Strings And Things
This episode of The Furthermore features violin, viola and cello. Not all at once, mind you – that would be overkill. After all, Bach only needed a single violin or cello to create enduring...
View ArticleThe Natural World in Music
Using music to evoke the natural world is an ancient tradition, and one that continues today. This time on The Furthermore, we hear some familiar natural scenes depicted in the music of Beethoven and...
View ArticleErik Satie and the Idea of Simple Gifts
An old Shaker hymn, famously quoted by Aaron Copland, tells us it’s a gift to be simple. In the classical music repertoire, it’s hard to find music simpler than the piano works of Erik Satie, the...
View ArticleNew York: A Musical Portrait
Two of the towering figures in American classical music, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, remain forever associated with New York. Not just because they lived and worked here, but because each of...
View ArticleMusical Mystics
Although Western classical music, with its Requiems, Masses, spiritual oratorios and the like, grew out of a sacred (Christian) music tradition, it doesn’t have too many composers you could say were...
View ArticleMusic From Iceland
Classical music came late to Iceland, but it has exploded in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We’ll hear leading Icelandic composers like Anna Thorvaldsdottir, who is the Kravis Emerging...
View ArticleTime For A Little Night Music
This week, The Furthermore looks no further than its own time slot for inspiration. At this time of the year, 9 pm is night — full on, not-getting-any-darker night. So we will hear a little night...
View ArticleThe New York Guitar Festival
The classical guitar repertoire is its own (relatively little) world, but there are a few pieces that have attained wider popularity. Among guitar concertos, Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez,...
View ArticleRediscovering The Psalms
There are 150 psalms in the Bible, and most if not all of them were originally intended to be sung. No surprise then that composers of virtually every stripe have set these poems/hymns/prayers to...
View ArticleThrough the Looking Glass
Benjamin Franklin – yes, that Benjamin Franklin – invented a musical instrument that worked well enough to attract the attention of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That instrument was the glass harmonica, or...
View ArticleSetting the Latin Mass to Music
Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are just a few of the great composers who’ve set the Latin Mass to music. But while the Mass is a specifically Christian tradition, it has become in recent years a form...
View ArticleThe Uses and Abuses of Dance
This week on The Furthermore, let’s dance. Composers have been using (and sometimes abusing) various forms of dance for many centuries, and today’s lot are no exception. Eastern European folk dances,...
View ArticleThe Best of 2017
This time on The Furthermore, we look back at some memorable musical events in 2017 – some of them recordings, some of them live performances. Among them is a work from this year’s Grawemeyer Award...
View ArticleChamber Music From Brahms to Rachel Grimes
This time on The Furthermore, some chamber music by Brahms and Debussy leads us to more contemporary chamber works by Somei Satoh, Dmitri Evgrafov, and Poppy Ackroyd (her idea of chamber music includes...
View ArticleMusic With Jewish Roots
Just in time for Chanukah, we listen to music with Jewish roots — even if not all of the composers were themselves Jewish. Prokofiev (not Jewish) wrote his Overture on Hebrew Themes for a Jewish...
View ArticleChristmas Time Is Here
Christmas music doesn’t have to be the same old songs, sung only at this one time of the year. Some Christmas music sounds great any time, and some music that wasn’t meant for Christmas has been sucked...
View ArticleThe Islands of Scotland
This week on The Furthermore, the islands of Scotland — the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Shetlands — have been a subject of fascination for composers since a 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn visited the...
View ArticleWinter Variations
Game Of Thrones fans had to wait six seasons for the dreaded Winter to arrive. We just had to wait for December. With the temperatures well below average for this time of year and meteorologists making...
View ArticleOld Songs / New Works
Just because a song is somewhere around 200 years old doesn’t mean it’s past its sell-by date. Old songs have provided the musical inspiration, and even the musical materials, for a number of...
View ArticleMemories in Music
Memory can be a tricky thing. Some memories are pretty straightforward — Tchaikovsky went to Florence, Italy; had a good time; memorialized it in music. Others are more fraught: the German composer Max...
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