Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchAnton Bruckner: The Insecure Genius Behind Monumental Symphonies
Episode 10276
Anton Bruckner wrote symphonies so monumental they sound carved from granite, yet the man himself was deeply insecure, submissive, and socially awkwa…
1 week, 3 days ago
Andrés Segovia: The Self-Taught Rebel Who Made the Classical Guitar
Episode 10275
Before Andrés Segovia, the classical guitar was a quiet parlor novelty. By the time he died in Madrid at 94, it was a centerpiece of the world's gran…
1 week, 3 days ago
Alfred Schnittke: Polystylism, Smuggled Scores, and a Loud Silence
Episode 10274
Carved into Alfred Schnittke's gravestone in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery is a fermata over a whole rest marked fortissimo: an infinitely loud silen…
1 week, 3 days ago
Albinoni's Adagio Mystery: The Wealthy Venetian Composer Bach Studied
Episode 10273
Tomaso Albinoni is remembered around the world for a single melancholy masterpiece, the Adagio in G minor, and yet he almost certainly did not write …
1 week, 3 days ago
Alban Berg: Secret Codes, the Number 23, and Emotion in 12-Tone Music
Episode 10272
Alban Berg survived the trenches of World War I, the riots his music provoked, and the rise of the Nazi regime, only to die at 50 from an infected in…
1 week, 3 days ago
Wynton Marsalis: Prodigy, Institution Builder and Guardian of Jazz
Episode 10271
In 1983, at age 22, Wynton Marsalis accepted the highest honor in his field in two fiercely separate genres, jazz and classical, on the same night, t…
1 week, 4 days ago
Money Jungle: Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach Collide
Episode 10270
New York City, September 17, 1962. Three titans walk into Sound Makers Studios on 57th Street without rehearsing a single note, and before the day is…
1 week, 4 days ago
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue and the Restless Mind Behind Modal Jazz
Episode 10269
What kind of artist creates one of the most foundational works in his field and then refuses to play it, saying it physically hurts and comparing it …
1 week, 4 days ago
Johnny Hodges: Duke Ellington's Alto Sax Voice and the Art of Saying Less
Episode 10268
Picture a saxophonist standing motionless on a swinging bandstand with a face so blank he looks bored, while the sound coming out of his horn brings …
1 week, 4 days ago