Jul 27, 2020
I had the great pleasure of speaking with my friend Yundu Wang about her doctoral thesis exploring the connections between language and music. This research gets into thorny questions about the relationship between national origin and the way we interpret music, and also into questions of identity, stereotyping,...
Jul 20, 2020
Mahan Esfahani is a world-renowned harpsichordist who has said that it is his mission to rehabilitate the harpsichord as an instrument for modern audiences. In this conversation, we talked about Beethoven, playing modern music on the harpsichord, and nearly starting a riot over the music of Steve Reich! We...
Jul 16, 2020
Albert Camus once wrote: “when I describe what the catastrophe of man looks like, music comes into my mind—the music of Gustav Mahler.” The last movement of Mahler 6 is a symphony within a symphony. It is a difficult movement to understand, and even the way it ends is full of the emotional complexity that marks...
Understanding Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Varese, and Berio w/ John Heiss
Jul 13, 2020
It was such a pleasure to welcome back the great John Heiss to discuss more encounters with some of the greatest composers of the 20th century. We started off with a survey of Schoenberg’s music and how best to approach each period of his life. John is one of the premiere experts on Schoenberg so don't miss this! We...
Jul 9, 2020
There are few controversies like the ones surrounding the order of the inner movements of Mahler 6. Musicologists and conductors battle with each other about what Mahler meant and what his wife knew, and they also are at each other's throats about which order WORKS better logically in the symphony, regardless of...