Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm
An expedition through the world of classical music.
Exploring Music is an adventure. Each week, we pick a theme and follow the music wherever it leads us. Over the years we’ve explored Shakespeare and music, have followed the lives of many composers (a sort of five-part mini-series), and visited the music of various locales — Paris, Venice, Spain, Hungary, the Pacific Rim. Each five-episode program is a musical journey that focuses on a particular genre, music festival, or classical theme. It’s a sort of Outward Bound for music, with the host as our guide to make sure we all get home safe and sound.
Listeners' emailed suggestions have played an important role in selecting themes. We’ve recorded over two hundred adventures, and the ideas keep turning up. We don’t think we’ll exhaust the possibilities. Exploring Music is familiar and welcoming, and is where you feel at home on your first visit and can’t wait to get back to sample what the series has come up with for its next five-episodes.
Symphony, Part X: Alexander Scriabin to Samuel Barber
June 15, 2026
This week, Bill McGlaughlin continues his multi-part exploration of this vibrant, exciting musical form with symphonies written between 1900 and 1920. Bill focuses on works rarely heard in concert, or on the radio for that matter: Alexander Scriabin’s Symphony No. 3 conducted by Riccardo Muti, an important interpreter of the Scriabin color wheel; George Enescu’s Symphony No. 2; and Samuel ...
Haydn and Mozart Quartets
June 8, 2026
Mozart’s six “Haydn” Quartets were dedicated and lovingly handed to Joseph Haydn, like a father entrusting his sons to a friend to protect and guide them. When Haydn first started composing for the string quartet, the first violinist was the star, actually standing in front of the other three players. Ninety-nine Haydn string quartets later, the form had evolved into ...
Strangers in a Strange Land
June 1, 2026
We will hear the musical evolution of five mature composers as they started their new lives in America: Russian Igor Stravinsky, Hungarian Bela Bartok, German Kurt Weill, Italian Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Austrian Ernst Toch. These five composers arrived in America early in the Twentieth Century and quickly became vital members of our American musical community. Bill leads us through their ...
Walton, William
June 22, 2026
Composer Benjamin Britten once wrote that hearing William Walton’s music was a “great turning point in his musical life.” We’ll trace the arc of Walton’s life and his associations with the greatest artists of his time, including Heifetz, Hindemith, Olivier, and Beecham. Bill features Walton’s love of different musical genres; Film music from Henry V, the poem Façade set to ...
