Podcasts

Of all early Modernism, it’s Anton Webern’s music that’s most abstract and challenging. Introducing this music in the foreword to his six-CD set of the composer’s complete works, Pierre Boulez speaks of the “purity” of Webern’s “asceticism.” […] Continue reading →

Most music historians recognize Igor Stravinsky to be the most influential composer of classical music in the 20th century. They talk about three kinds of “liberation” involved in the Modernist revolution in music […] Continue reading →

Just as Mark Twain had been the first writer to create a indigenous American style in literature — the first American author who wasn’t just a transplanted European — Charles Ives was the first composer to create an indigenous American style in classical music. His music is experimental and aggressively Modernist, so it’s not as immediately agreeable as Duke Ellington or Aaron Copland, but it evokes the American experience with an eloquence and candor that few other classical composers have matched, and none have exceeded. […] Continue reading →

Especially if you're an American afficianado of classical music, the name Dohnányi might first call to mind Christoph von Dohnányi, the conductor who led the Cleveland Orchestra as music director from 1984 to 2002. But even more important a musician than Christoph was his grandfather, the Hungarian composer, pianist, and conductor Ernő Dohnányi. […] Continue reading →

We’ll begin this episode with a Viennese composer and end it with a Viennese composer. Robert Fuchs was eighty-nine years old in 1926 — the last full calendar year of his life. […] Continue reading →