Musician-led ensemble Palaver Strings releases its new album of music by diverse female composers, Ready or Not. Works on the album include Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra; Non può il mio cuore by Venetian singer, lutenist, and composer Maddalena Casulana; composer Barbara Strozzi’s madrigal Lagrime mie featuring a performance by mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux; Chicago-based multi-genre composer, vocalist, pianist, and producer Akenya Seymour’s Fear the Lamb; and a set of fiddle t...
Apr 15, 2022•55 min•Season 18Ep. 86
Cellist Ani Aznavoorian and pianist Marta Aznavoorian, each a renowned soloist and chamber musician in her own right, together celebrate the sounds of their ancestral homeland on Gems from Armenia. The album marks the Chicago-raised sisters’ recording debut as the Aznavoorian Duo. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Gems from Armenia (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber....
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Season 18Ep. 231
William Tell is a French-language opera in four acts by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and L. F. Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell, which, in turn, drew on the William Tell legend. The opera was Rossini's last, although he lived for nearly 40 more years. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for Guillaume Tell to be his last opera even as he composed it. The often-performed overture in four sections features a depiction of a s...
Mar 27, 2022•4 hr 8 min•Season 18Ep. 222
The project began as a nine-month exploration of the Sibelius symphonies to mark Mäkelä’s inaugural season with the Oslo Philharmonic as Chief Conductor but, with Covid cancellations, turned into a completely immersive recording project. With the orchestral season disrupted, Mäkelä and the orchestra devoted much of the Spring of 2021 to playing nothing but the music of Sibelius. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Sibelius: Complete Symphonies (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase helps to suppor...
Mar 25, 2022•4 hr 45 min•Season 18Ep. 95
Deutsche Grammophon released VOYAGER: ESSENTIAL MAX RICHTER, the first-ever collection of the acclaimed British composer’s work. The 33-track collection will be available as a double CD and e-album and contains work from across his vast catalog, including studio albums such as 2004’s acclaimed The Blue Notebooks, Richter; reviewed by Pitchfork as one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in recent memory, 2012’s Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, ...
Mar 22, 2022•2 hr 45 min•Season 18Ep. 229
Aureliano in Palmira is an operatic dramma serio in two acts written by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto in which the librettist was credited only by the initials "G. F. R." The libretto has generally been attributed to Felice Romani, but sometimes to the otherwise unknown Gian Francesco Romanelli. It has been suggested that the latter name may have resulted from a confusion of Romani with Luigi Romanelli, La Scala's house poet prior to Romani's appointment to the post. Purchase the musi...
Mar 20, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Season 18Ep. 230
. Arc I is the inaugural album of an ambitious three-part series and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913 – the precipice before World War I. The three musical stories on Arc I – Granados’ Goyescas, Janáček’s In the Mists, and Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9 ”Black Mass” – each struggle with the same impossible awareness of what was coming for the world, and in doing so, plunge further into modernity and despair. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Orion Wei...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Season 18Ep. 97
Born in 1925 in Sacramento, California, to Polish immigrants, Slenczynska gave her concert debut at the age of four (just as the world entered the Great Depression), performed on television aged five, and at six made her European concert debut in Berlin. 92 years later, the extraordinary pianist still performs to audiences around the world. ‘MY LIFE IN MUSIC’ TRACKLIST:Rachmaninoff: 6 Romances, Op. 38: 3. DaisiesRachmaninoff: 13 Preludes, Op. 32: No. 5 in G Major. ModeratoBarber: Nocturne 'Homag...
Mar 18, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 18Ep. 85
Ziporyn who released his landmark Cantaloupe Music recording; ‘This Is Not a Clarinet’ in 2001, does the impossible on Pop Channel, taking us through some of the best iconic pop songs during the last 5 decades, imagined through a compendium of clarinets and all arranged, layered, and performed by Ziporyn. Every sound on this album – the lead vocals, guitar solos, backing horns, and even the drum parts - is played by Ziporyn, on a clarinet of one size or another. Purchase the music (without talk)...
Mar 15, 2022•57 min•Season 18Ep. 228
Rossini wrote L'italiana in Algeri when he was 21. Rossini stated that he composed the opera in 18 days, though other sources claim that it took him 27 days. Rossini entrusted the composition of the recitatives as well as the aria "Le femmine d'Italia" to an unknown collaborator. The opera is notable for Rossini's mixing of opera seria style with opera buffa. The overture is widely recorded and performed today, known for its distinct opening of slow, quiet pizzicato basses, leading to a sudden l...
Mar 13, 2022•2 hr 36 min•Season 18Ep. 226
Violinist Angèle Dubeau's newest release ELLE, is an album that magnificently marks the 25 years of existence of her orchestra La Pietà. This 46th album resonates with the feminine sensitivity and virtuosity specific to Angèle Dubeau and the ensemble she founded in 1997, which has ever since demonstrated its artistic excellence and audacity. ELLE transports listeners to a mesmerizing universe, that is alternately powerful and delicate, touching and ethereal. It features curated pieces by female ...
Mar 12, 2022•58 min•Season 18Ep. 227
Night: it can be dreamy or comforting, but sometimes it’s frightening, full of dark secrets. So it’s no great surprise that the long hours of darkness, often spent awake, have inspired so many composers to write some of their most touching works: Chopin’s dreamy Nocturnes, for example, Schumann’s dainty “Nachtstücke” or Ravel’s spinechilling cycle “Gaspard de la nuit”, populated by sinister figures and dark premonitions. In his piano recital at the Imperial Hall at the Würzburg Residence, the y...
Mar 11, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 18Ep. 224
Wagner: Meistersinger PreludeBruckner: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, WAB 102 (1877 version)Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108 (1890 version) Andris Nelsons, conductorGewandhausorchester Purchase the music (without talk) at:Bruckner: Symphonies 2 and 8 (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber. @khedgecock#ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive#LaMusicaFestiv...
Mar 08, 2022•2 hr 40 min•Season 18Ep. 221
L'equivoco stravagante (The Curious Misunderstanding) is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri. It was Rossini's first attempt at writing a full two-act opera.L'equivoco stravagante was first performed at the Teatro del Corso, Bologna, on 26 October 1811. It was only performed three times before the police closed the production down, possibly because the text touched on the subject of army desertion. The music of the overture was s...
Mar 06, 2022•2 hr 11 min•Season 18Ep. 225
This broadcast introduces our international audience to Rossini, our featured opera composer for March 2022. You will hear overtures from the 4 operas we feature this month: L'equivoco stravagante (The Curious Misunderstanding) L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers) Aureliano in Palmira William Tell
Mar 05, 2022•44 min•Season 18Ep. 223
Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer, performer, and writer Kate Soper releases The Understanding of All Things, a portrait album featuring frequent Wet Ink Ensemble collaborator Sam Pluta, on New Focus Recordings. The Understanding of All Things features Soper performing as vocalist, pianist, and electronics composer in three of her works: the title track for voice and fixed media; The Fragments of Parmenides for voice, piano, and fixed media; and So Dawn Chromatically Descends to Day for voice an...
Mar 04, 2022•58 min•Season 18Ep. 84
Night falls in diverse ways in Magdalena Hoffmann's debut album. Nightscapes sees the German harpist dive deep into the intimate, mysterious, magical world of night music, as well as exploring the theme of dance. Its tracklist spans everything from the austere beauty of Britten's Suite for Harp Op. 83 to the folk-like colors of Tournier's La danse du moujik. The recording comprises both original pieces for solo harp and compositions for piano, skillfully transcribed by Hoffmann herself. Purchase...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Season 18Ep. 220
Hailed as “one of a kind, a banjoist who specializes in classical music and regularly knocks socks off left and right doing so,” John Bullard has released a new recording, 24 Preludes for Solo Banjo, Volume One, Books 1 & 2 Nos. I-XII was produced by multiple Juno Award and Grammy-winning David Travers-Smith. Bullard commissioned composer Adam Larrabee to write 24 Preludes which Larrabee says he wrote in a style that is “predominantly early 20th-century, at times almost neo-classical and ins...
Feb 28, 2022•33 min•Season 18Ep. 213
L'Africaine (The African Woman) is an 1865 French grand opéra in five acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer and a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Meyerbeer and Scribe began working on the opera in 1837, using the title L'Africaine, but around 1852 changed the plot to portray fictitious events in the life of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and introduced the working title Vasco de Gama, the French version of his name. The copying of the full score was completed the day before Meyerbeer died in 18...
Feb 27, 2022•4 hr 27 min•Season 18Ep. 96
Lisa Batiashvili’s new album, released on May 29, 2020, takes the listener across the world with eleven carefully chosen pieces that represent the most important cities in her life, as well as a suite based on Charlie Chaplin’s own music for City Lights and other films of his, extending last year’s celebration of the 130th anniversary of the iconic artist’s birth.The music ranges from J.S. Bach and Johann Strauss to Michel Legrand and Astor Piazzolla, bringing together diverse genres, including ...
Feb 26, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 18Ep. 218
From prison reform, the plight of refugees, the need for music education for all, to the industry-defining In War and Peace, opera superstar Joyce DiDonato has long been an artist who has dedicated herself to creating and initiating projects that challenge and galvanize the public, transcending the physical confines of the concert hall. Player.FM Podcast of the Day - Feb. 26, 2022 TRACKLIST – EDENCharles Ives 1874-19541. The Unanswered Question Rachel Portman b.19602. The First Morning of the Wo...
Feb 25, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 18Ep. 202
Pianist Daniil Trifonov is known for performances of 19th and 20th-century virtuoso repertory and hardly at all for Bach. Thus one might expect from his album Bach: The Art of Life a certain old-school Romantic quality and even music that is a bit over the top. The album is all that and more. The title is a bit unclear; the interview-format notes quote Trifonov references to Bach's personal life, but also to various scientific phenomena, but one may dispense with those and get down to the music,...
Feb 24, 2022•2 hr 24 min•Season 18Ep. 218
Vestige, an album featuring premiere recordings of new pieces by five composers, performed by the contemporary chamber ensemble Wild Rumpus (now Ninth Planet). Five years in the making, Vestige is an ambitious melding of contemporary chamber music and Avant-rock. It features five compositions commissioned by Wild Rumpus, plus an arrangement of a Radiohead song by the ensemble's artistic director, Dan VanHassel. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Vestige (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase help...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 18Ep. 214
The Day the Earth Stood Still stands as one of the earliest and greatest examples of film exploring the mystery and fear of alien contact, using it as an allegory for our mistrust of one another. With its flying saucer, all-powerful robot, and unnervingly calm humanoid alien, much of this movie feels surreal, and that unsettled feeling is encouraged by near-perfect music by Bernard Herrmann, underscoring its action. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Herrmann: The Day the Earth Stood Still (cl...
Feb 22, 2022•52 min•Season 18Ep. 205
Before and After, the much-anticipated new album from NOW Ensemble, a group of composers and performers creating "effervescent, genre-busting" chamber music for the 21st century. Before and After-NOW's seventh album with New Amsterdam is devoted to the "refreshingly new and solidly mature" work of Rome Prize-winning composer Sean Friar. Featuring flute, clarinet, double bass, piano, and electric guitar, NOW's compositions each have "a distinct voice but a shared ethos". Friar's acclaimed piece "...
Feb 21, 2022•50 min•Season 18Ep. 212
After the brilliant success of their grand opera Les Huguenots (1836), Meyerbeer and his librettist Scribe decided to collaborate again on a piece based on a historical religious conflict. Meyerbeer's great personal wealth and his duties as official court composer to King Frederick William IV of Prussia meant that there was no hurry to complete the opera, and it was more than a decade in the composition and planning. Le prophète was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier on ...
Feb 20, 2022•3 hr 39 min•Season 18Ep. 93
Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod to "Tristan und Isolde"Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, WAB 101Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, WAB 105 Andris Nelsons conducts the Gewandhausorchester Purchase the music (without talk) at:Bruckner: Symphonies 1 and 5 plus Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod to Tristan und Isolde (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber. @khedgecock#Classi...
Feb 19, 2022•2 hr 35 min•Season 18Ep. 217
In 1949, two young Argentinian child prodigies met and made music together for the first time, the rest, as they say, is history. In continuation of Martha Argerich’s birthday celebrations, we announce a new album from Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich, performing selected works by Claude Debussy. Fantasia for Piano and OrchestraSonata for Violin and PianoSonata for Cello and PianoThe Sea – Three Symphonic Sketches
Feb 17, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 18Ep. 210
Jennifer Kloetzel’s lifelong journey with Beethoven began early: she was eight years old when her teacher placed the composer’s second cello sonata on her music stand, opening the door to an odyssey of intrigue and, ultimately, obsession with the composer’s music. Since then, rarely has a day passed without Beethoven being a part of Jennifer’s life. She has studied and performed all of the composer’s duos and trios. As founding cellist of the Cypress String Quartet, she spent 20 years rehearsing...
Feb 16, 2022•3 hr 6 min•Season 18Ep. 208
The film's music was composed by Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann had composed for Welles for his Mercury Theatre radio broadcasts. Because it was Herrmann's first motion picture score, RKO wanted to pay him only a small fee, but Welles insisted he is paid at the same rate as Max Steiner. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Herrmann: Citizen Kane (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival an...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 18Ep. 99
