Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

When the great pianist and composer Frederic Chopin decided to write a piano sonata in 1837, fashions had turned against the genre itself. Perhaps it was a feeling that Beethoven had essentially "finished" the genre, or perhaps it was a sense that a non-Germanic composer couldn't possibly master a form such as the Sonata, but Chopin's forays into the realm of the Piano Sonata were not generally appreciated. Robert Schumann famously said this about the Sonata: "The idea of calling it a sonata is a caprice, if not a jest, for he has simply bound together four of his most maddest children, thus under his name smuggling them into a place into which they could not else have penetrated.", This is criticism that we'll pick apart later, because it is very specific and goes to a big challenge within the piece. Mendelssohn also despised the piece, and until 1900, most of the critical reception to the piece was negative, criticizing its supposed lack of coherence and the strange last movement in particular. As a…

As I've often said, I love doing Patreon-sponsored episodes in part because they allow me to discover music I might never have encountered otherwise. Today's episode is one of those, because the truth is that before I made it, I had heard of Finzi, but that was about it. I knew nothing about the circumstances of his life or his music, and while I knew this was a hole in my musical knowledge, I hadn't had time to fill it. Well, thanks to Jillian, I got the time to explore this wonderful 20th-century composer's works, and now I'm ready to tell you about him, since I imagine his is an unfamiliar name to many of you listening. Gerald Finzi was a terrific composer and a fascinating figure in 20th-century music. He struck out on his own path, refusing to follow the trends of the time, and as a result his music has a special, unique quality: a bit more modest than that of someone trying to change the world, like Schoenberg, but nonetheless deeply human and often inspired by literary interests. Finzi was interested…

Dmitri Shostakovich: "I have set myself a task fraught with tremendous responsibility, to express in sound the immortal image of Lenin as a great son of the Russian people and as a leader of the masses. I have received numerous letters from all over the Soviet Union with regard to my future symphony. The most important advice contained therein was to make considerable use of musical folklore." In the massively consequential year of 1939, Shostakovich used these words to launch his Sixth Symphony. The piece was meant to have soloists and a chorus alongside the orchestra — perhaps a nod to his Second and Third Symphonies, which were essentially propaganda pieces. Shostakovich even promised to use the poem "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" by Vladimir Mayakovsky as the basis for his choral text. The Soviet public eagerly awaited this new symphony, which was inevitably going to be compared with his Fifth Symphony — the piece that had brought Shostakovich back into the Soviet government's good graces, and which remains one…

Grieg's Peer Gynt suites are among the best-known and best-loved works of classical music in the world. They are practically embedded into popular culture, being used in a dizzying number of cartoons, advertisements, and films. In the classical music world, as with Beethoven's 5th symphony, they have almost become a cliché, and they are often performed on so-called Pops concerts. The two big hits from Peer Gynt, Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King, are instantly recognizable to the general public, even if they don't know who wrote the music or where it comes from. And where all this music comes from is really interesting, and is going to be one of the main topics of this show. Because the famous music from Peer Gynt comes from the two suites that Grieg took from his massive score of incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play in verse, Peer Gynt. The two suites together take about 45 minutes to perform, but Grieg actually wrote an extra hour's worth of music! He then extracted, for his suites, the…

When it comes to a piece like the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, a few words or phrases regularly come up: the concerto is described as "mellow" or Mozart's "swan song," but most often it is described as "perfect." Such a perfect piece as Mozart's Clarinet Concerto must have been hugely popular during Mozart's lifetime, right? It must have been played all over, by all the virtuoso clarinetists of the day. Well, that is not even close to the case. At the age of 35, Mozart was kind of old news in the economically depressed, repressed, and censored city of Vienna in 1790. There were very few concerts during this period, and Mozart's popularity had waned severely. The clarinet concerto, one of a wealth of brilliant (and yes, perfect) pieces Mozart wrote in the final year of his life, was performed once by the man for whom Mozart wrote it, Anton Stadler, before Mozart's death, but the location and the program of that concert are forgotten. The manuscript of the concerto is lost, which means we actually don't know a…

It took a lot to make the composer and critic Virgil Thomson happy. He was famous for savaging new works he didn't like, and the truth is, he didn't like very many new works at all. One exception was Bohuslav Martinů's very first symphony, written in 1942. Thomson said this: "The Martinů Symphony is a beaut. It is wholly lovely and doesn't sound like anything else." The story of how this symphony came to be is as fascinating as the music itself, and it's perfectly in keeping with the relentless curiosity of Martinů as a composer. Martinů, a prolific composer who wrote nearly 400 works, had just arrived in the US in 1941 as a refugee from war-torn Czechoslovakia. He was 51 years old and had never written a symphony before. This delay wasn't a case of crushing self-doubt, as it was for Brahms. It was actually a seeming lack of interest in the symphonic genre, which was not unusual at the time. But in 1942, Martinů sent a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a…

Thence the universe resounds With a joyful cry I AM. These are the final lines of Alexander Scriabin's epic Poem of Ecstasy, a 300-line poem that takes nearly 10 minutes to read aloud and is one of the most surreal texts in the world. Scriabin wrote a Poem of Ecstasy in text and a Poem of Ecstasy in music simultaneously. Both are absolutely wild, with the musical Poem of Ecstasy being a 20-minute thrill ride that alternates between languid, sinewy, seductive music and some of the loudest, most over-the-top, and dramatic music that could possibly exist. I've always been fascinated by Scriabin, and so this week's episode is an opportunity to talk about his wild (I'm going to be using that word a lot today) life and the eclectic philosophy behind Scriabin's works, as well as to take you through this masterpiece of musical sensuality. Scriabin not only doesn't shy away from sensual aspects in music but instead fully embraces them; in fact, the original title for this piece was Orgiastic Poem! Thankfully, since…

Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams; Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God, And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets. These lines are affixed to the first page of Sibelius' tone poem Tapiola, a piece that is mysterious in many ways and stands as Sibelius' last completed major work. You might be expecting me to say that Sibelius died soon after its composition, but this is not the case. Sibelius wrote Tapiola in 1926, but did not pass away until 1957. Over the course of Sibelius' final 30 years, he wrote almost no music, a creative silence that has never been properly explained. There are many theories about this silence, but the answer to why Sibelius stopped composing might never be found. So, we have this final major piece, Tapiola, written at the very height of the composer's powers. Tapiola, a piece of around 15–20 minutes in duration, is concentrated Sibelius at its very best. It is a piece full of mystery, atmosphere, and most of all, the immense and overwhelming power of nature.…

In the aftermath of World War II, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, who had been living in occupied Paris throughout the war, wrote a new symphony entitled "Liturgical." He wrote an extended commentary on the piece, which included these lines: "My intention in this work was to symbolize the reaction of modern man against the morass of barbarism, stupidity, suffering, machine-mindedness, and bureaucracy that has been besieging us for some years now. I have reproduced in musical terms the combat that is joined in man's heart between yielding to the blind forces that encircle him and his instinct for happiness, his love of peace, his apprehension of a divine refuge. My symphony is, if you like, a drama played out between three characters, whether real or symbolic: misery, happiness, and man. These are everlasting themes. I have tried to give them new life." It doesn't get much clearer than that in terms of a "message" behind a piece, and the symphony reflects these feelings of Honegger's in almost every note.…

In 1872, at the age of 31, Dvořák wrote a Piano Quintet designated as Opus 5. Dvořák was not a prodigy like some other famous composers; instead, his development as a composer was slow and steady. Later in his life, he would look back at some of these early pieces with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment, burning some and revising others. In the case of the Op. 5 Piano Quintet, Dvořák decided to revise the piece in 1887, some 15 years after its original composition, at a point when he was approaching the peak of his creative powers. Soon, however, he cast aside the older quintet and decided to write an entirely new piece. What we were gifted was his Op. 81 Piano Quintet: a luminous, gorgeous, exciting, tragic, joyful, folk-like, classical, and flat-out masterful work that in some ways sums up what makes Dvořák such a wonderful composer, and why his music never really gets old. The Dvořák Piano Quintet is the kind of piece that feels like an old friend from the moment you start listening. Forty minutes…

You might be wondering: why on earth would I choose a piece that is literally called "Dissonance" when I was looking for something a bit simpler or cleaner to talk about on the show today? Actually, Mozart's Dissonance quartet, probably his most famous and beloved quartet, was not called "Dissonance" by Mozart, and the rest of the piece is thought of as one of Mozart's most outgoing and cheerful works, though I think there's a bit more to it than that. This quartet was part of a set of quartets dedicated to his friend and mentor Joseph Haydn, the father of the String Quartet. Upon their publication, Mozart wrote to Haydn: "Behold here, famous man and dearest friend, my six children. They are, to be sure, the fruit of long and arduous work, yet some friends have encouraged me to assume that I shall see this work rewarded to some extent at least, and this flatters me into believing that these children shall one day offer me some comfort." The final one of this set of six quartets is the one we're going to talk…

Bienvenue dans cette édition spéciale du podcast Sticky Notes en français ! Aujourd'hui, nous parlons de la symphonie la plus célèbre du monde, et de la symphonie que nous allons interpréter à Lille les 21, 22 et 23 mai, la 5e symphonie de Beethoven. Et veuillez me pardonner pour toutes les erreurs de prononciation dans ma deuxième langue ! Bonne écoute ! »

Thank you to Jerry for sponsoring today's episode on Patreon! Goethe's Faust is considered to be the greatest work of German literature. This sprawling, 2-part play occupied Goethe's life for nearly 60 years, from its original version, begun in 1772, all the way to Goethe's final revisions before his death. It inspired just about every Romantic era composer who came after it, including Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Berlioz, Gounod, Mahler, and our subject for the show today, Franz Liszt. Liszt, who was in many ways the world's first pop star, was initially skeptical of Faust, saying that he couldn't relate to the eponymous main character of the play. He wrote: "Faust's personality scatters and dissipates itself; he takes no action, lets himself be driven, hesitates, experiments, loses his way, considers, bargains, and is interested in his own little happiness." But slowly, Liszt began to be taken in by this remarkable play and decided to try his hand at a reflection on it, writing a massive,…

This is a free preview of my new series of mini-episodes over on Patreon all about Schubert's Die Schöne Mullerin, one of the great masterpieces of the 19th century. Each week we'll explore one song from the cycle, in a series of 21 episodes! Come join us over on Patreon.com/stickynotespodcast and thanks for listening!

This is a continuation of my new series where I learn about a new piece from a great friend/musician. This week I'm thrilled to welcome Case Scaglione, the Music Director of the Orchestre National D'Ile de France, for a discussion of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. This is one of the most beloved pieces in the entire repertoire, and my longtime skepticism of Wagner has always kept me away. But Case has such a beautiful way of talking about Wagner that I might very well be convinced to give it another shot! This is a really fun and also philosophical episode - I hope you enjoy it! https://open.spotify.com/track/3HcRU6WhAZ6ZON9tFhanJv?si=4cf47cfde06a4434 https://open.spotify.com/track/7AtzmeOGG4PdXcfoVklSo1?si=69034a5a52704929

The story of Lili Boulanger's life is one of the most fascinating and tragic in all of musical history. A remarkably precocious talent, Boulanger learned to read sheet music before the alphabet, played the violin, piano, cello, and harp, and composed regularly from a young age. Despite her talent and commitment, Boulanger suffered from chronic illness her entire life, which severely dampened her budding career and prevented her from reaching her potential. She died at the age of just 24, likely from Crohn's disease, and left behind several spectacular pieces that unfortunately were soon relatively forgotten. Boulanger's sister, Nadia, became one of the preeminent composition teachers of the 20th century, working with luminaries such as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, and many more. But throughout the 20th century there was very little interest in Lili Boulanger's musical output. That has changed somewhat with a renewed focus on bringing the works of female…

In a letter to Tchaikovsky's nephew Vladimir Davydov, Tchaikovsky wrote: "I'm very pleased with its content, but dissatisfied, or rather not completely satisfied, with the instrumentation. For some reason it's not coming out as I intended. It would be typical and unsurprising if this symphony were torn to pieces or little appreciated, as that wouldn't be the first time such a thing had happened. But I absolutely consider it to be the best, and in particular the most sincere, of all my creations. I love it as I have never loved any of my other musical offspring." I'm returning to that word sincere this week for Part 2, because it's the through line that makes Tchaikovsky's music so immediately arresting. You always know exactly where you stand with Tchaikovsky, since he always seems to be speaking so honestly in his music. Well, almost always. The last two movements of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony are among the most fascinating in the entire Western classical repertoire, and the reason for their fascination…

The great and somewhat controversial conductor Leopold Stokowski said this about Tchaikovsky: "His musical utterance comes directly from the heart and is a spontaneous expression of his innermost feeling. It is as sincere as if it were written with his blood." I couldn't agree more with Stokowski, because I think he hits on a word that has made Tchaikovsky's music so powerful to almost every audience that encounters it: sincere. Tchaikovsky's music is so profoundly moving because you feel as if there is no gap between the music and Tchaikovsky's emotions. It's as if he is earnestly speaking to you through his music. But paradoxically, this ability that Tchaikovsky had made him a punching bag of critics and cynics throughout his career and even into today. Even though Tchaikovsky remains one of the most popular composers in the Western Classical canon, his name is still not treated with the respect of a composer like Beethoven or Brahms or other luminaries. I understand that, but I also think Tchaikovsky's…

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony. Well, how about this one: how many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end in a minor key? The answer? Just one, Op. 59, No. 2, the subject of today's show. And that minor key is hugely important to this darkest of the three Op. 59 quartets, three towering achievements that changed the string quartet repertoire for good. Beethoven, as I've said many times on the show, was a revolutionary within limits, always expanding, rethinking, and reshaping what was possible without breaking anything beyond repair. But make no mistake: the Op. 59 quartets were revolutionary works. No one had written anything like them before in terms of scope, emotional intensity, difficulty, and complexity. In fact, like a few of Beethoven's greatest works, they were received with confusion and, in some cases, anger by musicians,…

Brahms spent much of his adult life battling with his ambition to write the next great symphony and his terror at the shadow of Beethoven standing behind him. Brahms tortured himself for 14 years with his first symphony, and only published it when he was 49 years old. But when that symphony finally came out, it was a relative success for a new work, and with immense relief, Brahms quickly turned out another symphony in just 4 months. Brahms' first symphony was quickly dubbed "Beethoven's 10th" something that annoyed Brahms to no end. When told that the main theme of the last movement resembled the Ode to Joy, he notoriously responded, "any ass can see that!" But all the same, Brahms had been re-anointed as Beethoven's successor with the symphony, and so therefore his second symphony would also be given a Beethovinian name, Pastoral. The question since the symphony has been written has been this: just how pastoral and idyllic is this symphony? Many commentators see an unadulterated joy and gentleness in the…

The story of Alexander von Zemlinsky's The Mermaid begins with a passionate love affair and ends in heartbreak of the most unabashedly big-R Romantic kind. In 1900, the young, fabulously talented, and famously beautiful Alma Schindler came to Zemlinsky's home to study composition. Wildly passionate feelings soon developed between them, and Alma wrote the following in her diary: "I would gladly be pregnant for him, gladly bear his children. His blood and mine, commingled: my beauty with his intellect. I would gladly serve him in his professional life, live for him and his kith and kin, breathe [for him], attend to his every happiness, serve him with a gentle hand. God give me the strength and the willpower to do so." The relationship lasted a little over a year, until one night when Schindler attended a party that happened to be frequented by a brilliant conductor and composer twenty years her senior: Gustav Mahler. The rest is history. Zemlinsky was devastated and poured his energies into a tone poem based…

Many aspects of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's life seem relatively normal when it comes to composers of the Baroque era. He was prolific, died young, and his music became very famous only after his death. However, all three of these facts are complicated by the unique circumstances of Pergolesi's life. He was somewhat prolific, but dozens of pieces that were once attributed to him are no longer considered authentic, including much of the music that Igor Stravinsky made famous in his ballet Pulcinella. Pergolesi did not just die young; he died remarkably young, at the age of twenty-six, from tuberculosis. And the idea that he became famous only after his death actually made him unusual among composers of his time, when popularity during one's lifetime was the primary mark of success. Most composers quickly fell into obscurity after they died. In Pergolesi's case, the opposite occurred. There was a massive surge of interest in his music immediately after his death, which in some ways contributed to the…

We humans seem to love comeback stories, and there is no comeback quite as compelling in the classical music world as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. It was written three years after the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony, a premiere so catastrophic that it lives on in the annals of musical history, and is the essential starting point for understanding the Second Piano Concerto and how it came to be. The concerto revived both Rachmaninoff's career and his spirits, and it remains his most famous orchestral work. It is a towering masterpiece of Romanticism, overflowing with glorious melody after glorious melody, supported by virtuosic and sumptuous writing for the solo piano, and a deeply satisfying orchestral part that continues to make audiences swoon around the world. Today on the show, we'll begin with the story of Rachmaninoff's First Symphony, and then walk through this extraordinary concerto, highlighting what truly makes Rachmaninoff's music so special. Hint: it's not just the pretty…

A piece that I have been asked to cover probably a dozen times is Handel's Messiah. It's a piece I love, but a piece that I've never conducted or played, and so therefore I don't know it incredibly well. There are plenty of pieces like this in the repertoire, and so I've decided to start a new series on Sticky Notes, which will be to take pieces that I don't know very well and to bring on experts to help me learn about them. This series will be a bit sporadic, and won't disrupt the but I'm really excited to share the first episode in this series, all about the Handel Messiah, featuring my good friend and the wonderful conductor Aram Demirjian, the Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony! I really hope you enjoy this episode and that you have a Happy Holidays and New Year!

Mr. Holst, wherever you are, I apologize in advance for what I'm about to say. From my research, I know you resented this fact, but unfortunately, I think it's true. Here it is: despite the large catalogue of music Gustav Holst composed, much of it wonderful, he is essentially a one-hit wonder in the classical music world, à la Pachelbel, Dukas, Mascagni, and others. His one hit is a big one, though: an epic, seven-movement suite entitled The Planets. As I said, Holst was not happy about this in the slightest. He was a prolific composer and someone who devoted himself fully to his subjects. He considered other works he wrote better than The Planets, and yet, in the end, we hear very little of his other music, though since the 1980s some of it has been performed more frequently, particularly in the UK. But The Planets is truly a hit: the reason we know Holst's name today, and one of the most frequently performed pieces in the entire Western classical canon. Holst took a novel approach to his depiction of the…

In the 1960s, Leonard Bernstein famously helped to popularize the music of a then relatively obscure composer, Gustav Mahler. His work, as well as the work of other conductors, made Mahler into a classical-music household name. Mahler's symphonies are played every year all over the world, and he is firmly ensconced in the so-called canon of standard orchestral repertoire. Would it surprise you to know that Franck's D Minor Symphony once had the same reputation? It was played almost every year by most major orchestras, it was recorded by all the great conductors, and it was a fixture of the canon just like a Brahms symphony. Nowadays you would be lucky if, outside of France and Belgium, you hear Franck's Symphony once every five years, if that. The truth is that, other than a short golden period for this symphony, it has either been controversial (around the time it was premiered) or ignored (nowadays), which is a real shame, since it is a glorious piece that I would argue is drastically underrated in our…

Nowadays it's hard to imagine Maurice Ravel as a "bad-boy" revolutionary, a member of a group whose name can be loosely translated as The Hooligans. To most listeners today, Ravel's music is the very picture of sumptuous beauty. But the group he belonged to, Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), earned its name because of its members' uncompromising attitudes about music; attitudes that clashed sharply with the conservative tastes of the establishment. Another composer who belonged to Les Apaches was the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Falla is certainly not as well known as Ravel, but the two became fast friends when he arrived in Paris in 1907. They formed a kind of mutual-admiration society that proved immensely fruitful for both of them. Falla was deeply impressed by Ravel's Spanish-inflected music, marveling at its authenticity given that Ravel was French. But Ravel, now a symbol of French music, was the son of a Swiss father and a Spanish-speaking mother, and he was born just eleven miles from the Spanish…

Longtime listeners of Sticky Notes know that Shostakovich's 10 symphony was the inaugural piece covered on the show. It's been 8 years(!) since that show, so I've totally re-written the episode and had the privilege of presenting this new version live with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra last week in Aalborg. Shostakovich, like so many composers before him, was obsessed with musical codes and messages, with songs that expressed two or more meanings, with ideas that were at once black and white and profoundly complex. This also describes Shostakovich himself, a man who was incredibly guarded with his public persona, and even his private persona as well. It is impossible to know anything for sure with Shostakovich, and to me therein lies the greatest strength of his music. The 10th symphony has been described as a portrayal of the Stalin years, as a portrayal of obsessive love, as a requiem, as sarcastic, as humorous, as agonizing, as triumphant, as, as, as….and the truth is that like all of the greatest works…

There are so many great apocryphal stories in the long history of classical music, from the reason Tchaikovsky wrote his Sixth Symphony to what famous composers supposedly said on their deathbeds, to my favorite story: how Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 96, The Miracle, got its name. Apparently, during the premiere of the symphony, a chandelier fell, but miraculously didn't hit anyone. Hence, The Miracle Symphony. The chandelier did, in fact, fall, but we now know it happened during the premiere of Haydn's Symphony No. 102, which has no nickname. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, the 96th Symphony is performed far more often than the 102nd, likely because of its nickname, even though it's the nickname of the wrong symphony. The Barber Violin Concerto has a great and true story behind it. But before certain information was revealed in 2010, the story everyone knew was quite different. The original version goes like this: Barber had completed the first two movements of his Violin Concerto and sent…

One of my favorite things about having Patreon sponsors is that they often suggest the most fascinating pieces and topics for shows. Adrian, who sponsored a show last year, gave me one of my favorite prompts when he suggested looking at works based on literature. Now he's sponsored another episode, this time with an equally compelling idea that I was eager to explore right away. His prompt was: "The evolution of conducting techniques throughout recorded history. How have innovations from great conductors changed how music is performed and understood?" As a conductor, the thought of diving into different recordings of a single piece naturally whets my appetite. But the real reason I was so excited about this episode is that interpretation is, in my view, wildly misunderstood. I've tried to tackle this idea in many different ways, in my episode about the sound of the violin with Soovin Kim and my dad, Donald Weilerstein; in my "What Does Music Mean?" episode; and even in "What Does a Conductor Really Do?" But…

The great Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski said this after the premature death of his contemporary Grazyna Bacewicz: "She was born with an incredible wealth of musical talent, which she succeeded to bring to full flourish through an almost fanatical zeal and unwavering faith in her mission. The intensity of her activities was so great that she managed, in a cruelly-shortened life, to give birth to such treasures that any composer of her stature with a considerably longer life span could only envy." Bacewicz is a name that is probably not that familiar to you, but during her lifetime she was an extremely popular composer in her native Poland and across Europe as well. In the United States, her music has been rarely performed, though this has started to shift thanks to a renewed interest in female composers of the past. This new look at Bacewicz has revealed an incredible wealth of music. Bacewicz was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, writing over 200 works during her short lifetime!…

I had such a wonderful time joining the jazz podcast You'll Hear It! We talked about the meeting of jazz and classical music, a topic I've explored before, but never in this much depth and never with so much input from jazz musicians and experts like Peter Martin and Adam Maness. We talk about great jazz and classical composers, but we also talk about the strange divide between jazz musicians and classical musicians, trying to break down the barriers that exist between purveyors of these wonderful genres of music. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did!

In the mid-1920s, Maurice Ravel wrote a letter to the legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger's class was a mecca for composers, both young and old, and musicians from all over the world vied to study with her. But Ravel's letter wasn't on his own behalf. Instead, he urged Boulanger to take on a young student whom Ravel himself had declined to teach. He wrote: "There is a musician here endowed with the most brilliant, most enchanting, and perhaps the most profound talent: George Gershwin. His worldwide success no longer satisfies him, for he is aiming higher. He knows that he lacks the technical means to achieve his goal. In teaching him those means, one might ruin his talent. Would you have the courage, which I wouldn't dare have, to undertake this awesome responsibility?" Boulanger also declined to take Gershwin as a student, fearing, like Ravel, that she might damage his spontaneity and dynamic jazz sensibility. Whether or not the famous story is true (that Ravel turned down Gershwin's…

There is a special category when it comes to Beethoven; a catalogue that doesn't include complete symphonies, sonatas, concerti, string quartets, etc., but just single movements. This is the catalogue of great Beethoven slow movements. Beethoven's slow movements are like a great Tolstoy novel. They span the gamut of human experience and also reach beyond it, into something we cannot understand but all somehow perceive. Simply put, Beethoven often seems to know us better than we know ourselves. This brings me to the slow movement of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata. Unlike those late quartet slow movements, the slow movement of the Hammerklavier is not about ecstatic contemplation. Instead, it is a movement of pure and profound despair. It has been described as "a mausoleum of the collective suffering of the world," and "the apotheosis of pain, of that deep sorrow for which there is no remedy, and which finds expression not in passionate outpourings, but in the immeasurable stillness of utter woe." This is…

Beethoven once wrote to his publisher: "What is difficult, is also beautiful, good, great, and so forth. Hence everyone will realize that this is the most lavish praise that can be bestowed, since what is difficult makes one sweat." If this credo manifests itself most powerfully in any one of Beethoven's works, it might be the piece we'll talk about today, the piano Sonata Op. 106, nicknamed, "Hammerklavier." It is the longest Sonata Beethoven ever wrote, which essentially means that it was the longest sonata anyone had written up to that point. It marks one of the pivot points between Beethoven's so-called heroic period and his late period, where his music became even more cosmically beautiful than before. It is certainly his most ambitious Sonata to that point, and his most difficult. The scale of the Hammerklavier sonata is hard to describe; in around 45 minutes of music, Beethoven explores the full gamut of human emotion. The intensity, the difficulty, and the concentration that this sonata requires from…

The collaboration between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht is rightly legendary. The two men could not have been more different from each other, and like the Brahms/Joachim relationship I mentioned in my recent show about the Brahms Double concerto, the friendship between Weill and Brecht was stormy to say the least. The two collaborated on some of the most memorable works of the Weimar era in Germany, such as the Threepenny Opera, which features a pretty famous tune called Mack the Knife. Their final collaboration was on the "sung ballet" The Seven Deadly Sins. This is a piece that was written at a point of remarkably high tension within Weimar Germany. On an artistic level, the 1920s and early 1930s had seen a veritable explosion in the world of culture, with art, dance, theater, and music all featuring artists who were pushing the boundaries with wild experimentation and a kind of ecstatic fervor that produced some of the world's greatest and most memorable cultural achievements. On a parallel track however,…

I so enjoyed making this latest episode in my collaboration with G Henle Publishers. I talked with two absolute experts in their fields, Norbert Mülleman and Stefan Knüpfer, all about how to edit Ravel's music, and how to create the Ravel sound on the piano. This episode definitely veers into some very nerdy territory, but Norbert and Stefan are both so brilliant at explaining very high level concepts in a way that anyone can understand, from a person who has never looked at a score to a professional performer. I think everyone will learn a lot from this episode and I don't think you'll ever hear Ravel the same way again after listening! Enjoy!

Admit it: if you're a fan of classical music—or even just a regular concertgoer—you might have glanced at the title of this episode and done a double take. The Dvořák Violin Concerto? Not the Cello Concerto? One of the things I love about my job as a conductor—and my side gig as a podcast host—is bringing audiences and listeners like you pieces you may never have heard before, even if they're by extremely well-known composers. Don't get me wrong, I love the blockbusters. But there's a special thrill in introducing someone to something new. Now, some of you might already be big fans of the Dvořák Violin Concerto. But in my experience, it's relatively unknown compared to Dvořák's more famous works. I've never performed it myself, and I've only heard it live once. It's not part of most touring soloists' repertoire, and it's just one of those pieces that rarely comes up—especially compared to the Cello Concerto, which I think I've conducted at least once every season since becoming a conductor. This concerto…

It's entirely possible that we would not know the name of Johannes Brahms very well if Brahms hadn't met Joseph Joachim as a very young man. Joachim, who was one of the greatest violinists of all time, had already established himself as touring soloist and recitalist, and he happened to know the musical power couple of Robert and Clara Schumann quite well. Joachim encouraged Brahms to go to Dusseldorf to meet the Schumann's, and the rest is history. I've talked about the Brahms-Schumann relationship dozens of times on the show before, but to keep it very brief, Robert Schumann's rhapsodic article Neue Bahnen(new paths) launched Brahms' career, and until Schumann's deterioration from mental illness he acted as a valued friend and mentor for Brahms. Clara Schumann, as a performer, was a powerful advocate for Brahms' music as well as a devoted and loving friend throughout the rest of their lives. Almost constantly present in this relationship was the sound of Joseph Joachim's violin. Brahms did not have a huge…

The commission for a new Clarinet Concerto from the great American composer Aaron Copland came from a rather unlikely source: Benny Goodman, the man known as the King of Swing. Goodman was one of the most famous and important jazz musicians of all time, but in the late 1940s, swing music was on the decline, and bebop had taken over. Goodman experimented with bebop for a time but never fully took to it in the way that he had so mastered swing. Goodman then turned towards the classical repertoire, commissioning music from many of the great composers of the time, such as Bela Bartok, Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith, Francis Poulenc, and of course, Aaron Copland. Copland eagerly agreed to the commission, and spent the next year carefully crafting the concerto, which is full of influences from Jazz as well as from Latin American music, perhaps inspired by the four months Copland spent in Latin America while writing the piece. What resulted from all this was a short and compact piece in one continuous movement…

Steve Reich, the great American contemporary composer, provided this program note about his work Different Trains: "The idea for the piece came from my childhood. When I was one year old my parents separated. My singer, song-writer mother moved to Los Angeles and my attorney father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I travelled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by my governess. While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation." Reich went about this piece in a completely innovative way: he recorded voices and then created the musical material for the piece out of the voices themselves, something that had never been done before. Therefore, the text and music material were integrated in a…

Debussy and Ravel are often described as the prototypical musical impressionists. It is often said that the two composers are the closest equivalents to the artistic world of Monet, Renoir, Pisarro, Degas, and others. But both Ravel and Debussy (like Monet for that matter), vehemently rejected the term Impressionism, and they both felt that they were striking out on their own individual paths in their msuic. That didn't stop the public and critics from constantly comparing the music of these two shining lights of French music, despite the fact that Ravel and Debussy are actually quite different. Comparing Ravel and Debussy is a bit like comparing Haydn and Mozart. At first glance, there are many similarities, but if you look and listen more closely, Ravel and Debussy(like Mozart and Haydn) had totally different approaches, goals, and styles. All of the constant comparisons and attempts at making the composers compete with each other had a real impact on Debussy and Ravel. Initially they were friends and…

It's hard to overstate the depth of the connection between Dmitri Shostakovich and the legendary cellist Mstistlav Rostropovich. Shostakovich and Rostropovich were extremely close friends, and Shostakovich wrote and dedicated several works to him, including the piece we're going to talk about today, the first Cello Concerto. Rostropovich had been desperate to get Shostakovich to write a concerto for him, but Shostakovich's wife had one simple piece of advice: if you want Shostakovich to write something for you, don't talk to him about it or even mention it. So Rostropovich waited and waited, until July of 1959, when he was asked by Shostakovich to come to Leningrad to try out a new Cello Concerto. Shostakovich played through the piece for Rostropovich, turned to him, and asked him if he liked it. Rostropovich apparently told Shostakovich that he "had been shaken to the core." Shostakovich, in his famously modest way, then shakily asked Rostropovich if he could dedicate the concerto to him. Rostropovich…

Amy Beach is a name that might not be familiar to you. She was born in 1867 and died in 1944, and her life was one of the most fascinating and varied in musical history. She was a child prodigy, became a successful pianist, and then pivoted to composing at her husband's request. She was one of the first successful composers without any training from Europeans, and when her Gaelic Symphony was performed for the first time in 1896, it became the first symphony by an American woman to be published or performed. This symphony, and Beach's whole career, is inextricably linked with the history and mores of the time, from the influence of Dvorak on American music, to Beach's stop and start relationship to performing. The Gaelic symphony is a remarkable amalgamation of American symphonic brilliance, some European influence(especially from Dvorak), and the music of Beach's own heritage. It's a symphony that was very popular in its time and then was forgotten, but now is finding itself on the stage more and more…

Voici un épisode bonus spécial de Sticky Notes en français, en avant-première de mes concerts avec l'Orchestre National de Lille, présentant la 13e symphonie de Shostakovich. Si vous souhaitez écouter la version anglaise de cet épisode, elle est disponible dans les archives. Je m'excuse pour toute mauvaise prononciation en cours de route, et j'espère que vous l'apprécierez ! This is a special bonus episode of Sticky Notes in French ahead of my concerts with the Orchestre National de Lille, featuring Shostakovich's 13th symphony. If you would like to listen to the English version of this episode, it is available in the archives. Apologies for any mis-prononciations along the way, and I hope that you enjoy it!

Magician, Swiss Watchmaker, Aloof, Elegant, Precise, Soulful, Childlike, Naive, Warm: these are all words that have been used to describe Maurice Ravel, a man of elegant contradictions. But perhaps these contradictions are why his music remains so beloved and universally appealing to so many musicians and audience members. Ravel has long been one of my favorite composers, and I always adore listening to his music and performing it. For the 150th anniversary of his birth, the legendary publishing house of G Henle has decided to focus on Ravel and his circle this year, calling this series Ravel and Friends. A few months ago, the Henle office contacted me to ask if I would be willing to collaborate with them on a series of Sticky Notes episodes about Ravel, each one focusing on the relationship between Ravel and another composer who was in his circle. This sounded like an amazing idea, and so I jumped at the chance to work with them. So, over the course of the next 5-6 months, you will be seeing 5 episodes…

Nationalism, patriotism, cultural identity, a sense of home; these are concepts and ideas whose popularity have ebbed and flowed throughout history. Nationalism has been seen as a natural expression of cultural identity and pride, and it also has been at the core of virulent racism and xenophobia. Patriotism has been used as a cudgel by all sides of the political spectrum for good and evil, and a sense of home has led to cultural explosions and also to some of the bloodiest wars of all time. For Bedrich Smetana, these concepts were extremely multi-layered. He was a proud Bohemian nationalist for much of his life, but he also barely spoke Czech(German was the lingua franca among educated classes in Prague), and he was also disenchanted with the Prague musical establishment due to their cool reception of his Wagnerian/Lisztian style. He even left Prague for a time to work in Gothenburg Sweden, writing curtly to his parents: "Prague did not wish to acknowledge me, so I left it." But only 6 years later, he wrote…

In the early 1930s, at the height of the atonal and twelve tone movement in music, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned a concerto from the Viennese Composer Alban Berg. Berg declined at first, saying that his idiom was not appropriate to a concerto and that he did not belong in the world of Wienawski and Vieuxtemps, two relatively obscure composers nowadays who wrote virtuoso showpieces for the violin that are very exciting but not particularly deep on a musical level. Krasner countered with the Beethoven and Brahms' violin concertos, which, frankly, is a pretty great argument! Krasner was convinced that Berg was the vessel through which 12 tone/serial music could reach, as the great writer Michael Sternberg called it, "it's expressive potential." The 12 tone/serial technique of writing music was still controversial at the time(and it remains that way now), with many composers and performers embracing atonal music, with others, especially audiences, turning away. Berg finally accepted the…

There is nothing like hearing a Late Beethoven String Quartet for the first time. Beethoven's late string quartets, Op. 127, Op. 130, Op. 131, Op. 132, and Op. 135, are among the 5 greatest pieces of music ever written for any combination of instruments. They reach a kind of cosmic understanding of the world that is unparalleled, and they remain the Mount Everest of every string quartet's repertoire. The quartet we're going to be talking about today, Op. 135, is slightly the outlier from the set, in that it is less expansive, slightly less complex, and as Misha Amory from the Brentano String Quartet says, "it is the work of a composer who seems to have suddenly attained some new, simple truth after miles of struggle." Op. 135 is Beethoven's last completed work, and as this year begins, I thought I would check off number 2 of 5 Late Beethoven Quartets with this work that seems to exist on another plane of existence entirely. It is a piece of great depth and sadness, and also of ecstasy and lightness. It is a…

I'm so happy to share this live episode of Sticky Notes that I did with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra in Denmark back in October! This episode covered Berlioz's remarkable Symphonie Fantastique - the ultimate symphonic thrill ride. Join the orchestra and I as we talk our way through this symphony, from it's opium fueled back story, to its innovative structure and style, to the dreams and reveries of the first movement and the sadistic glee of the final two movements, and a whole lot more. Thank you to the Aalborg Symphony for their participation in this project, and I hope all of you listening have had a wonderful holidays and a Happy New Year! See you in the New Year with all new episodes from Beethoven's Opus 135 String Quartet to Smetana's Ma Vlast and much much more!