Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm
Rachmaninoff, Sergei (1873-1943)
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.
Rachmaninoff, Sergei (1873-1943)
December 2, 2024
The finest example of late Russian Romanticism. This Russian composer held on to being a Romantic composer well into the twentieth century, a time when his fellow composers like Stravinsky and Prokofiev were forever reinventing Classical music. We will dedicate this week to exploring the private life and music of this lyrically gifted pianist and composer. Rachmaninoff once said, “If ...
American Masters, Part IV
November 25, 2024
From the East Coast to the West, American composers developed a singular identity in the 20th century that continues to energize and influence classical music. This week is dedicated to less popular American composers like John Alden Carpenter, Marion Bauer, and Randall Thompson. Bill investigates their family history, what drove them to compose, and what artistic journey they went on ...
Magnificent Magyars
November 18, 2024
Surveying the history of music in Hungary. Hungary was settled by the Magyars in the late 9th century and became a state in the year 1000. After adopting Latin Christianity in the 11th century, the country’s rich musical heritage of church music started with Gregorian plainchants, and later in the Middle Ages with fully realized polyphonic singing. Bill picks it ...
From This Mighty River: Music of the Children of J S Bach
December 9, 2024
Music flowed from the Bach family in a seemingly never-ending torrent for generations, and the three sons of Johann Sebastian are no exception. This week we’ll listen to the music of Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Johann Christian Bach as they continue their father’s legacy into the Classical era.
