Search results for

The Siena Pianoforte was salvaged from a Tel Aviv dump after having been used as a hive for bees, a chicken coop, and maybe even a smokehouse for sausages. Of such tales are legends made — some of them might even be true!

Niccolo Paganini, perhaps the most flamboyant and famous violinist of his time, acquired a new viola and he wanted to show it off. Paganini’s solution was to commission Hector Berlioz to write a concert showpiece.

Aaron Copland — a city boy — made a name for himself with music evocative of the American West. It’s a romanticized West, of course it is, but we’ll look at one of the first of his “oater-ballets,” Billy the Kid, this Sunday, and we’ll hear a couple of the others in upcoming weeks as well.

WFIT Studios - Fall Fund Drive 9/27/16Very happy to share this with you folks. It was not long after this night our dear friend Larry passed away suddenly on February 19th 2017.

Jazz meets classical: it was a daring concept, and success was mixed. We’ll look at some of this music on this Sunday’s program.

Early in the 20th century, Bela Bartok headed for the villages around Hungary, lugging along an Edison wax cylinder recorder, to capture the folk melodies of the countryside before they were gone forever.

It was in 1896 that Richard Strauss tried to express Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophies through music. We’ll go light on the Nietzsche as we see what Zarathustra has to say this Sunday.

I recently came across an interview I did on WFIT 10yrs ago with former US Congressman, Co-founder of the band ORLEANS, and my friend, John Hall. We discussed the No-Nukes concerts, and the tragedy at Fukushima that had happened just weeks before in Japan.

We conclude two series this week with the final of Bach’s six cello suites, recorded by Pablo Casals in 1936, and another of Aaron Copland’s American West pieces. And then we’ll hear a most unfamiliar version of a most iconic piece of American music.

The premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a rare immediate triumph for the composer, ending with the cheers of the audience. We’ll hear Herbert von Karajan’s reading with the Berlin Philharmonic -- one of the great recordings of this iconic work — on this Sunday’s program.