adds to the music. The Sinfonietta is an expression of patriotic love for Janacek's homeland, but it is also a piece that shows off so many of the things that make Janacek such a unique and underrated composer, his love of short fragmented melodies, his shocks and surprises, his innovative use of orchestration, and more. If you're not familiar with Janacek's music, the Sinfonietta is the perfect entry point, so come join us on this Patreon-sponsored episode!

The center of Western Classical Music, ever since the time of Bach, has been modern-day Germany and Austria. You can trace a line from Bach, to Haydn to Mozart to Beethoven to Schubert to Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner, and finally to Mahler. But why does that line stop in 1911, the year of Mahler's death? Part of the answer is the increasing influence of composers from outside the Austro-German canon, something that has enriched Western Classical music to this day. There was also World War I getting in the way. But after the war, one could have expected that this line would continue again. The 1920's in Germany and the rest of Europe were a time of radical experimentation, a flowering of ideas, a sort of wild ecstasy of innovation across all the arts. So why don't we hear of these Austro-German experimenters and innovators anymore? Because of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and their Entartete, or Degenerate music. Hitler's worst crime was by no means his suppression of dozens of German, Austrian, and Eastern European composers, but it is a fact all the same that from the end of World War I until 1933, classical music in Germany and Eastern Europe(especially Czechoslovakia), was flourishing, with composers such as Zemlinsky, Krenek, Korngold, Schreker, Schulhoff, Haas, Krasa, and Ullmann taking up the mantle of the giants of the past and hoisting it upon themselves to carry it forward. The Nazis silenced, exiled, or killed off many of these musicians during the twelve years of 1933-1945, and those voices are forever lost, but the music they wrote before, during the War and the Holocaust, and after it, some of it masterpieces quite on the level of their predecessors, has been preserved. So why then are these composers not better known? I've chosen 12 composers, all of whom were writing music at the highest level. Some of them may be familiar to you, but many probably won't be. And through all of their trials and tribulations, one of the things I want to emphasize throughout these stories, even the bleakest ones, is that so many of them found the will to be able to compose this heart-rending, beautiful, and often optimistic music all as they witnessed unimaginable horrors. It may seem empty when the end for many of these artists was so horrific, but these compositions and the men and women who were behind them are a true testament to the resilience of the human spirit. These artists created a life for their friends, neighbors, and fellow inmates in concentration camps. They wrote music they knew would almost certainly not be heard in their lifetimes, from an urge that could not be destroyed, even by gas chambers. Join us to learn about them this week.

David Krauss is the Principal Trumpet of the Met Opera orchestra, and in this conversation, we talked about his beginnings on the trumpet, the differences between playing in a symphonic orchestra vs. an opera orchestra, how to manage the vast distances between singers, the conductor, the orchestra, and the brass section, the specific skills an opera orchestra player has to have, and some funny/terrifying stories about on stage moments we both would rather forget! We also talked about David's podcast, Speaking Soundly. This was a really fun conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Note: This episode will be a lot more enjoyable if you listen to Part 1 first! As we turn towards the final three quartets of the set, we'll see a lot of the same characteristics of the first 3; a perfect classical era proportionality, strong influences from Haydn and Mozart, and that perfect blend of vividly drawn but just very slightly restrained characters that marks Beethoven's early period. But we also will see something else. We will see C Minor, Beethoven's favorite key to depict drama and anxiety, we will see music that is almost impossibly charming and Mozartian coming from a composer as irascible as Beethoven, and then we will arrive at Op. 18 No. 6, perhaps the most emotionally complex and forward looking of the 6 Op. 18 quartets. We'll take our same birds eye view of each of these quartets, as we did last week, but I will also do two more deep dives. We'll take apart the first movement of Op. 18 No. 4, and the last movement of Op. 18 No. 6, which is the movement that for many is the highlight of these quartets. Along the way, we'll enjoy all of the quirky details of these three mini masterpieces, and see how Beethoven was starting to break the mold and set out onto his own path, one note at a time. PS: All recordings used on the show for the last two weeks were done by The Cleveland Quartet - recordings of the complete quartets are available at clevelandquartet.com

In 1798, Beethoven, all of 28 years old, was about to begin a project that would take him to the last days of his life, a project that would result in some of the most far-reaching, most cosmic, most life-affirming, most dramatic, and simply put, some of the greatest music he, or anyone else, ever wrote. This project that Beethoven was beginning was his first set of string quartets. Beethoven wrote/published 16 string quartets during his life, and they are both a superhuman achievement and yet also a testament to the ability of a single person to create music of vast complexity and the deepest of emotions, all for just 4 musicians. To really understand Beethoven's quartets, and his achievements with them as he progressed through his life, we have to start at the beginning. Beethoven was very rarely in the shadow of anyone during his life, but when it came to the string quartet, Beethoven still felt very much indebted to two of his colleagues, Haydn and Mozart. Haydn had essentially invented the genre of the string quartet, and by 1798 was beginning the massive project of cataloguing and writing out his 68 string quartets. Mozart had died only 7 years earlier, leaving us with some of the most pristine and gorgeous entries in this still relatively new at the time genre of instrumentation. Beethoven's music is often separated in to early, middle, and late periods, and these string quartets are always placed into the early period, which makes sense considering his later works, but also belies the fact that Beethoven had already accomplished quite a bit by the time he turned 30! It's safe to say that these pieces come near the end of this early period, where Beethoven was still working out how to embrace the classical traditions that he admired so much in composers like Mozart and Haydn, while also finding his own path as the creator of brand new traditions, smashing the rule book along the way. So this week, I wanted to take you through an overview of these amazing works. We'll talk about the genre of the string quartet itself, what Haydn and Mozart had essentially codified when Beethoven wrote his Op. 18s, and of course, what Beethoven did with this genre, even at this early stage, which is often absolutely astonishing in its creativity, intensity, and just plain excitement.

In almost every one of the past shows I've done about Shostakovich, the name Joseph Stalin is mentioned almost as much as the name Dmitri Shostakovich, and of course, there's a good reason for that. Shostakovich's life and music was inextricably linked to the Soviet dictator, and Shostakovich, like millions of Soviet citizens, lived in fear of the Stalin regime, which exiled, imprisoned, or murdered so many of Shostakovich's friends and even some family members. Post his 1936 denunciation, Shostakovich's music completely changed. Moving away from the radical experimentation he had attempted with his doomed opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, he adopted a slightly more conservative style, which he hoped would keep him in good stead with the authorities. But the piece I'm going to tell you about today, his monumental first violin concerto, is a bit different. It was written just after World War II, between 1947 and 1948. And yet, it was not performed until 8 years later. Shostakovich himself withdrew the work and kept it "in the drawer" along with his 4th string quartet and his song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. When the piece was finally performed by its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, it was a massive success, and it remains one of the best ways to "get into" Shostakovich's music. It is a huge work, in 4 grand movements, and Shostkaocvich himself described it as a "symphony for violin solo." It features all of the qualities that make Shostakovich's music so exciting, powerful, heartbreaking, and intense, while also allowing the listener, for the most part, to remove politics from the equation. While there are certainly encoded messages in the piece, one of which we'll get into in detail, this is a piece that is as close to pure musical expression as any of Shostakovich's post 1936 works, and so today I won't be mentioning Stalin all that much, I won't be mentioning the Soviet government every other sentence, and instead, we'll explore what makes this concerto so fantastic, so emotionally powerful, and so rousingly exciting. Join us!

Everyone knows Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Even if United Airlines hadn't made the piece ubiquitous, it seems like the one piece of classical music almost everyone knows besides the beginning of Beethoven's 5th symphony is Rhapsody in Blue. But did you know that Gershwin wrote a second rhapsody for piano and orchestra? We know Shostakovich's later works for their intensity, drama, and depth, but did you know that Shostakovich was a completely different composer when he was a young man? That he wrote funny, sarcastic, and wildly experimental music? How about Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and his Battalia a 10? Or Ethel Smyth's string quintet? Or the music of Teresa Carreno? Leonard Bernstein used to talk about the infinite variety of classical music because there's simply an endless treasure trove of great and often totally unknown classical music out there. So today, I want to take you on a bit of an archeological expedition, exploring 10 pieces you've (probably) never heard of, but really have to listen to. My list includes some very recognizable names, including Ravel, Gershwin, and Shostakovich, but also some names you might know less well, like Anton Arensky, Milosz Magin, and Teresa Carreno. Join us and discover something new!

In 1929, the conductor Nicolas Slonimsky contacted the American composer Charles Ives about performing one of his works. This was a bit of a surprise for Ives, since he had a checkered reputation among musicians and audience members, if they even were familiar with his name at all. In fact, he was much more famous during his lifetime as an extremely successful insurance executive! Ives mostly composed in his spare time, and his music was mostly ignored or ridiculed as that of a person suffering from a crisis of mental health. Most of his music was never performed during his lifetime, and even today, he is thought of as a great but extremely eccentric composer, and orchestras and chamber ensembles often struggle to sell tickets if his name appears on the program. But for those who love Ives, there is an almost evangelical desire to spread his music to the world. I'm one of those people, and I'm finally fulfilling a pledge to myself to do a full show devoted to a single work of arguably the greatest and most under appreciated American composer of all time, Charles Ives. The piece I chose to talk about today is Three Places in New England, or the New England Symphony, a piece that is a perfect amalgam of what makes Ives such a spectacular composer - his radical innovations, his ahead of his time experiments, his humor, his humanity, his warmth, and the staggering creativity that marked all of Ives' great works. We'll start with a little biography of Ives in case you're not familiar with him, and then we'll dive into Three Places in New England, and by the end, I hope , if you're not already, that I will have converted you into an Ives fan for life! Join us!

In the mid 19th century, the way to make yourself famous in France as a composer was to write operas. From Cherubini, to Meyerbeer, to Bizet, to Berlioz, to Gounod, to Massenet, to Offenbach, to Saint Saens, to foreign composers who wrote specifically for the Paris Opera like Rossini, Verdi and others, if you wanted to be somebody, especially as a French composer, you wrote operas, and you wrote a lot of them. But one composer in France bucked the trend, and her name was Louise Farrenc. Farrenc never wrote an opera - instead she focused on chamber music, works for solo piano, and three symphonies that were in a firmly Germanic style. Writing in a style that was not en vogue in her home country, along with the obvious gender imbalances of the time, meant that you might expect that Farrenc was completely ignored during her life. But that's not the case. She had a highly successful career as a pianist, a pedagogue, and yes, as a composer too. But after her death, her music was largely forgotten. Bu in the last 15-20 years there has been a concerted effort at bringing Farrenc's music back to life, part of a larger movement to rediscover the work of composers who were unfairly maligned or treated during their lifetimes and after. One of Farrenc's greatest works, and the one we're going to be talking about today, is her 3rd symphony in G Minor. On the surface this is a piece in the mid-to-late German Romantic symphonic tradition, with lots of echoes of Mendelssohn and Schumann, but there's a lot more to it than that. So today on this Patreon sponsored episode, we'll discuss how Farrenc's music fit into French musical life, how a symphony was a still expected to sound in 1847, and of course, this dramatic and powerful symphony that is only now beginning to find its rightful place on stage. Join us!

In 1922 a review appeared in the French newspaper Le Figaro: "We cannot describe the cries of admiring joy let loose by an enthusiastic public. In the immense oeuvre of Camille Saint-Saëns, The Carnival of the Animals is certainly one of his magnificent masterpieces. From the first note to the last it is an uninterrupted outpouring of a spirit of the highest and noblest comedy. In every bar, at every point, there are unexpected and irresistible finds. Themes, whimsical ideas, instrumentation compete with buffoonery, grace and science. ... When he likes to joke, the master never forgets that he is the master." You would think that this review came after a triumphant performance for Saint-Saens, and that he basked in the glory of the major success of what would become perhaps his most well known work, the Carnival of the Animals. But it just wasn't the case. In fact, this review appeared after a performance of the piece given after Saint-Saens death, and there was a reason for that. Saint-Saens, after 3 private performances of the piece, forbade it from being performed publicly during his lifetime. Why? Well, he was concerned that this lighthearted piece would diminish his standing as a serious composer. Even in the mid 1880s when this piece was written, Saint-Saens began to evince the conservatism, musical and otherwise, that would mark his later career, to the point that he wanted Stravinsky declared insane and said this about Debussy: "We must at all costs bar the door of the Institut against a man capable of such atrocities; they should be put next to the cubist pictures." Why was Saint-Saens so opposed to modernism? Why was he so concerned with his reputation as a serious composer, to the point that he suppressed this wonderfully creative piece? And just what makes the Carnival of the Animals so fantastic and so much fun to listen to, as well as being so vivid in its portrayals of the animals it represents? Join us to find out!

Welcome to Season 9 of Sticky Notes! We're starting with a bang this season with Brahms' incomparable 4th symphony. This symphony takes the listener on a journey that unexpectedly ends in a legendarily dramatic and stormy way. What would compel a composer like Brahms to write an ending like this? Was it a requiem for his place in music? For Vienna? For Europe? Or was it the logical conclusion to a minor key bassline he stole from a Bach Cantata? This is the eternal question when it comes to Brahms - logic or emotion? Well, usually the answer is a bit of both, and today we're going to go through this remarkable piece with all of this in mind. Join us!

"I think Mozart just really loved people." - Jan Swafford. For the Season 8 Finale, I had the great pleasure of welcoming back Jan Swafford, the great writer on music, who has written a spectacular new biography of Mozart. In this conversation, we talked about who Mozart really was as a person, some of the myths that defined him during his lifetime and into the present day, and of course, the incomparable music that Mozart was able to create, sometimes on a whim or in a single afternoon. This is a conversation about a man who understood people perhaps better than almost any composer, and a musician who scraped and struggled during his life while achieving immortality through his creations. Please note that this will be the last episode of Season 8 and Season 9 will begin on September 8!

George Gershwin's story is like the story of so many American immigrants. His mother and father, Moishe and Rose Gershowitz, were Russian Jews who came to New York City in the 1890s looking for a better life and to escape persecution at home. Soon they became the Gershwines, and in 1898, Jacob Gershwine was born. Later on he changed his name to sound just a little bit more American, and the name George Gershwin was on its way to immortality. In just a few short years, the Gershowitz's had become the Gershwins, and the story of George Gershwin was beginning to be written. On today's show we'll talk about some of Gershwin's greatest works, including his Concerto in F, Rhapsody in Blue, and Porgy and Bess, but we'll also talk about the collision between Classical and Pop music, a Russian Jew imbibing the purely American form of Jazz, and Gershwin's place in the modern classical and jazz repertoire, and in America. Join us!

If you want to understand how a symphony works, look no further than the works of the Father of the symphony, Joseph Haydn. In 1790, a concert promoter and impresario named Johann Peter Solomon showed up un-announced at the Vienna home of the great composer Joseph Haydn. He immediately told Haydn: "I am Solomon from London and I have come to fetch you." What Salomon and Haydn were about to embark upon would be one of the greatest successes of both of their lives. Haydn would end up making 2 visits to London, presenting an adoring audience with 12 symphonies, almost all of which are still regularly performed today. But the most famous one is the one we're going to be talking about today, the 94th symphony, nicknamed "Surprise" or in the slightly drier German version: "the one with the Drumstroke." The piece is famous for this surprise, which is now so well known that it rarely surprises anyone, though we'll get into just how you might be able to do that in 2022. But the entire piece is a masterpiece in its own right, and so today we'll discuss all of the tricks and traps Haydn pulls with his audience, leading to one of the most enjoyable symphonies of his entire catalogue.

Derrick Skye is one of the most creative, innovative, and brilliant composers of our time. His orchestral work, Prisms, Cycles, and Leaps is a musical thrill ride spanning influences from literally all over the world, from West African Music, Balkan Folk Music, Hindustani Classical Music, all the way to Appalachan Folk harmonies. I had the great pleasure of talking my way through this piece with Derrick, exploring the mind-bogglingly complex rhythmic patterns, the melodic lines that blend cultures and harmonies, and the infectious joy of this unique piece. If you're not familiar wiith Derrick's music, trust me, take the time to get to know him and his music in this interview/analysis - you won't regret it!

There is one composer who I've never devoted a full show to that fills me with the same devotion and ecstasy as the people who claim that Wagner almost immediately dissolves them into tears. His music is widely played, but it has never been totally embraced by the wider classical music audience. There are a variety of reasons for this, but his uniquely 20th century language of tonality mixed with atonality mixed with something completely different from anyone who has ever written music makes it sometimes difficult to pin down his vast contribution to the world of music. His music is as deeply connected to his religious faith as any composer in history, and yes, that includes Bach. His music is as deeply connected to Nature as any composer who ever lived, and his music is tied directly to the colors he saw as he played and listened to it. His name is Olivier Messiaen, and he is one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. I wish I could describe to you the otherworldly feeling I get when I listen to his music, but for a very long time, I shied away from it. Perhaps the reason is that it's extremely hard to talk about Messiaen's musical outlook without talking about his religious faith. I'm a non-religious Jewish person, so the depths of devotion that Messiaen describes regularly as his inspirations were and are foreign to me. And yet, the first time I heard his L'Ascension, every single hair on my body seemed to stand on end. I was completely blown away by these ravishing harmonies, how light seemed to shine off of them, how Messiaen translated his religious devotion into sound. I've not talked about Messiaen's music on the show because it's not easy to grapple with, but I can't wait any longer. Today I'll tell you a bit about Messiaen's life, his upbringing, his musical and religious revelations, and then I'll discuss some of his greatest pieces using three frameworks - religion, nature and specifically birdsong, and color. Join us!

Bucolic. Sunny. Cheerful. Joyous. Folksy. Ebullient. Thrilling. These are all words that I found while researching Dvorak's 8th symphony. Dvorak's gift for writing the most gorgeous of melodies is on full display in his 8th symphony, a piece that has been charming listeners ever since its very first performances. It is, on its surface, an uncomplicated piece, bursting at the seams with melody after melody after melody, almost mirroring one of Brahms' greatest one-liners, where he referred to his summer country home as a place where melodies were so heavily present thatt one had to be careful to avoid tripping on them! The overriding characteristic of this 8th symphony is joy, from its childlike key of G Major, to its raucous use of folk music, and even its smiling through tears slow movement. Very often on this show I try to take pieces that are quite complicated and break them down for you to show you how to follow their twists and turns despite their complexities. But today, I'm going to do the opposite. Today, I'm going to take a piece that is, on its surface, quite simple, and I'm going to show you how this symphony is not quite as simple as it seems. It is a piece full of invention and of the scintillating energy of trying out new ideas. As Dvorak said, he would try to make this symphony "different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way." So today on the show we're going to talk about how this symphony is different from other symphonies, and also how Dvorak constructs his chains of melodies that add up to the joyful whole of this piece, though tinged with the melancholy that is almost always present with Dvorak. Join us!

How does a composer capture the spirit of a country, especially if it's not his native land? Mendelssohn, in his Italian Symphony, gives us one of the best examples of someone doing just that, giving us a tightly integrated, yet highly independent set of 4 snapshots from his travels all over Italy. And yet, despite the piece being called the Italian Symphony and being indelibly associated with the country, the symphony remains a relatively traditional 4 movement German classical symphony. What we hear then is a brilliant amalgamation of a symphony and a tone poem that is among the first of its kind. The symphony tells no story, has no narrative, and yet, when we finish the breathless Tarantella that ends the piece, we feel like we've been flicking through a photo album of Felix's vacation, smiling (mostly) all along the way. Today we'll talk all about how Mendelssohn builds this symphony and how each movement captures such a distinctive character, while remaining Mendelssohnian to its core - kind, warm-hearted, and full of bubbling energy. Join us!

Today I'm going to be talking about one piece, but in two different ways. I'm going to start today with an in-depth look at Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor, an early piece of his that reveals an incredible sense of drama, drive, and creativity. This is very different music than I've talked about before with Brahms as this is decidedly the work of a young composer, without all the burnished maturity of Brahms' later music. This is also a great opportunity to revisit the bedrock of the Classical and Early Romantic eras, Sonata Form, a form that makes so many pieces from those eras intelligible and clear. But I'm also going to be talking about another piece. Well, it's the same piece, but to some people, it sounds so completely different that it constitutes a completely new piece entirely. To some others, myself included, it almost constitutes an entirely new Brahms symphony. What I'm talking about is the composer Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahms's Piano Quartet for a massive orchestra, filling the stage with instruments that Brahms never would have even conceived of! You don't often think of Schoenberg and Brahms in the same breath, but Schoenberg was a devotee of Brahms' music, and often defended him against those who called him a crusty old conservative composer. But Schoenberg was still Schoenberg, and this arraangement of the quartet reflects that in a lot of ways. So along with an exploration of Sonata Form, I'll save a look at the Schoenberg arrangement for the end of th show, since this is a great chance to look at orchestration and how a composer takes a piece written for 4 people and transforms it into a piece for 100. So today we'll dive into this vast and complex piece, and along they way we'll visit Schoenberg's fascinating and sometimes downright wacky arrangement. Join us!

In 1964, the popular 20th century composer Luciano Berio was commissioned by Mills College in California to write a piece for voice and chamber orchestra. What Berio came up with is one of his most remarkably creative works, which is really saying something considering the innovative and constantly evolving way that he wrote music. Berio once said: "My links with folk music are often of an emotional character. When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery… I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realized: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music — a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient, popular music-making which is so close to everyday work and music." The words "thrill of discovery" are at the core of what makes the Folk Songs so wonderful and easy to listen to. They combine a modernist classical aesthetic with songs that are of such beauty that it is hard not be overwhelmed by them. Berio took 11 folk songs from 5 different regions of the world, from places as far away as the United States and Azerbaijan, and transformed them. He wrote: "I have given the songs a new rhythmic and harmonic interpretation: in a way, I have recomposed them. The instrumental part has an important function: it is meant to underline and comment on the expressive and cultural roots of each song. Such roots signify not only the ethnic origins of the songs but also the history of the authentic uses that have been made of them." Today on the show I'm going to take you through these 11 songs, going on a historical expedition to find some of their roots and to get as close to the original songs as I can, and then looking at how Berio re-worked these songs into this cycle that consistently stuns people with its beauty and creativity. If you've never heard these pieces before, get ready, because Berio will take you on a remarkable journey. Join us!

It's very easy to compare Sergei Prokofiev to Dmitri Shostakovich. They are the two most famous representatives of Soviet and Russian music of the 20th century, they lived around the same time, and their music even has some similarities, but at their core, you almost couldn't find more different people than Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Shostakovich was neurotic, nervous, and timid. Prokofiev was confident and cool. Shostakovich was tortured by the Soviet government, and while Prokofiev certainly had his runins with Stalin and his crones , his life wasn't so inextricably linked to the Soviet Union, besides the fact that he had the bad luck to die on the same day as Joseph Stalin, which made it so that there were no flowers available for his funeral. Prokofiev was able to travel, and see the world, generally without nearly as much interference as Shostakovich faced. These two lives are reflected in two very different musical approaches. Shostakovich's wartime symphonies are full of terror and violence, whlie Prokofiev wrote that his 5th symphony was a hymn to the human spirit. We don't know how much that reflects his true feelings, but its undeniable that there is a certain "optimism" to this symphony that both thrills and unsettles listeners to this day. It is also filled with traademark Prokofiev cynicism and sarcasm, and so we are left, as always, with a contradiction. What did Prokofiev mean with this symphony? Join us as we try to find out!

Imagine writing a concerto that prompted Beethoven to remark to a friend: "we'll never be able to write anything like that. Or a piece that prompted Brahms to call it: "a masterpiece of art, full of inspiration and ideas." Or had scholars and musicologists raving, saying things like: "not only the most sublime of the whole series but also one of the greatest pianoforte concertos ever composed" or "whatever value we put upon any single movement from the Mozart concertos, we shall find no work greater as a concerto than this K. 491, for Mozart never wrote a work whose parts were so surely those of 'one stupendous whole'." I could go on and on, but the simple end to this story is that Mozart's C Minor Piano Concerto has been considered one of the great achievements of humanity ever since it was premiered on either April 3rd of April 7th of 1786, performed by Mozart himself. While we don't know exactly how long it took Mozart to complete this concerto, it could not have taken more than a few months, and it came amidst him writing his 22nd and 23rd piano concerti, both masterpieces in their own right, and it was written just as Mozart was putting the finishing touches on his comic magnum opus, The Marriage of Figaro. It's almost a cliche at this point, but its one of those rare cliche's that really deserves to be repeated: If Mozart had written just one of those 4 pieces, his name would have been etched in history. Instead he was working on all 4 at the same time! Today, we're going to be talking about the astonishing harmonic language of the piece, it's skeletal manuscript, and how performers deal with the contradictions and quite frankly, missing pieces of this concerto. Join us!

Today I've got a pretty special show for you. It's set up in two parts, with the first part featuring an interview, and the second part will be a more typical Sticky Notes analysis of a specific piece. Why did I set up the show this way this week? Well, I had the opportunity a few months ago to work with an extraordinary scholar and musician, Dr. Samantha Ege, who is the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and is also one of the foremost scholars on the music of Florence Price. Florence Price is a composer who has been receiving a lot of attention over the last 5-7 years. As the first African American woman to have a major piece performed an orchestra, her first symphony was performed in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony, Price has become one of the most prominent figures in the revival of music written by Black composers as orchestras and performers not only in the US but all over the world attempt to diversify their programming. Price is part of a group of composers from the early twentieth century who were the first nationally successful Black composers. This group included luminaries such as William Grant Stiill, William Levi Dawson, and Nathaniel Dett, among others, and all of these composers have had their works rediscovered during this period, a truly exciting development that has brought a lot of neglected music back onto the concert stage. I've wanted to do a show devoted to Florence Price for a while, but when I got the chance to perform Florence Price's Piano Concerto in One Movement with Dr. Ege, I knew I had to ask her to come on the show to tell the incredible story of this wonderful American composer. So the first part of the show is devoted to an interview with Dr. Ege going through Price's background and talking about her writing style and approach to music. This was such a fun interview - Dr. Ege is a great teacher and I learned a ton about Price that I didn't know about beforehand. The second part of the show will be an analysis of one of Price's most rarely played, but in my opinion, one of her best, orchestral works, Ethiopia's Shadow in America. Join us!

Mahler once said this to Bruno Walter, his protege and great advocate of Mahler's works: "What one makes music from is still the whole—that is the feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering, human being" You could almost just stop there with the last movement of Mahler 9. This is music so full of feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering, but also of also acceptance and consolation, that words fail to describe its emotional impact. But as always with Mahler, this isn't merely an emotional outpouring, a dumping of his innermost feelings onto the audience. It is a superbly paced, beautifully written movement, and despite its 25 minute length, and very stable and slow tempo, the movement does the seemingly impossible and feels both endless and compact at the same time. So today, while of course we'll talk about the emotional content of the music, I want to focus a bit more on how Mahler writes this music to make it so effective, and how he finds a way to reach the peaks of expression and the epitome of using silence as music. And finally, we'll explore how and to whom Mahler says goodbye to at the end of this symphony, as everything fades away. Join us!

It's easy to forget that Mahler, for all of his ubiquitous success nowadays, was much better known as a conductor during his life than as a composer. He had basically one major success in his compositional career: a performance of his 8th symphony in Munich in 1910 that finally seemed to give him the approval he craved from the audience. But for much of his compositional life, Mahler was misunderstood. His symphonies were either too long, too dense, too confusing, too esoteric, too vulgar, too banal, lacking in sophistication, or had too MUCH sophistication - the list goes on and on. Mahler famously said in regards to his music that "my time will come" and it certainly has come, with regular performances of his music all around the world. But as we discuss the third movement of Mahler's 9th symphony today, I want to keep reminding you that Mahler was really not a popular man. Even as a conductor, he had bitter enemies that drove him out of his position as the Director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1907. As a person, he could charitably be described as difficult, with moments of kindness followed by bouts of stony silence or fierce rages. Mahler was a complicated man, and it's perhaps in this third movement that we can learn so much about this side of Mahler that doesn't get talked about as much - that bitter, sarcastic, nasty side of him that many choose to ignore, preferring to focus on the love and warmth that he instills into much of his music. In the third movement of his 9th symphony, Mahler seems to be letting out some of his rage and anger at the Viennese public, concerned in his mind only with intrigue and gossip, and those critics who trafficked in open Anti-Semitism in order to bring him down from his lofty perch. But amidst all of this, Mahler continually grasps for order throughout the movement, only to find it ripped away from him. This is the shortest movement of Mahler's 9th symphony, but it is also the most dense. So today, we'll talk about that bitter pill that is this movement, a movement that is nevertheless relentless in its search for beauty, form, and order. Join us!

Remember where we ended in the first movement of Mahler's 9th symphony? After a 27 minute farewell which touched on the two poles of rage and acceptance, while filling in every conceivable emotion in between, we ended in total peace, calm, and acceptance . There is a lot about this symphony that is traditional - it has four movements, it's tonal(for the most part), it uses(mostly) traditional forms, but there is one thing about the symphony which is extremely unusual: the fact that it is bookended by two slow movements. A traditional symphony takes the form of a moderately fast first movement, either a slow movement or a fast dance movement for the second movement, the same for the third(almost always the opposite of whatever the second movement was), and a fast last movement to send the crowd home happy. Mahler, using a form that he never used before, and would never be used again by any composer, writes a slow first movement, then 2 fast dance movements, followed by a slow final movement. It's a fascinating formal design, but one that presents a lot of problems to solve; how do you contrast the two middle dance movements? How do you create a sense of excitement when you've just finished a 27 minute slow movement which could easily be its own piece? And perhaps most importantly, how do you conceive of the arc of a 16 minute dance movement, one that seems almost shockingly simplistic in its basic harmony and melody. Well, Mahler finds a way through a combination of genuine joy, sarcasm, bitterness, and irony, emotions we will certainly be talking about as we take apart this second movement.

Two events, occurring on the same day, drove Mahler to the brink. His daughter Maria died at the age of just 4, and Mahler himself was diagnosed with a heart condition that would prove to be fatal. He became consumed even more so than he ever was before with the idea of death, the afterlife, and all the philosophical trials and travails that came with these thoughts. These ideas of death did not come only from his own sense of loss and grief; they were about his place in history, and how he would be remembered. The 9th symphony explores all of these questions in a remarkably powerful way. The symphony sets up two poles: acceptance and struggle, and then wavers between them for its duration, vacillating between desperately clinging to life, and accepting and letting go. Leonard Bernstein famously said that the symphonies' 4 movements represent 4 ways for Mahler to say farewell, but they could just as easily be 4 movements for Mahler to say he will be here forever. Join us today for part 1 to discuss the first movement of this monumental symphony!

Shostakovich is one of the easiest composers to do podcasts about because his life and his music is full of such incredible stories. But as easy as it is, it's also complicated. Shostakovich's music is sometimes heard as a musical history book, a testament, which it often is, but we should never lose sight of the fact that Shostakovich was a composer first, not a politician. So today we're going to be looking at the 4th quartet in two contexts, the historical and the musical, and then try to see how one works(or doesn't) with the other. How do you incorporate religion into music, and how do you handle the heavy burden that was laid down to you by masters of the String Quartet like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert? How do you write political music without getting in trouble with the authorities? How do you speak out against injustice when it can put you in grave danger? Shostakovich, as always, has the answers. Join us!

Barber's Adagio seems to access a deep well of sadness, heartache, passion, and nostalgia in the listener that is very difficult to explain. As dozens of commentators have noted, there is nothing in particular in the piece which is particularly remarkable. There are no great harmonic innovations, no formal surprises, nothing NEW, at all. In fact, the music was completely anachronistic for its time. Despite all of that, or perhaps because of it, Barber's Adagio has become perhaps the most well known piece of American classical music in the world. It became even more famous after its use in the Vietnam War Movie Platoon. It was played at the funeral of Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy, and was performed to an empty hall after the assassination of John F Kennedy. A deeply emotional performance of the piece was done at the Last Night of the Proms, a traditionally celebratory affair, on September 12th, 2001. Simply put, this piece has come to symbolize SADNESS in music. But would it surprise you to hear that the Barber Adagio for Strings wasn't originally for string orchestra at all? That it was the second movement of a string quartet, sandwiched by movements that were much more modernist and "forward-thinking" than its slow movement? Would it surprise you that sadness might never have been the intention of Barber in the piece? Well, let's take a closer look at Barber's Adagio this week - how the piece works, what originally surrounded it, it's different arrangements, and its tempo. Join us!

There are many reasons why Schubert's Unfinished Symphony remains a mystery to this day - the literally unfinished form, the unusual way of the symphony's emergencee into public consciousness, and probably most importantly, the character of the music itself, which seems to inhabit a different realm altogether, whether in its brooding first movement or the heavenly second movement. When Schubert's half-finished symphony was discovered, it had been sitting in a drawer of the minor composer Anselm Huttenbrenner for 43 years, unmissed and unheard by anyone. The score was discovered by the conductor Johann von Herbeck. Herbeck naturally considered the moment where he first held the score unforgettable, quickly organized a performance, and 37 years after Schubert's death, the Unfinished symphony was heard for the first time. But, the truth is that the fact that the symphony is unfinished isn't really that special. Composers started and failed to finish works all the time, whether they were songs, symphonies, operas, cantatas, or something else. Most of those pieces are either ignored or are regarded as interesting curiosities by none but the most hardcore classical music lovers. So why is this one different? Why do these two movements rank up there with Bach's Art of Fugue, Bruckner's 9th symphony, Mozart's Requiem and C Minor Mass, as pieces that are still performed today despite their unfinished nature. Today, we're going to find out. We'll explore the two existing movements of the symphony, take a look at the fragment of the third movement that Schubert started, stopped, and then tore out of the score, and also the speculative last movement, theorized by some enterprising musicologists. But all along, we'll marvel at Schubert's lyricism, his endless creativity, and the powerful character of this unique symphony. Join us!

Brahms' two piano concertos could not possibly be any more different. The first, written when Brahms was just 25, is dramatic, stormy, and impulsive. This makes sense seeing at it was written practically as a direct response to the attempted suicide of his friend and mentor Robert Schumann. The second, written 22 years later when Brahms was a seasoned and mature composer at the height of his abilities, was not, as far as we know, inspired by any specific event. It is a warm, almost sun-tanned piece, but it also does something that makes it both the perfect piece to analyze on a show like this, but also makes it a rather elusive one that takes some baking to really understand and appreciate. What Brahms does in the 2nd piano concerto is to distill everything that makes Brahms really Brahms into one 50 minute piece of music. There's continuous development, gorgeous melodic lines, contrasts of character, stern willful music immediately followed by tenderness, Hungarian music, light music - it's ALL there - but here's the key - it's not an events based piece. What I mean by that is that its not like Brahms moves from one character or personality trait to another like he's putting together mismatching clothes. Instead, he integrates all of these different facets of his music into the whole - one moment you are hearing stern and powerful music, and the next, almost without realizing, you are into some of the most tender music he ever wrote. This is the power but also the complexity of Brahms' 2nd piano concerto. Join us to learn all about it!

How do you orchestrate a painting? How do you take the detail and the visual imagery of a painting and translate that into something that is so vivid that even if you've never seen the painting before in your life, you can picture it as clearly as if it was right in front of you? Most people look at a painting for no longer than a minute or two at a museum, so how do you sustain that image over nearly 20 minutes of music? Well, to answer all of these questions, all you need to do is look at Rachmaninoff's brilliant tone poem, The Isle of the Dead, which he wrote in 1908. In 1907 Rachmaninoff saw a black and white reproduction of a painting by the Swiss artist Arnold Bocklin entitled The Isle fo the Dead. This painting had cause a storm of interest all across Europe. Vladimir Nabokov said that prints of the painting were found in every home of Berlin, Sigmund Freud owned a copy, as did Lenin. Bocklin painted 5 different version of the piece, but they all had the same theme - a desolate haunting image of a large rocky island, with a solitary boat with a coffin approaching it. It is said that the painting portrays the mythological river Styx, and even reproduced on the computer, it is a striking image. From that encounter, Rachmaninoff sat down and created one of his most underrated and enduring compositions, the masterful Isle of the Dead, which features a gigantic orchestra that very rarely shows off its full power, a rhythmic character that is both inevitable and unstable, and an unsettling and haunting theme that followed Rachmaninoff throughout his life, the Dies Irae. We're going to talk all about this brooding and mysterious piece on this Patreon sponsored episode this week - join us!

While the inspiration for the show today is likely obvious, I'm also very happy to get the chance to share this wonderful music with you, separate from the current horrors going on right now. Here's a little quiz for you - name a Ukrainian composer. Were you stumped? Well, so are many people by that question. Despite a long line of brilliant composers throughout history, the music of Ukrainian composers has not entered the standard repertoire, except if you consider the contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov. But Ukrainian music has a long and fascinating history, from the so called Big Three of the 18th and 19th centuries who were heavily influenced by the legendary Austro German composers but wrote in a highly unique style, to the nationalistic and folk inspired music of Lysenko, to the wild experimentation of Lyatoshinsky in the 20th century, all the way to the contemporary era and the post modern work of Silvestrov. Today on the show I'm going to take you through a history of Ukrainian classical music, and all along the way I'll share the stories and the music of 6 of the most important Ukrainian composers. You're going to hear some of the most fascinating and touching music around, and you're going to wonder how it's possible that you haven't heard this music before. Join us! Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqdwQ4eCTHM (Documentary on Ukrainian Composers by Natalya Pasichnyk)

In 1888, Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony was premiered. It was enthusiastically received by the audience, and by Tchaikovsky's friends. But Tchaikovsky's nemesis, the critics, were not so happy with the piece. One utterly tore apart the symphony, writing after a performance in Boston: "Of the Fifth Tchaikovsky Symphony one hardly knows what to say ... The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delirium tremens, raving, and above all, noise worse confounded!" Another wrote: "Tchaikovsky appears to be a victim of the epidemic of the Music of the Future, that in its hydrophobia, scorns logic, wallows in torpor, and time and again, collapses in dissonant convulsions. Of basic inspiration in these people, who present interest at most as pathological cases, there is very little indeed." Usually this is the moment where I quote Sibelius' brilliant: "no one ever built a statue to a critic" line, but for once, Tchaikovsky somewhat agreed with his critics. He wrote to his legendary patron Nadezhda von Meck: "I am convinced that this symphony is not a success. There is something so repellent about such excess, insincerity and artificiality." Though he later changed his mind, the last movement of the symphony was always problematic for Tchaikovsky, and its been problematic for many performers and audience members to this day. Is the ending a profound expression of triumph over fate? Or is it hackneyed, over the top, and as Tchaikovsky said, excessive? Perhaps it's the controversy over its ending, or perhaps something else, but ever since its premiere, Tchaikovsky's 5th has been one of the most dependable audience favourites around the world. Today I'm going to take you through the genesis and the composition of this wonderful and polarising symphony. Join us!

In 1902, the great French composer Gabriel Faure said this: "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different." Faure's requiem is part of a long tradition of master composers addressing death through Requiems. Mozart, Brahms, Verdi, Britten, Berlioz, Beethoven(to a certain extent), and many many other composers all tried their hands at the Requiem, some of them keeping to Requiem Mass traditions, and some striking out completely on their own. Most notably, Brahms barely followed the traditional Requiem mass at all, preferring to use his own favorite biblical texts. Faure was also a composer who followed his own beat throughout his life, and perhaps one of his best known works is his modest and humble Requiem, which omits the fire and brimstone of famous requiems like Verdi's, and focuses more on what he called the 'happy deliverance' of death. What results is a remarkably inward looking piece, with only 30 or so measures sung at the loudest possible dynamic. It's a piece that only lasts around 35 minutes, and was actually first performed as part of a liturgical funeral service. Faure's Requiem is music of mysticism and comfort, brilliantly conceived from start to finish in Faure's own unique way. We're going to talk a bit about Faure the man and the composer today, since it ties in so much to how he conceived of this requiem, and then of course, all about the Requiem itself on this Patreon sponsored episode. Join us!