Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Shostakovich's 4th symphony is not for the faint of heart. It is a massive work, around an hour in length, and it calls for the second largest orchestra of any in Shostakovich's output. It is uncompro...

They are the most famous 8 notes in not only Western Music, but probably in all of music. If you walk down the street and ask someone to name a painting, they might say the Mona Lisa.  A movie?  Maybe...

This show is a bit different today. Last year I did a live video podcast on Mozart's Requiem for my Patreon subscribers. I've now edited that show into an audio-only version for everyone to be able to...

The history of classical music is littered with the stories of great composers who tragically died young. The composer I've been talking about for the last two episodes, Franz Schubert, died at 31. Mo...

There are a few tropes when it comes to Schubert's late music. The pieces are very long. They have four movements.  The first two movemnts are expansive, magisterial explorations of the human psyche, ...

For a long time I've received emails and messages from people asking, and sometimes demanding, that I explore the solo piano repertoire. Other than a look at the Goldberg Variations of Bach, I've basi...

H.C. Robbins Landon, the great musicologist, once wrote about Mozart that his music was "an excuse for mankind's existence and a small hope for our ultimate survival." I couldn't agree more, especiall...

My first interaction with the musical term modes was Leonard Bernstein's brilliant Young People's Concert, also called What is a Mode? In that show, Bernstein showed how modes are an essential part of...

In 1857, Brahms wrote to his friend Joseph Joachim about his first Piano Concerto, saying, " "I have no judgment about this piece anymore, nor any control over it."  Brahms first began sketching his f...

Very often, when I tell people that I'm a classical musician, I am told, "wow, I love classical music! It's so relaxing!" I think almost all classical musicians have heard that before, and you know wh...