EXPLORING MUSIC with Bill McGlaughlin
Broadcast Schedule – Fall 2017
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-01
RELEASE: Week of September 25, 2017
The Big Five II: The New York Philharmonic, Part 2
We continue to look at the unique history of the New York Philharmonic. Just think about the audiences who were there before you. There was Walt Whitman's “silent sea of faces and the unbared heads” listening to the funeral march from Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony as Abraham Lincoln lay in state at City Hall. A century later, the entire country watched the orchestra’s televised tribute to JFK led by Leonard Bernstein, and later still, the premiere of the John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the Philharmonic to remember the victims of September 11, 2001. In celebration and in mourning, the New York Philharmonic has been there.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-02
RELEASE: Week of October 2, 2017
Nadia Boulanger
Virgil Thomson once said, “In every town in the United States you find a five-and-dime and a Boulanger student," and he wasn't far off. Nadia Boulanger taught and influenced an entire generation of musicians, from Aaron Copland and Astor Piazzolla to Philip Glass and Quincy Jones. This week we'll hear some of her own compositions, works by her talented sister, Lily, and performances of works by prolific students. Bill features Nadia conducting her close friend Igor Stravinsky’s composition Dumbarton Oaks and ends this retrospective listening to Piazzolla’s Oblivion.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-03
RELEASE: Week of October 9, 2017
The Glories of Venice
Exploring Music focuses on sounds of the city, water, and love in Venice. Bill explores the magical city that inspired music of the late Renaissance, Baroque, and the beginning of Italian opera. From Monteverdi and Orlando di Lasso, Bill includes religious and secular music and continues with two major Venetian influences: Adrian Willaert of Dutch descent and the Roman composer Palestrina. Other composers featured in the week are Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Verdi, and more.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-04
RELEASE: Week of October 16, 2017
Unfinished Symphonies
Schubert wasn't the only composer who passed from this earth with an incomplete symphony on his shelf. Elgar, Mahler, Bruckner, and other symphonists left fantastic but tantalizingly unfinished material that Bill will feature. Varied and unusual stories explain why each one of these works remained unfinished and buried deep in the back of our composers’ minds.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-05
RELEASE: Week of October 23, 2017
Les Cinq Plus
This week’s theme: French composers from the generation before Les Six (Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, et al),and we are fondly calling our composers Les Cinq Plus. Like Les Six, our composers did not have a great deal in common, and the way they all have been grouped is an historical accident — artists who happened to inhabit a particular locale at a given time. A few of these composers shared some characteristic traits, but they were incidental, and the artists didn’t even care much for each other. Unlike Les Six, Les Cinq Plus grew up listening to the art songs of the 1800s, and each in their way, carried this romantic torch forward. Chabrier, Massenet, Duparc, Chausson, Dukas, and perhaps Satie as “L’Autre.”
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-06
RELEASE: Week of October 30, 2017
Triple Play
It’s trios on Exploring Music! Piano trios, string trios, operatic trios and many others. Trios have their own set of challenges for composers and performers, and this week Bill will demonstrate on the piano pointing out to us through their complex structure of voice harmonies. We will hear Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, the trio from Act III of Der Rosenkavalier and, finally Bill will play a wonderful treat from Porgy and Bess performed by the Bill Evans Trio. Join us for a delightful week of music for three, where the odd man is not left out.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-07
RELEASE: Week of November 6, 2017
The Viola
This week we’ll celebrate some of the exquisite music written for this “inner voice”. The viola is the middle sister of the stringed instruments, sitting between the violins and the cellos, and playing in a clef written devised just for her. The viola is often misunderstood and mistaken for a “larger violin” or sometimes either forgotten about or made the butt of jokes. But, the viola sings with a dark richness that composers loved! Mozart, Brahms, and Dvorak, to name just a few composers, played the viola, and oh, Hindemith did too. And these composers, plus many more figured out how to let this instrument have her day in the sun with concertos, tone poems, and orchestral solos. Listen and you too will fall in love with this instrument.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-08
RELEASE: Week of November 13, 2017
Beethoven and That Danged Metronome
The metronome is a device which indicates the exact tempo of a piece of music – it marks time by producing a clicking sound. Beethoven was notorious for marking his scores with metronome timings, and this week we learn the significant role those little numbers played. The tempo and interpretation affect the emotional impact of a composition, thus changing its entire character. We'll also take a brief detour and examine how other composers, like Bach, Handel, and Shostakovich, worked with tempi in their music.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-09
RELEASE: Week of November 20, 2017
Tchaikovsky, Part I
Bill launches into the first part of a two part series on the Russian Romantic composer Peter Tchaikovsky. Though shunned by some other Russian composers as sounding “too Western”, Tchaikovsky was loved throughout the world as a great Russian composer. Caught between East and West, he created his own sound— a sound that to this day is still treasured and that Russians are proud to call their own. Bill starts with Mikhail Glinka, who broke from the Italian school to create the Russian school of music, and ends with excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Don’t miss this week and next, where we continue with the music of Peter Tchaikovsky.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-10
RELEASE: Week of November 27, 2017
Tchaikovsky, Part II
This week, we’ll continue our exploration of Peter Tchaikovsky, focusing on the latter part of his life, including his symphonies, ballets, and life at the Moscow Conservatory. Bill picks up in 1876 with Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op.33 for Cello and Orchestra and we close the week with his Symphony No. 6 in b minor, Pathetique, written in 1893 and premiered just days before his death. This week, Bill tells the story of Tchaikovsky’s failed marriage and his unusual relationship with his patroness Nadezhda von Meck.
PROGRAM #:EXP 18-11
RELEASE: Week of December 4, 2017
Invitation to the Dance, Part III
This third installment of our series on dance music will center on the charmed life of George Balanchine, the chief choreographer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Born in St. Petersburg, Balanchine became a dancer and accomplished pianist, and we will listen to the music that inspired him to choreograph his iconic dance movements. We will listen to music by Bach, Ravel, Tchaikovsky and Balanchine’s longtime friend, Igor Stravinsky.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-12
RELEASE: Week of December 11, 2017
Don’t Shoot the Piano Player
—He is doing the best he can. -Oscar Wilde
Starting with the earliest piano trios from Joseph Haydn, Bill will present the best ofchamber music that includes the piano— piano trios, quartets, quintets, andmore. The piano is a versatile instrument in the chamber music world. Pianistscan be members of an established group or featured guests, and composers addthem to compositions as the “glue” that joins instruments together. Mozart,Dvôrák, and Brahms all wrote chamber music and then played "musicalchairs” to fill the empty seat to join in on the fun. Chamber musicwritten to include the piano continues through the 20th century with Bartok andMessiaen, and on to today with Joan Tower and her colleagues. Bill just touchesthe surface of this world, and will return to it in the future, so please, takecare of our piano players!
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-13
RELEASE:Week of December 18, 2017
Holiday Celebration
All around the world, winter holidays are celebrated, and their music is wonderful to hear, regardless of which tradition you observe. Bill gets us started with Nova Stella, medieval Italian Christmas music with a very early staging of the nativity. We will enjoy Christmas in Paris with music from Debussy, Charpentier and Poulenc and a Polynesian traditional hymn, AnauOiaEa, plus an excerpt fromAmahl and the Night Visitorsfrom the original television production. Bill plays us one of his favorites from Ernest Bloch,Sacred Service.On our final day we will listen to Vaughan Williams'Fantasia on Christmas Carols,and this week’s celebration will end with more holiday cheer fromDavid Bowie and Bing Crosby.
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-14
RELEASE:Week of December 25, 2017
The Music of London, Part I
Join Bill for a two-week musical history tour of London. We will listen to medieval chant, folksongs, court composers and more. Bill will stroll the South Bank, now a rejuvenated part of London, but in the past home to brothels and bear fighting arenas, plus Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Artists of all times and disciplines wandered this district, with a bird’s-eye view of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster. During the English Reformation, Anglican Chant developed with the decree that all chants were to be in English, adhering to the cadence of the spoken word. We will listen to Thomas Tallis, court composer to Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, hear Purcell and Elgar carry his English sound into their compositions, and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, based on a psalm that starts,“Why fumeth in fight.”
PROGRAM #: EXP 18-15
RELEASE:Week of January 1, 2018
The Music of London, Part II
Week two of the music of London continues with visits from continental composers. Haydn’s last 12 symphonies were inspired by London. Geminiani and Mendelssohn wrote music using material from their visits, and the German-born composer Handel spent most of his life in England. After the death of Handel, music of London went into a decline,until about one hundred years later, when the wandering minstrels Gilbert and Sullivan started engaging us with songs and snatches, and awakened London’s creative spirit. We will listen to Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Britten, and Thomas Ades. Three cheers for the music of London and Nanki-Poo too!