Monday – Friday at 7:00 pm
Grieg and Sibelius
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.
Grieg and Sibelius
We’ll explore the lives and music of the two Nordic greats: Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Music spanning almost one hundred years includes a number of chamber works, Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Norwegian Dances, and several Sibelius symphonies. Bill will introduce us to the hardanger fiddle, and we’ll listen to Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes performing on Edvard Grieg’s own piano.
Treasure Hunt
EUREKA! This week Bill invites us to come along on a treasure hunt. We will dig deep into that overflowing box of CDs in the back of his front hall closet. He found many real treasures starting with a marvelous young Icelandic pianist, Vikingur Olafsson and a beautiful recording of the Beethoven violin concerto with Leonidas Kavakos. This is a ...
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
This week Bill follows the life and musical development of one of Hungary’s greatest composers. A musician’s musician, Bartok was supported by many of the great conductors of his time; Paul Sacher, conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra commissioned the Divertimento for Strings, Serge Koussevitsky and Fritz Reiner commissioned the Concerto for Orchestra, and Benny Goodman commissioned his trio Contrasts ...
