In January 2021, we'll hear the first two episodes of a 10-part exploration of the music of Giuseppe Verdi.
Week of January 4, 2021 - A Guitar Fest A Guitar Fest on Exploring Music! The inspiration for this week came from a listener responding to Bill McGlaughlin's call for new program ideas. This listener wrote that he would like to see one or more shows dedicated to Andrés Segovia and went on to say, “Of all musicians I have known, no one dominated the field as he did. Almost singlehandedly, he converted the guitar from a plaything to a concert instrument. Several composers dedicated their works to him. The thrill of my life was to be his dinner companion at his last (or maybe also first) performance in Columbus at the Ohio Theatre in the late 1970s. An amazing artist, and an unforgettable man!” So, this week, Andrés Segovia and others will perform guitar works from around the world including works by JS Bach, Villa-Lobos, Albéniz, and Bouwer.
Week of January 11, 2021 - Giuseppe Verdi, Part 1 This week we begin a ten-part series investigating the life and music of Giuseppe Verdi, a towering figure in Italian art and perhaps the greatest composer of 19th-century opera. We’ll explore the nooks and crannies of Verdi’s repertoire, including a trip to Medieval Spain, Shakespeare’s Scotland, and France. Despite Verdi being known for his work in opera, an art form intimately connected with language, his music transcends words. To end our first week on Verdi, we will listen to his overtures and as Bill would say, “Man, that boy wrote a lot of music!”
Week of January 18, 2021 - Giuseppe Verdi, Part 2 Join us for the second part of our two-week series featuring Verdi with more of his operas and other works, both iconic and underappreciated. Verdi takes on musical expressions of Italian painters, Egyptian princesses, and composes perhaps the grandest requiem ever written. According to legend, at Verdi’s funeral a hundred thousand voices rose in song as Toscanini conducted the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from his opera Nabucco.
Week of January 25, 2021 - Triple Play It’s trios on Exploring Music! Piano trios, string trios, operatic trios and many others. Trios have their own set of challenges for composers and performers, and this week Bill will demonstrate on the piano pointing out to us their complex harmonic structures. We will hear Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, the trio from Act III of Der Rosenkavalier and, finally Bill will play a wonderful treat from Porgy and Bess performed by the Bill Evans Trio. Join us for a delightful week of music for three, where the odd man is not left out.
