Week of May 6, 2024 - New Wine in Old Bottles This is a week of transcriptions, orchestrations, fantasies, rhapsodies, and reminiscences: the creative efforts of composers who give new vitality to existing music by transforming it. This is much more than composers finding inspiration from others- these are works that use the structure and tunes of another composer to create a new piece in their voice. Bill includes folk music and works by Bach, Liszt, and Ravel as set by Stokowski, Schoenberg, and Copland.
Week of May 13, 2024 - The Quartets of Béla Bartók In response to listeners’ interest in 20th century music, we will present a week analyzing Béla Bartók’s six string quartets. The first quartet was published in 1909 and the last in 1939, and these works are now considered an essential part of our musical heritage. We will hear performances from many different quartets, including the Juilliard String Quartet, who performed them while the ink was still wet on the page. Bill compliments these quartets by surrounding them with his favorite moments from Bartók’s ballet and orchestral works.
Week of May 20, 2024 - I Hear a Rhapsody We've borrowed our title from the 1941 jazz standard, but what is a rhapsody? In music, Grove defines a rhapsody as "an episodic instrumental composition of indefinite form." The word originates in the epic poetry of Ancient Greece, although the musical origins are traced back only as far as humble ballads in 18th century Hausmusik. Rhapsodies came to be based on popular and folk melodies, and composers in the 19th century began writing Rhapsodies for chamber music and large-scale nationalistic orchestral epics. There are Hungarian Rhapsodies, Slavonic Rhapsodies, Blue Rhapsodies, Rhapsodies of Fire, and Bohemian Rhapsodies. Spend a week with us as Bill riffs on rhapsodies.
Week of May 27, 2024 - Exploring Theme and Variations This week is a grand adventure exploring two towering sets of variations, one from Johann Sebastian Bach and one from Ludwig van Beethoven. Our first three episodes will focus on Bach’s work published in 1741, and the title page reads, “A Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals and composed for music lovers, for the refreshment of their spirits.” We know this work as the “Goldberg Variations” BWV 988. EM’s last two episodes of this week will be the 33 variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, finished in 1823 and commonly called the “Diabelli Variations.” Bill introduces Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson, alongside the great heroes who made these works as well-known as they are today. Our heroes include pianists Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida, András Schiff, and Rosalyn Tureck.
