Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

If you haven't listened to Part 1 of this episode about Mahler's 4th symphony, I highly recommend doing that, as every movement of this symphony builds to the "Heavenly Life" of the last movement. On ...

After the truly heavenly slow movement of Mahler's 4th symphony, a soprano emerges and sings a song literally called "The Heavenly Life." It is a symphonic ending like no other, one that leaves the li...

If you joined me last week, you heard about the severe intestinal illness that Beethoven suffered from during the year of 1825.  Beethoven thought that he was near death; he was spitting up blood, in ...

I had long hesitated to write a show about any of Beethoven's late string quartets.  These are pieces that professional quartets spend the better part of their careers grappling with, struggling with,...

At the top of the score for the Danish composer Carl Nielsen's 4th symphony, he wrote: "Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable." This could easily be the shortest podcast I've ever done. I coul...

The stories, legends, and myths about the trials and travails of composers lives are legion, like Beethoven's battles against fate, Mozart and Schubert's struggles with finances, Brahms' failures with...

Elgar's Cello Concerto was composed in the shadow of World War 1. It was a piece that marked a profound shift in Elgar's outlook on life and music, and was his last major work before a long silence ca...

The "love theme" from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture is one of the most famous themes in the history of Western Classical Music.  The story it accompanies might be the most famous Wes...

Very few cities have had a relationship with a single person, especially a foreigner, like the city of Prague and its love affair with Mozart. Here's what Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist for som...

Thank you to Nicole for sponsoring today's show on Patreon! Have you ever heard of Jean-Louis Duport? I imagine that unless you are a professional cellist, or someone who studied cello as a child, yo...