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January 27
Mozart's Halcyon Days—Vienna, 1782-85
January 20
And the King Played the Flute: the Politics of Music at Sans Souci
January 13
Buried Treasure: The Symphonies of Miaskovsky
January 6
Robert Schumann's Enthusiasms
December 30
The Mutual Admiration Society — Brahms and Strauss
December 23
Christmas Carols from Around the World, Part II
December 16
Christmas Carols from Around the World, Part I
December 9
The French Six, their Music and their Times
December 2
The Russian Five — Borodin, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov
November 25
Grateful American Landscapes
November 18
Elegant Guru: Portrait of Ferrucio Busoni
November 11
Armistice: Scoring The Great War
November 4
Exit Poll: Composers and the Presidents
October 28
Portrait of Erich Leinsdorf
October 21
Connecticut Yankee, Sharp Businessman, Musical Rebel —Charles Ives
October 14
Franz Schubert: Song, Sonata, Symphony
October 7
Portrait of Milhaud
September 30
Bruckner's Seventh
September 23
Malcolm Agonistes: The Work of Malcolm Arnold
September 16
Tchaikovsky's Fifth
September 9
September Songs: Portrait of Kurt Weill
September 2
Marvelous Youth: Music of the Prodigies
August 26
Leonard Bernstein's 90th birth anniversary
August 19
Portrait of Sibelius
August 12
No Program
August 5
No Program
July 29
No Program
July 22
Mahler Seventh and Songs
July 15
Ravel & Debussy: Contemporaries, not Colleagues (Much Less Friends)
July 8
An Original Amber: Folk Song Collectors, their Preservations and Transformations
July 1
American Independents and Their Music
June 24
Summer Winds: Virtuoso and Chamber Pieces
June 17
Bonny Prince Charlie, Norwegian Lobster, and Edvard Grieg
June 10
Chopin: Nocturnes; Cello Sonata; Piano Concerto o. 2
June 3
"Small time, but in that small most greatly lived . . . " these composers who left us shy of forty.
May 27
Talent Magnets: Rennaissance courts and their composers
May 20
Benjamin Britten's Journey
May 13
Abhorring a Vacuum: Unfinished Works and their "Finishers"
May 6
A Brahms and Tchaikovsky Birthday Eve Bash
April 29
Guitar Heroes
April 15
Portrait of Heifetz
April 1
Rex du Bonhomme, the man who very nearly inspired dozens of masterpieces
March 25
The first American-born conductors
March 18
Bach's birthday eve
March 11
Portrait of Mendelssohn
March 4
Prokofiev in America
February 26
Just a "Hobby": composers of independent means
February 19
Portrait of Mussorgsky
February 12
(No program)
February 5
Tchaikovsky's Winter Daydreams
January 29
The Night Erik Satie Invented Muzak and Other Deliberate Absurdities
January 22
Great moments in feather-ruffling by composers, and their creative progeny.
January 15
Shostakovich -- The Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar"
January 8
Carl Nielsen and the Guns of August -- though the Danish composer was physically remote from the slaughter of WWI, it haunted, to varying degrees, his last three symphonies.
January 1
Resolute music -- the "official" score to buoy up our determinations to do/be/think/give/laugh/love better in '08.
How did Aaron Copland come to write music to accompany the balletic adventures of cowboys, desperadoes, and pioneer homesteaders? Open Air host Bill Morelock throws a lasso around the memory of this influential American composer. (11/14/2005)
Miracle on 57th Street
On November 13, 1943, 25 year-old Leonard Bernstein heard his song cycle "I Hate Music" premiered in New York. A fine title by a young man who, the very next day, would become the most famous musician in America. Open Air host Bill Morelock follows Leonard Bernstein on perhaps the most remarkable day in a remarkable life in music. (08/30/2005)
The Waltz King and the Land of Giants
When Johann Strauss, Jr. came to America in 1872, concert promoters in Boston went all out. They built a great wooden hall which held an audience of 100,000, not to mention an additional 20,000 singers and musicians. Strauss conducted his own music, communicating with the multitudes through 100 assistant conductors. A sincere expression of our love of Strauss' music (or celebrity?), or a megalomaniacal lust for spectacle? Strauss was pretty sure he knew. Bill Morelock looks at the American sojourn of a reluctant Waltz King. (08/09/2005)
Edvard Grieg: absolute quiet and a taste of codfish
Classical music host Bill Morelock remembers composer Edvard Grieg on his 162nd birthday. (06/14/2005)
How "Les Six" became the most recognizable brand in French music
Classical host Bill Morelock looks at how a proto-marketing campaign in 1917 made infamous the composers Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey. (05/28/2005)
Before the Six, there was Satie
When French composer Erik Satie wrote the music for "Parade" during World War I, he set in motion the attitude for Paris of the 1920s. (05/28/2005)
A mountaintop gone; a life remembered
Sydney Fortunato lived, and died, in what may have been the last snippet of time during which the light in a small storefront bookstore on an early autumn evening could still calm the soul. (05/18/2005)
Conscience vs. McCarthy: the political Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland has been synonymous with American music for more than 60 years. But during the McCarthy era, not even the composer of Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man--two WWII morale boosters--was immune from Sen. Joseph McCarthy's questions about political affiliations in the thirties and forties. Classical musical host Bill Morelock traces the activities of Aaron Copland the composer and Copland the citizen leading up to a cancelled performance and an offical grilling in 1953. (05/03/2005)
The career path of J. S. Bach; from Arnstadt to Leipzig
Even geniuses have have not-so-great jobs like the common folk. Open Air host Bill Morelock wonders how J. S. Bach could have created so many well-crafted pieces while he labored long days in undesirable employment. (04/26/2005)
The Lads in Their Hundreds: the music of World War I
Classical music host Bill Morelock examines the music by French and English composers written during and in the immediate aftermath of The Great War. (04/05/2005)
Celebrating "Pelleas and Melisande" through four different composers
This month on "Open Air" we'll hear music that an enigmatic, hypnotizing play called "Pelleas and Melisande" coaxed out of four great composers. Classical Music host Bill Morelock examines why Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist manifesto fascinated composers as varied as Schoenberg, Sibelius, Faure, and Debussy. (02/01/2005)
Remembering Pearl Harbor and FDR's letter to the future
Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 63 years ago, December 7th, 1941. A little over a week after that tragic event, President Franklin Roosevelt took the time to look past the immediate crisis, and wrote a letter to the future, with every faith there would be a recognizable future. Classical Music host Bill Morelock reads that letter. (12/07/2004)
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