Classical For Everyone

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the frustrations of insomnia hit the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This month… Camille Saint-Saën's 3rd Symphony. Known as the Organ Symphony for reasons that will become pretty obvious. In this performance Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the organist is Gaston Litaize.  [Episode Image: Portrait of Saint-Saëns by Benjamin Constant. Background: Illustration of St John's Hall, London; where the premiere took place. The Hall was demolished in 1905.]

Is Ludwig van Beethoven neglected? No, not at all. But with the well-deserved emphasis on his symphonies, a couple of piano concertos and a handful of piano sonatas and string quartets; there is another roughly eighty hours of music to explore. And in the same way that maybe Picasso, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Dickens created very little that is not of extraordinary quality… there is a bunch of incredible music that is not going to be encountered by the casual listener and that is what I want to feature in this show. An overture, excerpts from a misnumbered piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano sonata and from the Triple Concerto. [Episode image: Johannes Gelert sculpture of Beethoven photographed in Lincoln Park outside Chicago mid-20th Century by Percy Sloan.]

When a podcast is about five hundred years of music, there is going to be a reasonable amount of music from people who are no longer with us. Now if you combine that with the baggage of the term 'classical' then you can kind of forget that there is a lot of music being written, performed, recorded and released right now. Music by composers who are still very much amongst the living. And you are going to hear from seven of them in this episode… Gabriela Ortiz, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Maria Grenfell, Unsuk Chin, Anna Clyne, Paul Stanhope and Joe Hisaishi. I hope you enjoy the second 'Not Dead Yet' show from the 'Classical For Everyone' podcast.

Winter... Now if you are in the northern hemisphere maybe think of this as a form of aural air conditioning. But if, like me, you are near the bottom of the planet then the music will be bringing up sensations you are all too familiar with. I hope that wherever you are listening to this you are not shivering too much or sweating too much and that for the next hour and a quarter some wintery music will bring you some pleasure. Music from Geirr Tveitt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Frederic Delius, Frederic Chopin, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, Josef Haydn, Johannes Brahms, Jabra Latham, Morten Lauridsen, Henry Purcell and Franz Schubert. [Episode Image: Central Park NY.]

There may have been wine involved when the decision to put together a show of music for pets was first discussed. But when I was presented with art for the episode featuring a the surprisingly gifted cavoodle, Bob; it was too late to go back. So, music for pets it is. But I don't imagine you lining up your Spots, Tiggers, Fidos, Nuggets and Bobs for them to listen appreciatively to your audio device. No, the music is really more about a selection of the animals that we happen to enjoy as pets. And like all the themes for Classical for Everyone it is an excuse to find some wonderful music… And in this episode it is going to come from… Aaron Copland, Bernd Deutsh, Antonio Vivaldi, Jessica Wells, Domenico Scarlatti, Camille Saint-Saens, Bright Sheng, Sergei Prokofiev, Bohuslav Martinu, Nigel Westlake and Maurice Ravel. [Episode Image: Bob.]