Week of May 2, 2022 - Get the Picture? Listen your way through the works of composers inspired by well-known paintings and poems. Pianist Alicia de Larrocha will perform Goyescas, by Enrique Granados, a musical transcription of Francisco Goya’s paintings. We will hear Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter), and Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. Many of these musical works have gone on to be the inspiration for new artistic creations. Art and music are one!
Week of May 9, 2022 - Artists in Exile, Part I Our two-week series titled Artists in Exile pays homage to Joseph Horowitz’s book that focuses on "how refugees from 20th-century war and revolution transformed the American arts.” In this program, you will hear stories of appreciation for a new country, but also of terrible loneliness that comes from being forced from one's home by political strife. Bill begins this week with a vacationing artist, Antonín Dvořák, before playing music from Serge Prokofiev, who fled the Soviet Union. This week will end with Hungarian Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, written in America.
Week of May 16, 2022 - Artists in Exile, Part 2 Bill continues to reflect on artists in exile, beginning with music from Paul Hindemith. In his escape from Nazi Germany, Hindemith traveled to Turkey, England, and Switzerland before coming to America. We will listen to his Symphony for Concert Band and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. Bill then considers the plight of composers who faced deportation from America because of their political views. We finish this two-week series with composers from Asia and Latin America. Glorious music from Chen Yi and Gabriela Lena Frank, as well as Tan Dun’s title song for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Week of May 23, 2022 - The Ballad of East and West Borrowing this week's title from the Rudyard Kipling poem, "The Ballad of East and West" we will explore the music of Asia. Traveling to Japan, China, and everywhere in between, we will listen to instruments, sounds, folk tunes, and poetry. The sounds that are the unique musical voices that define a country's identity, tunes that are shared, and melodies that are borrowed by western composers.
Week of May 30, 2022 - Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) German composer Felix Mendelssohn finds himself at the center of this week’s episode of Exploring Music. He has been hailed as one of the greatest musical minds of all time. We venture from his precocious youth to his early death. His great body of work is still in the repertories of chamber groups and orchestras. And it’s the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto that is loved by all. The same love and devotion is true for his String Octet and Italian Symphony.
