In MY SYMPHONIC POEMS, the two-disc album that is Mark John McEncroe’s fourth recording overall for Navona Records, the Australian composer explores worlds both internal and external. On each of the album’s ten tracks, McEncroe has crafted a musical painting, a work of art that describes, as it were, his reflections on the subject alluded to in its title. Purchase the music (without talk) for only $2.99 at: http://www.classicalsavings.com/store/p715/My_Symphonic_Poems_-_Mark_John_Mcencroe_%28dig...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 59 min•Season 15Ep. 5
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti. Long's version was dramatized by David Belasco as the one-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, which, aft...
Nov 25, 2020•2 hr 20 min•Season 15Ep. 4
La bohème is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger. The world premiere of La bohème was in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio, conducted by the 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini; its U.S. premiere took place the following year, 1897, in Los Angeles. Since then, La bohème has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently perform...
Nov 25, 2020•2 hr 2 min•Season 15Ep. 3
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, completed by Franco Alfano, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is based on one of the seven stories in the epic Haft Peykar (The Seven Beauties), a work of 12th-century Persian p...
Nov 25, 2020•2 hr 17 min•Season 15Ep. 2
Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a February 1937 German libretto by Joseph Gregor, based on an outline written in 1920, "Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience", by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Strauss worked on the score in 1937, 1938 and into 1939, although he was preoccupied with completing Daphne, developing ideas with Gregor and finally replacing him as librettist for Capriccio, and then succumbed to illness, which caused postponement for seve...
Nov 24, 2020•2 hr 53 min•Season 15Ep. 66
Mozart: Serenade in B-flat, K. 361 "Gran Partita" Mozart: Serenade in E-flat, K. 375 Mozart: Serenade in C minor, K. 388 "Nacht Musik" Mozart: Divertimento in B-flat, K. 240 Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 252 Mozart: Divertimento in F, K. 253 Mozart: Divertimento in B-flat, K. 270 2018 Winter European Tour CMD Paris Philharmonic in Orleans Woodwinds Conducted by Dominique Beaulieu Purchase the music (without talk) for only $2.99 at: http://www.classicalsavings.com/store/p855/Mozart_Wind_Sere...
Nov 24, 2020•2 hr 46 min•Season 15Ep. 109
Considered by many to be the greatest of ALL Strauss operas that you've never heard of. Although Strauss described Daphne as a "bucolic tragedy," based on Greek myth, it is not an opera about loss, as is Orpheus, or about retribution, as in Elektra, but rather something else altogether. Daphne, a child of nature, embodies both chaste purity and bewitching glamour, rejects two suitors, and, through metamorphosis, turns into a tree, becoming for all time a part of the natural world she ardently lo...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 48 min•Season 15Ep. 47
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian for Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante; usually referred to simply as Idomeneo, K. 366) is an Italian language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a co...
Nov 24, 2020•2 hr 42 min•Season 15Ep. 48
Coppélia (sometimes subtitled: The Girl with the Enamel Eyes) is a comic ballet originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter. Nuitter's libretto and mise-en-scène was based upon two stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman). In Greek, κοπέλα (or κοπελιά in some dialects) means young woman. Coppélia premiered on 25 May 1870 at the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra, with the 16-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi in th...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 46 min•Season 16Ep. 120
Sylvia, originally Sylvia, ou La nymphe de Diane, is a full-length ballet in two or three acts, first choreographed by Louis Mérante to music by Léo Delibes in 1876. Sylvia is a typical classical ballet in many respects, yet it has many interesting features that make it unique. Sylvia is notable for its mythological Arcadian setting, creative choreographies, expansive sets and, above all, its remarkable score. The ballet's origins are in Tasso's 1573 play Aminta, which provides the basic plot of...
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 50 min•Season 16Ep. 121
Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in mu...
Nov 21, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Season 17Ep. 17014
Maria di Rohan is a melodramma tragico, or tragic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Salvadore Cammarano, after Lockroy and Edmond Badon's Un duel sous le cardinal de Richelieu, which had played in Paris in 1832. The story is based on events of the life of Marie de Rohan. Purchase the music (without talk) for only $2.99 at: http://www.classicalsavings.com/store/p989/Donizetti%3A_Maria_di_Rohan.html Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Mus...
Nov 20, 2020•1 hr 47 min•Season 17Ep. 17013
Music to play for Thanksgiving Dinner. Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber. @khedgecock #ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive #LaMusicaFestival #CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans #CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBerlin #CMDGrandOperaCompanyofBarcelonaSpain #ClassicalMusicLivesOn #Uber Support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4186107 staff@classicalmusicdiscoveries.com...
Nov 17, 2020•2 hr 25 min•Season 14Ep. 46
Messiah, HWV 56, is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible, and from the Coverdale Psalter, the version of the Psalms included with the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and m...
Nov 17, 2020•2 hr 26 min•Season 17Ep. 17012
There are 106 symphonies by the classical composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Of these, 104 have numbers associated with them which were originally assigned by Eusebius Mandyczewski in 1908 in the chronological order that was known at the time. In the subsequent decades, numerous inaccuracies in the chronology (especially in the lower numbers) were found, but the Mandyczewski numbers were so widely used that when Anthony van Hoboken compiled his catalogue of Haydn's works, he incorporated the Man...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 17Ep. 17011
There are 106 symphonies by the classical composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Of these, 104 have numbers associated with them which were originally assigned by Eusebius Mandyczewski in 1908 in the chronological order that was known at the time. In the subsequent decades, numerous inaccuracies in the chronology (especially in the lower numbers) were found, but the Mandyczewski numbers were so widely used that when Anthony van Hoboken compiled his catalogue of Haydn's works, he incorporated the Man...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 8 min
There are 106 symphonies by the classical composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Of these, 104 have numbers associated with them which were originally assigned by Eusebius Mandyczewski in 1908 in the chronological order that was known at the time. In the subsequent decades, numerous inaccuracies in the chronology (especially in the lower numbers) were found, but the Mandyczewski numbers were so widely used that when Anthony van Hoboken compiled his catalogue of Haydn's works, he incorporated the Man...
Oct 29, 2020•1 hr 17 min
Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112, subtitled The Year of 1917, in 1961, dedicating it to the memory of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, as he did his Symphony No. 2. The symphony was premiered that October by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. This was the last Shostakovich symphony Mravinsky premiered; his refusal to give the first performance of the Thirteenth Symphony, Babi Yar, caused a permanent strai...
Oct 15, 2020•41 min
Shostakovich: Symphony 10 Tchaikovsky: Symphony 5 Purchase the music (without talk) at: http://www.classicalsavings.com/store/p980/Shostakovich_Symphony_10_and_Tchaikovsky_Symphony_5.html Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber. @khedgecock #ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive #LaMusicaFestival #CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans #CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBer...
Oct 14, 2020•1 hr 47 min•Season 15Ep. 145
