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Back a hundred or so years ago, before the radio, the phonograph and other such devices, a parlor piano was a source of amusement for some. If two players were available, duets were often played. We’ll look at some of these keyboard duets this week.

I am very pleased to share with everyone along with some great music, portions of two new interviews that I have done in recent weeks, this coming Monday night, July 19.

So glad I came across and share our 2007 interview! We discussed his new music at the time Fractured Minds, and Rainy Day in June, the stroke he had had, new music influenced by The Kinks...

In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill teamed up to produce The Threepenny Opera. This week we’ll have some of the original cast members performing their roles in historic period recordings of nearly a hundred years ago.

In 1955, the 22-year old Canadian pianist Glenn Gould arrived at the Studios of Columbia Records to record the — not much better known — Goldberg Variations of J.S. Bach. Sixty-six years later, the recording is still in print. It launched Gould’s career, and in 1981, he book ended that career with another recording of the same work. It was to be his last recording.

Igor Stravinsky’s first two ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, The Firebird and Petrushka, were enthusiastically received by the Parisian audience, but nothing prepared them for The Rite of Spring.

Most composers who wrote Requiems, went for the dramatic. Gabriel Faure took a different approach, which many feel to be more appropriate. See what you think as we look at the Faure Requiem this Sunday.

We lighten it up a bit this week, going back to the 1878 London comedy stage with a complete performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, in which love conquers all (or mostly all) on board the most preposterous ship in the Royal Navy.

We have a special live performance recording of the Verdi Requiem this week. Vedri, of course, was first and foremost an opera composer. One would expect his Requiem to be dramatic, and Verdi does not disappoint.

Maurice Ravel penned a piano duet drawn from Mother Goose tales for the amusement of a friend’s children in 1910.