Week of February 3, 2025 - Orchestral Heroes This week, Bill responds to a request from a listener in Philadelphia who wants to hear solo performances and concertos by various members of the symphony orchestra. Bill believes that orchestras are among humanity's greatest creations. The beautiful sounds produced by one hundred musicians blend artfully, allowing each instrumentalist to showcase their unique personality and spirit. He has created a playlist featuring solos by the clarinet, horn, oboe, violin, and even saxophone, all highlighting some of our favorite orchestral heroes. We will conclude the week with Ravel’s Boléro, where every instrument gets to shine.
Week of February 10, 2025 - It Was a Lover and His Lass We start every hour of this week with a "hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino" from the incidental music in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Bill rounds out each day with many different composers' works influenced by all aspects of love. These range from love songs in operas, Richard Wagner’s poetic chamber work Siegfried Idyll celebrating the birth of his son, to Edward Elgar’s Salut D’Amour. Music is truly the universal language of love!
Week of February 17, 2025 - Ports of Call, Part I Once while traveling by train across the Alps, Gustav Mahler turned to his friend, a fellow composer, and said, “Don’t bother looking at the view; I have already composed it.” For the next two weeks, Exploring Music will present sounds from composers' backyards and hear their journaling voyages to distant lands: from the bird calls in the Amazon jungle expressed by Brazilian composers, to the distant bells ringing as a composer approaches a safe harbor. Listen, for example, to Italian composer Ottorino Respighi's famous Pines of Rome, and then travel with him to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he wrote Brazilian Impressions, an orchestral suite with strange and beautiful sounds.
Week of February 24, 2025 - Ports of Call, Part II This week we continue traveling with composers around the world. Music from around the globe varies as much as languages do. Many of us can identify the country where a composition was written before we can name the composer who wrote it. You can’t separate the composer from his background. Listen to them express the sounds of their native land and paint musical pictures of their travels. We will hear the music of homesick George Gershwin in Paris, Charles Ives floating down the Housatonic River in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, and Ella Fitzgerald and her friends on the “A” train in New York City.
