Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Brahms' two piano concertos could not possibly be any more different.  The first, written when Brahms was just 25, is dramatic, stormy, and impulsive.  This makes sense seeing at it was written practi...

How do you orchestrate a painting? How do you take the detail and the visual imagery of a painting and translate that into something that is so vivid that even if you've never seen the painting before...

While the inspiration for the show today is likely obvious, I'm also very happy to get the chance to share this wonderful music with you, separate from the current horrors going on right now. Here's ...

In 1888, Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony was premiered. It was enthusiastically received by the audience, and by Tchaikovsky's friends. But Tchaikovsky's nemesis, the critics, were not so happy with the pi...

In 1902, the great French composer Gabriel Faure said this: "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see...

The year is 1910. Imagine that you are a young composer, and the music world is in flux all around you. Mahler is dying, and with his death many agreed that the great Austro-German symphonic tradition...

Rimsky-Korsakov, above anything else, is regarded as a master of orchestration, the art of creating orchestral sound and color. As Rachmaninoff said about Rimsky-Korsakov's music: "When there is a sno...

In May of 1937, R. Nathaniel Dett's oratorio "The Ordering of Moses" was premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony. The performance was carried live on national radio by NBC, but about 3/4's of the way thr...

"I never really thought of them as walls. I thought of them more as boundaries. Walls are a much more serious matter. You're not supposed to be able to get through, while boundaries at least you can c...

Sibelius never gets mentioned on "most" lists, the most innovative, modernistic, romantic, beautiful, conservative, ugly, violent, peaceful etc. In fact, no one is ever sure where to put him on these ...