Week of July 7, 2025 - Invitation to the Dance II Experience five hours of beautiful music composed for dramatic performances, including stage plays, opera, and ballet. We begin with Jean-Baptiste Lully, an Italian-born French composer described by Bill as “the most ‘dancingest’ composer who ever lived.” Next, enjoy dance music from Stravinsky, Schubert, and even Beethoven! On Wednesday’s program, Bill will introduce his children’s favorite dance music, featuring Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite and The Wooden Prince. This week will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and a charming suite of dances from Manuel de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat.
Week of July 14, 2025 - Songs of Parting Adiós, adieu, sayonara, vale, zàijiàn — no turning back this week as Bill explores musical farewells. He features works ranging from Purcell’s "Sonata for Trumpet" to Bach’s “Capriccio,” a heartfelt goodbye to his eldest brother. Prokofiev’s ballet "Romeo and Juliet" includes a moving farewell from Romeo, where the mandolin cleverly sets the scene in Italy, and the saxophone expresses Romeo’s poignant departure. Kathleen Ferrier sings a Northumbrian folk song, “Blow the Wind Southerly,” and Ray Charles doesn’t mince words in his shout to “Hit the Road Jack!” that includes a snarling vocal by Margie Hendricks of the Raelettes, and yes, more saxophone.
Week of July 21, 2025 - The Art of the Transcription This week’s theme, musical transcriptions refer to taking a composition and changing its instrumentation. For example, transforming a piano piece into an orchestral work or adapting a string quartet into a wind quintet. We will start with Johann Sebastian Bach’s discovery of the works of Antonio Vivaldi while exploring the library at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. Bill will present Vivaldi's "Concerto for Four Violins," followed by Bach's transcription of this piece for four harpsichords. Additionally, we will hear transcriptions of Bach's organ works by Edward Elgar, John Barbirolli, and Otto Klemperer. This week concludes with Maurice Ravel's well-known, orchestral transcription of Modest Mussorgsky's piano work "Pictures at an Exhibition” performed by the Berlin Philharmonic.
Week of July 28, 2025 - To The Finland Station, Part 1 “I have spoken Russian all my life. I think in Russian, my way of expressing myself is Russian. Perhaps this is not immediately apparent in my music, but it is latent there, a part of its hidden nature.” —Igor Stravinsky, Russian-born, naturalized French, and then American, spoke these words in an emotional visit to his homeland after an almost fifty-year absence. For the next two weeks, we will follow the lives of some of our favorite Russian musicians, and how the revolution changed them and their music. Starting a decade before the Revolution, we will then spend time on the period 1918 to 1924, Lenin’s reign, and then on into the era of Stalin, with the music of Shostakovich and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
