Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm
Janáček, Leoš
Exploring Music is an adventure — an expedition through the world of classical music. We pick a theme each week 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 Bill McGlaughlin as our guide to make sure we all get home safe and sound.
Listeners' emailed suggestions have played a very important role in choosing 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.
The player below features a continuous five hour loop of the most recent Exploring Music episode. Listen to the past two weeks of Exploring Music here.
Janáček, Leoš
January 23, 2023
One of the most influential (and underrated) Czech composers, Leoš Janáček created a deeply original style of composition that infused his operas, string quartets, and symphonic music with Moravian and Slavic folk influences. We start this week listening to his charming intimate Nursery Rhymes, White Goat Gathers Pears and Beetroot Was Getting Married, performed by The Netherlands Wind Ensemble. Each ...
A Modest Survey of Ballet Music, Part 2
January 16, 2023
Put back on your dancing shoes for our second week of ballet music. This week we will hear the Russian ballets and return to Paris for what now is considered a full-out riot when Ballets Russe choreographed movements to express the music they heard from Igor Stravinsky. New music, and new dance techniques in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with stage ...
A Modest Survey of Ballet Music, Part 1
January 9, 2023
Put on your dancing shoes and join us for two weeks of ballet music. Starting in the 16th century to meet Catherine de’ Medici, and we continue to a golden age of ballet in Paris. Then we meet the Russian ballets, and finally, we will return to Paris for Ballets Russe in the years just before WWI. Our survey covers ...
A Visit with Richard Stoltzman
January 30, 2023
Descending into Richard’s daylight basement is stepping into over fifty years of clarinet history. Music scores, posters, photos, thousands of clarinet reeds, and over 175 of his recordings fill tables and shelves. With sweet overtones and a twinkle in his eye, he describes standing on stage, pointing the bell of his clarinet towards the audience, and drawing them into the ...
Franck, César
February 6, 2023
Join us for a week of music from César Franck. Born in 1822 in Liège, Franck moved to Paris in 1835 and died there in 1890. He was initially known as a gifted improviser on the organ – and considered by some to be the greatest composer of organ music after J. S. Bach – but over time we have ...
Tudor Music
February 13, 2023
The House of Tudor reigned from Henry VII through Elizabeth I, and during this time, the arts were loved and supported by church and state alike. This support gave rise to a new type of English secular music, music that was not folk music and didn’t belong to the church. Though the Tudor poets are better known than the composers, ...