Monday – Friday at 7:00 pm
Beethoven at Parnassus, Part I
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.
Beethoven at Parnassus, Part I
This is a festival of the late music of Beethoven, from the last ten years of his life. Parnassus refers to the great mountain that towered over Delphi in Greek legend, and was the home of the Muses. In these years from 1816 to 1826, Beethoven soared to almost mythological heights with some of his greatest works—the Ninth Symphony, last ...
Rimsky-Korsakov and His Pupils: Glazunov, Stravinsky, Liadov, and Respighi
Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral genius spun thousands of exotic sounds and colors, much as Scheherazade did in her tales. He left not only his musical mark on the world, but also his creative mark on all his students, by teaching them the fundamentals of orchestration and encouraging them to express their own imaginations. He and his pupils created unique voices, and all ...
Remembering Old Friends
In “Remembering Old Friends” Bill takes us along to visit some dear colleagues he’s had the pleasure of knowing and working with over the years, and to celebrate the times they spent together and the music they made. Find a comfy spot, lean back and close your eyes, and let us take you to Rudolf Firkusny, Maureen Forrester, Lynn Harrell, ...
