Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcasts

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We would like to invite you to join Naxos, the world's leading independent classical music label, in exploring the best of today's classical music. Each week we bring you a new program: sometimes a look at Naxos new releases, and sometimes a look at the performers and composers who make our recordings. Primary Format : Classical Language : English Also Listed as: City : Franklin State/Province : TN Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcasts Methings.com listings of Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

CMS:The Theatre Music of Henry Purcell An introduction to the theatre music of the great English composer Henry Purcell, in a new CD featuring the Aradia Ensemble under the direction of Kevin Mallon. Purcell is still one of the most popular of all composers, and his music has been copied or borrowed by everyone from Benjamin Britten to Michael Nyman Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS:Frederic Rzewski's The People United Will Never be Defeated An interview with pianist Ralph van Raat about his new recording of Frederic Rzewski's monumental solo piano variations The People United Will Never be Defeated Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Bartok's The Wooden Prince A podcast look at Bartok'[s ballet score, The Wooden Prince, written in 1912. This ballet is one of only three stage works Bartok composed during this decade before returning to composing music for the concert stage Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An interview with Ralph Couzens Ralph Couzens, Managing Director of Chandos Records, has grown up with this record label - it was founded by his father Brian Couzens. In this interiew, he talks about the Chandos name, the Chandos sound, and what it means to be a classical label in today's media universe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An interview with Orli Shaham Orli Shaham treads the concert halls of the world as a pianist in her own right. Occasionally, though, she teams up and does concerts with her equally famous brother, violinist Gil Shaham. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Nigel Clarke The Miraculous Violin An interivew with composer Nigel Clarke about his new CD featuring The Miraculous Violin and other works for solo violin and winds. In this interview Clarke discusses how he composes, and how his travels around the world have influenced his music Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Haydn's Piano Concertos A podcast feature about Haydn and his Piano Concertos Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Guitar Music of Chile An introduction to Jose Antonio Escobar's new CD "Guitar Music of Chile". As this recording shows, Chile is producing some wonderful music for guitar, as well as some outstanding performers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An interview with composer Kenneth Fuchs An interview with American composer Kenneth Fuchs about his new CD "Canticle to the Sun", and about the various sources of his inspiration Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Jose Serebrier and the Carmen Symphony An interview with Jose Serebrier about his new recording with "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. Serebrier discusses the composers on this disc, including Bizet, Revueltas, Ginastera and Villa Lobos Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Lise de la Salle plays Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Liszt A podcast introduction to Lise de la Salle's new recording of the first piano concertos by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Liszt, three concertos that all had their first performances with the composer at the piano. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Shostakovich's music for the film Odna In 1929, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote music for a feature length film called Odna (Alone). Although some of the film has been lost, this astonishing score has been meticulously re-constructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An interview with Elliott Carter Elliott Carter is the "Dean of American composers". At the age of 99, still actively composing, he has a perspective and depth of knowledge that few can match. In this podcast, he talks about his string quartets, and the development of his compositional ideas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An interview with the Pacifica Quartet Elliott Carter is the "Dean of American composers". At the age of 99, still actively composing, he has a perspective and depth of knowledge that few can match. In this podcast, Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet talks about learning and performing his String Quartets Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: Brundibar Brundibar was first performed in 1943 in the Terezin concentration camp. Of the 15,000 children who passed through this camp, only 132 survived. This podcast features an interview with Ela Stein Weissberger - one of those who survived, and who took part in those original productions of this children's opera. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS: An introduction to Vivaldi's opera Griselda A brief introduction to Vivaldi's opera Griselda, based on a story that appeared in Boccacio's book The Decameron, that had been published several hundred years earlier. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- James Hartway An interview with American composer James Hartway in which he talks about his new CD, how commissioners affect composers, and the delights of his mother making him take piano lessons Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- Leroy Anderson Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of Leroy Anderson Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- Cimarosa Overtures Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of Domenico Cimarosa Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- Vaughan Williams' Hodie Raymond Bisha discusses Vaughan Williams' Hodie Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- Serebrier's Grammy Nominated The Golden Age Raymond Bisha interviews Maestro Jose Serebrier about his Grammy nominated CD Shostakovich: The Golden Age Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Gloria Coates Raymond Bisha interviews composer Gloria Coates Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - The Black Dyke Band Raymond Bisha discusses the history of the Black Dyke Band Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - The Works of Respighi Conducted by JoAnn Falletta Raymond Bisha discusses Respighi's Church Windows - An Interview with JoAnn Falletta Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle Raymond Bisha discusses Bela Bartok's creepy yet magnificent opera Bluebeard's Castle performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Chants d'Auvergne Raymond Bisha discusses Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Virgil Thomson's music for The Plow that Broke the Plains Raymond Bisha discusses the importance of Virgil Thomson's score to the film, The Plow That Broke the Plains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - A Discussion with Gary Green regarding works by Thomas Sleeper and David Maslanka Raymond Bisha chats with Gary Green about his undiminished passion for winds and new comminsioned works from David Maslanka and Thomas Sleeper Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Serebrier on Stokowski Raymond Bisha discusses the life and works of Stokowski with Jose Serebrier" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Gil Shaham discusses his new label, Canary Classics, and its premier release, "The Butterfly Lovers" Raymond Bisha chats with Gil Shaham about his new label, Canary Classics, and its premier release, "The Butterfly Lovers" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mahler Symphony No. 8 With its enormous vocal, choral and orchestral forces, Mahlers Eighth Symphony, later to be dubbed Symphony of a Thousand, is one of the largest and longest symphonies in the active repertoire. Part One, inspired by the Whitsuntide Vesper hymn Veni creator spiritus, is an invocation to the Creator Spirit. Part Two, a setting of the closing scene from Goethes Faust, depicts Fausts redemption through wisdom and love. Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound, was how Mah ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Composer Jefferson Friedman and his String Quartet No. 2 Raymond Bisha chats with composer Jefferson Friedman about his String Quartet No. 2" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Violinist Jennifer Frautschi on the music of Stravinsky Raymond Bisha chats with Jennifer Frautschi about her most recent performance on, "Stravinsky 125th Anniversary Album." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - The Music and Life of Miklos Rozsa Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of composer Miklos Rozsa" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Wagner - Stokowski Transcriptions Raymond Bisha discusses Stokowski's transcriptions of the works of Richard Wagner Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Brahms' Symphony No. 4 Raymond Bisha discusses Brahms' Symphony No. 4 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Music From the Republic of Georgia Raymond Bisha discusses Georgian Guitar Music Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Perform Brahms Symphony No. 1 "Raymond Bisha discusses the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and their recording of Brahms Symphony No. 1" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Mozart's Horn Concertos Raymond Bisha discusses Wolfgang Mozart's famous Horn Concertos Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - The Music of Charles Ives and the U.S. Marine Band, "The President's Own." Raymond Bisha chats with former Marine Band Conductor Col. Tim Foley about the music of Charles Ives and the U.S. Marine Band, "The President's Own." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Special Editon Classical Music Spotlight - The Sonic Rebellion Collection- 20th Century Music That Shunned Conformity Raymond Bisha discusses the Sonic Rebellion Collection and the composers that comprise this unconventional classical collection Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti performs Berg, Hindemith, Schoenberg & Hartmann on "20th Century Piano Sonatas" Interview With pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti about the CD she performs on, "20th Century Piano Sonatas" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Erick Korngold's Soundtrack to the Film, "The Sea Hawk" Raymond Bisha discusses the music of Erich Korngold soundtrack from the film "The Sea Hawk" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Stravinsky 125th Anniversary Album Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of Igor Stravinsky on the 125th Anniversary of his birth Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Special Editon Classical Music Spotlight - Class of '38 - William Bolcom Raymond Bisha chats with William Bolcom about his music. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Special Editon Classical Music Spotlight - Class of '38 - Joan Tower Raymond Bisha chats with Joan Tower about her most recent release, "Made In America" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight Special Editon - Class of '38 - A Conversation with Composer Ellen Zwilich Raymond Bisha chats with composer Ellen Zwilich about her most recent work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight Special Editon - Class of '38 - A Conversation with Composer Charles Wuorinen Raymond Bisha chats with composer Charles Wuorinen about his most recent work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight Special Editon - Class of '38 - A Conversation with Composer John Harbison Raymond Bisha chats with composer John Harbison about his most recent work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight Special Editon - Class of '38 - A Conversation with Composer John Corigliano Raymond Bisha chats with composer John Corigliano about his most recent work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Interview With Stephen Hartke about his opera, "The Greater Good" Raymond Bisha interviews composer Stephen Hartke about his opera, "The Greater Good." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Classic American Love Songs Raymond Bisha chats with Carole Farley about her most recent performance on, "Classic American Love Songs." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Interview With Conductor Richard Rosenberg of the Hot Springs Festival about Louis Moreau Gottschalk Raymond Bisha discusses composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Hot Spings Festival with its conductor Richard Rosenberg. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Howard Hanson's opera Merry Mount with Gerard Schwarz Raymond Bisha discusses composer Howard Hanson's opera, "Merry Mount" with conductor Gerard Schwarz Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Three Centuries of Bagatelles Raymond Bisha discusses bagatelles and their place in Classical Music Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Interview With Roberto Sierra Raymond Bisha discusses composer Roberto Sierra's most recent release, "New Music with a Caribbean Accent." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Gustav Holst's Double Concerto An exploration of the new recording, "Double Concerto" by Gustav Holst. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Interview With Joan Tower Raymond Bisha interviews composer Joan Tower to discuss her most recent release, "Made In America." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Joseph Alessis Return to Sorrento Interview with Joseph Alessi discussing his newest release Return to Sorrento. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The recordings of Julia Fischer - iTunes Exclusive Raymond Bisha explores the recordings of Julia Fischer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The recordings of Julia Fischer - iTunes Exclusive Raymond Bisha explores the recordings of Julia Fischer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The life and music of Giuseppe Tartini and Adriane Daskalakis - iTunes Exclusive Raymond Bisha discusses the Life and Music of Giuseppe Tartini and Violinist Adriane Daskalakis. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Jose Serebrier Interview - iTunes Exclusive An Interview with Jose Serebrier on the release of his compositions on Naxos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Winds of Nagual The work that gives this disc its name, Michael Colgrass'Winds of Nagual, was inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda and his experiences with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, delving into the secrets of Columbian wisdom. No Shadow of Turning by David Gillingham is based on a hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, and is dedicated to the memory of Lois Brock, secretary of the Ohio State University Bands. It was the Dvorak Serenade for Winds, Op. 44 that led conductor Russel Mikkelson to arrange the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - A Portrait of Accentus The latest Accentus release features a 40-voice choir performing masterful transcriptions as close to literal as possible of both purely instrumental works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Manuel de Falla Piano Music The Complete piano music of Manuel de Falla Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - John Adams Piano Music John Adams vast and varied output has earned him a wide audience, uncommon among contemporary classical composers. The works on this disc span his entire career to date, and illustrate his many different styles of writing for the piano. Phrygian Gates and China Gates could be regarded as his first minimal works, but are more tonal and expressive than the music of his contemporaries such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. As a teenager Adams had played clarinet in his father's marching band, a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - John Adams Piano Music John Adams vast and varied output has earned him a wide audience, uncommon among contemporary classical composers. The works on this disc span his entire career to date, and illustrate his many different styles of writing for the piano. Phrygian Gates and China Gates could be regarded as his first minimal works, but are more tonal and expressive than the music of his contemporaries such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. As a teenager Adams had played clarinet in his father's marching band, a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Pichl Symphonies In his lifetime Wenzel Pichl was esteemed as one of the foremost European composers of the age. A friend of Dittersdorf, whose works exerted a strong influence on his development, Pichl wrote symphonies that rank among the most interesting of the period. The symphonies featured on this recording, all of which were composed in the 1760s and take as their subject mythical figures from classical antiquity, reveal acomposer of flair and technical resourcefulness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Philip Glass Heroes Symphony Although he remains best known for the works he wrote for his own ensemble, orchestral music has been at the forefront of activities for PHilip Glass for much of the last two decades. Having achieved success in 1993 with his Low Symphony, a reworking of David Bowie and Brian Eno's classic rock album Low, three years later Glass repeated the experiment with another Bowie,Eno collaboration, Heroes,an album that drew its inspiration from the then divided city of Berlin. The six movements of He ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Hovhaness Symphony No. 60 Of Armenian and Scottish extraction, the American composer Alan Hovhaness was a trend setting pioneer who absorbed a variety of archaic and modern influences from East and West. He once said My purpose is to create music, not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. Khrimian Hairig, with its trumpet solo, recalls the heroic Armenian priest of the title. Hovhaness virtuoso and romantic Guitar Concerto was written for the Bolivian guitarist Juan Calderon. The Symph ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Das Partiturbuch A look into Das Partiturbuch Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - From Byzantium to Andalusia A journey from Byzantium to Andalusia Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Mahler Symphony No. 5 Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a work of huge emotional and structural range, was his first purely orchestral work since the First Symphony of 1888, and his first orchestral work to dispense with both the human voice and overtly programmatic elements. The second most recorded of Mahler's symphonies, it includes the ravishing Adagietto, a love poem for the beautiful Alma Schindler, his future wife, and subsequently made famous by its use in Visconti's film Death in Venice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Christmas Through the Ages A look at Christmas Music through the ages with the Elora Festival Singers and Oxford Camerata. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Sacred Music from Notre Dame From plainchant via simple 9th-century harmonies and the virtuosic duets of Master Leonin, known as organum, this hauntingly beautiful sequence charts the birth of polyphony up to the first music in four independent parts composed by Master Perotin and sung during the liturgy at the new Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. From the official laying of the cornerstone in 1163 to the completion of the famous Western facade almost a hundred years later, Notre Dame was the fertile home of singers a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Shostakovich's The Golden Age The three full-length ballet scores that Dmitry Shostakovich wrote between 1925 and 1935 remain among his least known works. The Golden Age revolves around the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city at the time of an industrial exhibition, only for its heroic sporting and social endeavours constantly to be undermined by hostile administrators, decadent artistes and corrupt officials. Even before its premiere Shostakovich had prepared a suite, including the famous Polka (Naxos 8.5 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Alberto Ginastera Ballet Panambi Much admired by Aaron Copland, the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera is widely regarded as one of the most important and original South American composers of the 20th century. The two ballets featured on this recording belong to the early period ofGinastera when he was eager to promote an authentically national voice in his work through the use of Argentine folk and popular elements. The exotically scored Panambi is based on a romantic and supernatural legend of love and magic from the G ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Vivaldi The Four Seasons Vivaldi's universally popular Four Seasons has become one of the most recorded pieces of classical music. The four concertos, with their virtuoso part for solo violinist, depict the changing seasons in a pastoral landscape with dazzling variety. Vivaldi evokes not only the changing atmospheric conditions, for example the dripping rain represented by the pizzicato violins in the second movement of Winter, but bird calls and animal cries, swaying grass, bubbling brooks, and human events such ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Leonard Bernstein's Ballet Music Dybbuk and Fancy Free The ballet Dybbuk was Bernstein's fourth and final collaboration with choreographer Jerome Robbins, written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel. The plot concerns a spirit that seeks to enter the body of a living person, and the battle between good and evil is represented musically by the conflict between atonality and tonality. Different in every respect is the symphonically conceived ballet Fancy Free. It follows three sailors on shore leave in New York for 24 hours, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Spaghetti Rag This unique recording sets out to give a flavor of American ragtime through the medium of the mandolin. It is now believed that many of the original early twentieth-century rags were regularly performed by American-Italian mandolin orchestras whose numbers were swelled by Italian immigrants. Highlights on this disc include three of Scott Joplin's best known rags, Julius Lenzberg's Operatic Rag, a syncopated take on works by Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Wagner, Bizet and others, That Italian Rag b ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Coplands Rodeo, Red Pony Suite This new Copland collection is devoted specifically to works inspired by the spacious landscape of the American prairie. The Suite for the 1948 film of John Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony, depicts life on a ranch in California. The composer described the music as 'folkish', although the themes are all original. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Monumental Winds Monumental Works for Winds is a collection of some of the greatest pieces ever written for wind band. Persichetti’s 1956 Symphony for Band, Op. 69 is not only one of his greatest works, but has become one of the most frequently performed original American works for wind band. Stravinsky’s strikingly original and rhythmically vital Symphonies of Wind Instruments is one of his most adventurous pieces in neo-classical style. Copland’s technically challenging Emblems, is the composer’s only wor ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Charles Ives String Quartets A look into Charles Ives String Quartets with Connie Heard of the Blair QUartet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Bach's Brandenburg Concertos A unique look at the group of six orchestral works known as the Brandenburg Concertos, commissioned by and dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg, are among the greatest works of Johann Sebastian Bach. These are consummate examples of the art of Baroque composition, frequently using groups of solo instruments in a more complex and virtuoso fashion than ever before. The Concerto No. 5, with its prominent and dazzling harpsichord part, is almost a Harpsichord Concerto in its own right. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - A tribute to Sir Malcolm Arnold A wonderful look at Malcom Arnolds music and symphonies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Bartok's Mikrokosmos The 153 piano pieces of Bela Bartok's 'Mikrokosmos' are a milestone in piano literature. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from musical terms and technical procedures to indications of regional provenance and folk derivation, they are arranged in order of increasing technical and musical difficulty, while encapsulating Bartok's maturing sound-world during the period 1926-1939. When asked, near the end of his life, about the meaning of his chosen title, Bartok explained that "'Mikrokosmos' ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Chloe Hanslip Interview Interview with Chloe Hanslip discussing her views and experiences from the latest recording of the John Adams Violin Concerto Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Kabalevsky Piano Concertos Unlike many of his fellow countrymen, the Russian composer, pianist and writer Dmitry Kabalevsky flourished under Soviet rule, writing music mainly designed to inspire heroism and patriotism. The tuneful Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, clearly inspired by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, are written in a direct and accessible style. They are performed here by the remarkable young Korean pianist In-Ju Bang, the 2004 winner of the Puigcerda International Piano Competition in Spain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Carmina Burana for Wind Band This wind band arrangement of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" is entirely instrumental in concept, the vocal music having been fully incorporated into the band itself. The throbbing rhythms, chaste tenderness and heartfelt simplicity of the original are fully captured in John Krance's exhilarating transcription. Arthur Bird's "Serenade" won the Paderewski Prize as the best chamber work by an American in 1901. Herbert Owen Reed's "La Fiesta Mexicana", subtitled "A Mexican Folk Song Symphony for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Orlando Gibbons Orlando Gibbons' exquisite tunes and rock-solid bass-lines for the first English hymn book, "Hymnes and Songs of the Church (1623)", were written to be sung and played both at home and in church. Specially realized by Antony Pitts and Alexander L'Estrange for this recording, the complete collection is interleaved with new English hymns. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Beethoven Liszt Symphonies 7 and 8 The transcriptions must speak for themselves. Liszt is meticulous in his accurate reproduction of original phrasing and his specification, where necessary, of the original instrumentation. Critics have compared his transcriptions [favorably] with the earlier piano versions of the symphonies by the virtuoso pianist Kalkbrenner, a pioneer in this field. Liszt does not primarily seek for technical display, however demanding the transcriptions may be. He is particularly adept in his solution of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - El-Khoury's Lebanon in Flames The Franco-Lebanese composer and poet Bechara El-Khoury was born in Beirut in 1957. A master of orchestration, El-Khoury draws on the rich palette of resources available to today's composers, putting into music, "human nature and its passions". This disc features the brilliant orchestral miniature, "Dance of the Eagles, Op. 9", works inspired by the poetry of Khalil Gibran (Image Symphonique and Suite symphonique), and two panels in a triptych dedicated to the dramatic events of the war in ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Music of Ivan Khandoshkin A wonderful interview with Anastasia Khitruk discussing the works of Ivan Khandoshkin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Marin Alsop talks about Toru Takemitsu Marin Alsop discusses the works of Toru Takemitsu. Regarded as one of the most important composers of the second half of the twentieth century, Toru Takemitsu was the first Japanese composer to gain international status. The works on this disc cover Takemitsu's career from early "Solitude Sonore" to "Sprirt Garden" composed two years before his death. Inspired by a dream, "A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden" has passages of randomness, surges of dissonance and delicate melodies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Haydn Symphonies 18 to 21 The four symphonies included on this recording date from an early period of Haydn's career, when he was experimenting with a newly developing form. Nos. 18-20 were written around 1759 when Haydn had his first steady employment as music director to Count Morzin. "Symphony No. 21 in A major" dates from c. 1761 when Haydn entered the service of the Esterhazy family. Scored for oboes, horns, strings, and continuo, all four works are characteristically inventive. "Symphony No. 20 in C major", is ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Violin Music of Max Bruch With its memorable tunes and dazzling writing for the solo instrument, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 has been described as the “quintessential Romantic showpiece”. A firm favorite with soloists and audiences alike, it is coupled on this disc with two less frequently heard works for solo violin and orchestra that were originally conceived as possible concertos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Roy Harris Symphonies 3 and 4 Strongly infl uenced by his native Oklahoma, Roy Harris studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, returning to America to establish himself as one of the leading composers of his generation. The backbone of his output is the series of thirteen symphonies, which span his career from 1933 to 1976. Described by the conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, as ‘the fi rst great symphony by an American composer’, Symphony No. 3 is remarkable for its broad, sweeping melodies evoking vast landscapes, and for it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edvard Grieg String Music Grieg was a master of the miniature, an aspect of his genius shown in this collection of works for string orchestra. The popular "Holberg Suite" translates a set of baroque dances into contemporary idiom. The other works are derived by the composer from earlier songs or piano pieces, of which Grieg wrote a very large number. Established in 1998, the internationally renowned Oslo Camerata has its own concert series at the Old Masonic Lodge in Oslo, which dates from Grieg's time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Four Handed Brahms In keeping with the custom of the day, the scores of each of Brahms' four symphonies were all published in four-hand piano versions, so as to be accessible to a domestic audience. These arrangements reveal the cheerfulness and serenity of the Second Symphony, and those qualities which led the Third Symphony to be dubbed "Brahms' Eroica," in a fresh and fascinating light. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stockowski/Bach 01 It was as a young church organist that Leopold Stokowski grew to love the music of Bach. Later,he arranged a number of Bach’s organ works for full symphonic forces. The results were a spectacular success and through Stokowski’s Bach transcriptions music lovers heard baroque music in a new guise. Some of Stokowski’s finest Bach arrangements are newly recorded here in highly enjoyable performances by José Serebrier and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. As one of the Leopold Stokowski Societ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lute Music of John Dowland The pre-eminent lutenist of his day, John Dowland was an almost exact contemporary of William Shakespeare. This first volume of his complete lute music, which comprises about one hundred solo pieces, includes the 7 Fantasies, free-form, improvisatory works in which the composer gives free rein to his fertile imagination and wonderful melodic gift. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Cage Piano Music American-born, John Cage, was one of the most adventurous musicians of the 20th century. Always seeking new musical sounds, he was a pioneer in the technique known as the ‘Prepared Piano’. This involved placing screws, bolts, and pieces of rubber and plastic on defined strings in the body of a grand piano. The fascinating range of sonorities created, often akin to music of the Orient, is explored in the Sonatas and Interludes composed between 1946-1948. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ned Rorem Concertos for Violin and Flute Chosen in 1988 as Composer of the Year by Musical America and now recognized as one of the finest song composers in America, Ned Rorem has also written a significant body of music for orchestra,including Three Symphonies. Written in a refined tonal idiom like so much of Rorem’s music, the 1985 Violin Concerto is notable for its elegiac lyrical invention. The recent Flute Concerto, the first in a series of Philadelphia Orchestra commissions for its principals, was described at its première a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Choral Music of Healy Willan A choirboy in his youth, Healey Willan had a life-long passion for the human voice. Not counting his output for organ, chamber music and orchestral works, the bulk of his almost 800 compositions involved voice in one form or another. Born in England, Willan moved to Canada in 1913, where he dominated the field of sacred music. This anthology includes the most popular choral work by Willan, Rise up my love, a wonderful illustration of the famous words ‘a true church music is beautifully fit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CMS- Thomas Tallis Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of Thomas Tallis Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website W.A. Mozart: Requiem At his premature death in the early hours of December 5, 1791, Mozart left his final masterpiece unfinished and shrouded in mystery. The mystery surrounding this beautiful work and the myth of Mozart being poisoned by the jealous Salieri became the stuff of legend in the 19th century, and inspired an opera, a play and a film in the twentieth century. The Requiem remains one of the most personal, impassioned and profound of Mozart’s works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Rutter: Mass of the Children Bringing together the voices of adults and children, Rutter’s Mass of the Children is scored for mixed choir, soprano and baritone soloists, orchestra, and the irresistible charm of a children’s choir. Rutter’s skillful writing and his sensitive interweaving of both the Latin Mass texts and Thomas Ken’s renowned morning and evening hymns for Winchester College, gives the whole work the framework of a complete day, from waking to sleeping. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Igor Stravinsky: Pulcinella and The Fairy's Kiss Pulcinella, a one-act ballet with song, is no mere re-working of music by Pergolesi and other 18th-century Italian composers. Instead Stravinsky uses the originals as a springboard for experimentation, transforming the music into a modern work. The ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, at another extreme, is a largely original composition. Stravinsky greatly altered, developed, and elaborated melodies from early piano pieces and songs by Tchaikovsky, expanding them into sizeable ballet numbers to for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Tavener: Lament for Jerusalem Lament for Jerusalem, described by Sir John Tavener as a mystical love song, brings together Christian, Judaic and Islamic texts. Sung in Greek and English, it is both a cri de coeur at the loss of peace in a place where religions once co-existed in harmony, and an affirmation of the power of love to bring together all who seek God, from whatever tradition they come. Lament for Jerusalem is heard in this recording in the composer’s specially re-worked version for the Choir of London’s gro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight presents a special interview with Maestro Leonard Slatkin Maestro Leonard Slatkin joins our host Raymond Bisha on this week's episode. He speaks about his work on the GRAMMY winning recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Release Spotlight: Haydn Piano Variations Though he is better known for his instrumental works, Franz Joseph Haydn also made important contributions to the genre of keyboard music. Haydn’s works for keyboard include 47 authenticated sonatas and numerous sets of inventive and highly attractive variations. In this recording, acclaimed pianist Jeno Jando delivers elegant interpretations of Haydn’s piano variations. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience Naxos presents a special interview with GRAMMY winning composer William Bolcom, who speaks about his Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This critically acclaimed recording swept the classical GRAMMY’s in 2006, winning the GRAMMY awards for Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition and Best Classical Album. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website G.F. Handel: Rinaldo The opera Rinaldo, its plot drawn from Tasso’s epic of the Crusades, was Handel’s first opera for London, where it was staged in 1711. The Italian libretto was set in the space of just two weeks by Handel. The novel Italian singing style with its arias and recitatives, and the sheer variety of colorful orchestral effects, ensured that Rinaldo won immediate and widespread success. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Release Spotlight: Virtuoso Cello Encores This collection of Virtuoso Cello Encores ranges widely from Air on a G string by Bach to Shostakovich’s Neapolian Tarantella from his film score, the Gadfly. Most are transcriptions, in many cases by leading cello virtuosi, of well-known favorites, with original works written for the instrument from Offenbach, the great Catalan cellist Cassado and the 19th century Bohemian master David Popper. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website G.F. Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks Brimming with exhilarating dance tunes and colorful sonorities, Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks are G.F. Handel’s two most popular orchestral works. These works, composed for special regal occasions, show why Handel is considered one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kurt Weill: Symphonies 1 and 2 and Lady in the Dark, Symphonic Nocturne Marin Alsop conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in this brilliant program featuring Kurt Weill's First and Second Symphonies. The angular Symphony No. 1, completed in 1921, reflects the turmoil of the post World War I era. In 1933, with Hitler in power, Weill escaped to Paris where he wrote his Symphony No. 2, which is considered one of the 20th century's forgotten masterpieces. To contrast, the Symphonic Nocturne, adapted from the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark (a 1940 collab ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Instrumental Music of Benjamin Britten Today we take a look at the orchestral music of the great English composer Benjamin Britten. Britten occupies an unrivalled position in English music of the twentieth century and a place of greater importance in the wider musical world. Although he is particularly known as a vocal and opera composer, Britten was also a superb orchestral composer. We will look in particular at Britten's Sinfonia di Requiem, op. 20, the Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, the Variations on a theme of Frank Br ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thomas Tallis Along with his pupil William Byrd, Thomas Tallis was the finest composer of the English Renaissance. The Naxos recording Spem in Alium, released to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Tallis's birth, features his largest compositions for the church. The motet Salve intemerata, written when Tallis was a young man, is one of the longest single movements of the entire 16th century. Scored for forty independent voices, Spem in Alium, a work of Tallis's maturity, dwarfs any other English work ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Release Spotlight: Fall River Legend by Morton Gould In this New Release Spotlight, Naxos takes a look at Fall River Legend, composed by Morton Gould. Based on the story of Lizzie Borden, the famous alleged murderess who “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks,” the Fall River Legend ballet is one of Gould’s most frequently performed and best known works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ariel Ramirez: Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra Naxos presents this new recording of Ariel Ramirez’ beloved masterpiece Misa Criolla, performed by The Choral Arts Society of Washington. Ramirez, widely acclaimed for his unique synthesis of popular and liturgical styles, based his Misa Criolla on South American folk music. Missa Luba, which adapts traditional Congolese melodies and rhythms to the Latin texts of the Mass, has been described by its creator, Father Guido Haazen, as a collective improvisation. It includes a prominent and e ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The American Horn Quartet: Concertos for Four Horns Naxos presents highlights from an exciting new CD featuring the American Horn Quartet, Concertos for Four Horns, with music by Schumann, Handel, Telemann and Haydn. This podcast also includes an interview with group leader Kerry Turner, who talks about the music, the group, and why horn players put their hand in the bell of the horn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Highlights - Naxos 2006 Grammy Nominated Titles Naxos is proud to present highlights of the fourteen Naxos recordings nominated for Grammy awards this year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Symphonies of William Boyce William Boyce was among the most important English composers of the late Baroque period. His Eight Symphonies are the best known and most recorded of all his works. Today Kevin Mallon, director of the Aradia Ensemble, speaks about the recent Naxos recording of the Eight Symphonies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Christmas Around the World Naxos presents a Christmas tour of Europe and North America, with stops in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Italy, England, Canada and the USA. Every country that celebrates Christmas develops its own music to celebrate – this podcast takes a look at some Christmas favorites from around the world. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ana Maria Martinez: Soprano Songs and Arias On the eve of her Metropolitan Opera debut, soprano Ana Maria Martinez released a new CD on Naxos entitled Soprano Songs and Arias. This CD makes it abundantly clear why she is a rising star in the opera world. This edition of Classical Music Spotlight features Ms. Martinez in interview, plus highlights from the CD. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sean Hickey: Left at the Fork in the Road Sean Hickey is a New York-based composer whose new CD, Left at the Fork in the Road, has been recently released on Naxos American Classics. This podcast features both music from the CD and an extended interview with the composer. Mr. Hickey speaks about his major influences (from van Halen to Stravinsky), how he composes, and what?s next in his busy schedule. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Release Spotlight: The Romantic Harp This recital of mainly late Romantic harp repertoire not only illustrates the important contribution of French composers to the genre but some of the innovative techniques introduced by composers of the early twentieth century. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Heitor Villa Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras Heitor Villa-Lobos was one of Brazil?s most important composers, and one of its most prolific. His Bachianas Brasileiras (all nine of them) combine two of his greatest loves ? the music of Bach, and his homeland of Brazil. Colorful, tuneful, and sometimes magical, these pieces helped put Villa-Lobos, and Brazilian music, on the map. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William Bolcom: Music for Two Pianos William Bolcom is one of today?s finest American composers. His music combines various influences ? from Stravinsky to ragtime ? to produce a sound that is unique, intriguing and very American. This podcast looks at his works for two pianos? music that shows his fascination with the traditional ragtime music of a century earlier. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stravinsky's Firebird The spotlight looks at one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky, and his ballet The Firebird. This was the first of three ballets Stravinsky wrote just prior to World War I, and over the course of these pieces, he changed the direction and history of classical music. Stravinsky had a unique sense of melody and rhythm, and his imagination for orchestral color led him to create music unlike anything heard before. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Release Spotlight: The Symphonic Music of Respighi This release presents a fascinating survey of the early orchestral works of Ottorino Respighi. Although the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, and others is readily discernible, these works also demonstrate Respighi?s growing mastery of a form of music - the symphonic - that was largely neglected at that time in Italy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Leonard Bernstein, Kaddish Symphony No. 3 and Chichester Psalms Leonard Bernstein was one of the best known musicians of the past century. He was a star conductor, pianist, and a composer who wrote terrific music for both symphony orchestras and Broadway. He was also a larger-than-life personality who seemed in his element whenever he was in front of an audience. This podcast looks at a two pieces influenced by his Jewish heritage - the Chichester Psalms, and the Symphony No. 3, named the Kaddish Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Virtuoso Timpani Concertos Though many people think of the timpani as a purely orchestral instrument, timpani have been in use as solo instruments for centuries. It was not unusual for virtuoso timpanists of the 18th century to perform on between 10 and 16 drums, which were smaller than those in use today. This Naxos recording presents several styles of music for multiple timpani. These include the semi-improvised style used by military drummers, elegant court symphonies by Molter and Graupner, and Fischer?s ?Symp ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 Johannes Brahms waited more than 40 years before he composed a symphony, then he wrote four in the space of ten years ? all of them masterpieces. Conductor Marin Alsop is now recording all of these symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This podcast looks at Symphony No. 2 ? German Romanticism at its glorious best, this new recording, and the composerbehind it. It also asks why Brahms Symphonies are 45 minutes long, while Beatles songs last five minutes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Life and Music of Arvo P?rt On September 11, 2005 the great Estonian composer Arvo P?rt turned 70. This documentary looks at his musical journey: the youthful years in Estonia, years of struggle with the repressive forces of Soviet cultural policy, emigration to the West, and finally, finding his mature voice in pieces such as Passio and Spiegel im Spiegel. In P?rt?s life, musical, spiritual and religious threads that may have started out unconnected weave together into one connected tapestry giving his music an almos ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Celebrate America with the Music of Peter Boyer What was it like to be one of the millions of immigrants coming to America through Ellis Island early in the 20th century? Peter Boyer's Ellis Island: The Dream of America brings that experience to life in a unique and powerful way. This work combines elements of symphonic music, theatre and history to celebrate the American immigrant experience. Boyer chose stories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, wove them together into a narrative describing the hopes, dreams and struggles of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Classical Music Spotlight - Elgar's Sea Pictures Written for the striking contralto Clara Butt, who gave the work's premiere in a dress said to resemble a mermaid, Sea Pictures is Elgar's only song cycle with orchestra. These exquisite miniatures depict the sea in all its guises, peaceful and storm tossed by turns. The heartfelt Where Corals Lie is perhaps the most remarkable three minutes in all of Elgar. Inspired by the notion that artists are the real creators and the true makers of history and society, The Music Makers is a largely in ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website