Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchToru Takemitsu: From a Bamboo Needle to the Sea of Tonality
Episode 10456
In the final stages of World War II, a 14-year-old conscript named Toru Takemitsu huddled with friends around a gramophone, playing a forbidden Frenc…
1 week, 3 days ago
Jascha Heifetz: The Perfectionist Who Redefined the Violin
Episode 10455
Picture the most austere classical violinist of the 20th century driving a converted electric Renault through Los Angeles in 1967 wearing a gas mask …
1 week, 3 days ago
Philip Glass: The Cab-Driving Plumber Who Reinvented Classical Music
Episode 10454
In the 1970s, a New York art critic might have hired a plumber to fix a broken dishwasher and discovered that the man on the kitchen floor was Philip…
1 week, 3 days ago
Vangelis: The Self-Taught Synth Master Behind Chariots of Fire
Episode 10453
When his score for Chariots of Fire won the Academy Award, Vangelis stayed home in Europe, partly from a fear of flying and mostly from disdain for t…
1 week, 3 days ago
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Folk Songs, War, and the Sound of England
Episode 10452
At 42, already an established name in British music, Ralph Vaughan Williams volunteered as a stretcher bearer in the First World War, hauling wounded…
1 week, 3 days ago
Pauline Oliveros: Deep Listening, the Cistern, and Sonic Awareness
Episode 10451
In 1988, Pauline Oliveros climbed a 14-foot ladder into an empty underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, carrying an accordion. Inside, sou…
1 week, 3 days ago
Moondog: The Blind Viking Composer Hiding Genius on Sixth Avenue
Episode 10450
In the 1960s, a blind man in a handmade cloak and horned Viking helmet stood on Sixth Avenue in New York selling sheet music and poetry. Passersby sa…
1 week, 3 days ago
Hector Berlioz: The Lone Wolf Who Built the Modern Orchestra
Episode 10449
Hector Berlioz once packed a disguise, loaded pistols, and vials of poison, and set off across Europe to murder the fiancée who had jilted him, only …
1 week, 3 days ago
Rhapsody in Blue: The Five-Week Scramble That Made George Gershwin
Episode 10448
In January 1924, George Gershwin was shooting pool on Broadway when his brother Ira read him a New York Tribune article announcing he was hard at wor…
1 week, 3 days ago
Wilhelm Furtwängler: The Conductor Trapped Inside Nazi Germany
Episode 10447
A 1935 photograph shows Wilhelm Furtwängler shaking Adolf Hitler's hand on a concert stage. What it does not show is that minutes earlier, ordered to…
1 week, 3 days ago