Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

What MAKES a moment in a piece of classical music? Sometimes it's the result of careful pacing from a composer, the slow build to a powerful release. Sometimes it's about surprise, a sudden explosion,...

From 1825-1827, Mendelssohn wrote 3 of his most beloved and most played works: his Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, his String Quartet, Op. 13, and the piece were going to talk about today, his Octet...

I left you last week after Part 1 of Mahler's 5th symphony, dazed and defeated.  There seems to be no hope, and no way out.  But as many of you know by now, Mahler reaches for the entire emotional spe...

There is a thread of musical theory called Schenkerian analysis, based on the work of Heinrich Schenker.  Schenker believed that musical works could be boiled down to their fundamental structures and ...

I'm not sure there's ever been a composer who changed as much throughout his or her life as Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg would become famous, or infamous, depending on who you talk to, for his invent...

Have you ever wondered what exactly goes on behind the scenes putting together an opera? Have you ever asked yourself how a director make decisions on how to interpret the libretto of an opera? Why do...

Clara Schumann, without a doubt, was one of the greatest pianists of all time.  Schumann's playing didn't just leave critics and audiences in raptures, it also left other composers amazed that their ...

Stefan Dohr is one of the greatest french horn players in the world today. He has been the Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world's greatest orchestras, since 1993. In this really...

Brahms was only 20 years old when Robert Schumann wrote his famous Neue Bahnen(New Paths) article that proclaimed Brahms as the future of music and the heir of Beethoven. Beethoven had only been dead ...

Just one year before Debussy wrote his legendary Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, he completed another groundbreaking work.  It was a string quartet, which he expected to be the first of many. But ...