Last week in our cycle of the Schubert symphonies, we listened to the sixth symphony - written on the cusp of the Classical and Romantic periods by the 21-year-old composer.
This week we come to one of the most famous symphonies of them all, Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the Unfinished Symphony.
Why was it unfinished --- and what happened to Symphony No. 7?
These are both good questions, and they have been debated by musicologists for nearly 200 years. We'll add our two cents' worth this Thursday night.
We continue the Estro Armonico cycle of Concerti Grossi by Vivaldi, then take a look at the music Rameau was writing in Paris around the same time.
Peter Schickele (of PDQ Bach fame) shows us his serious side with a quartet of particular beauty, written at his summer camp at Woodstock, New York (there must be something in the water up there).
Bartok and Rachmaninoff demonstrate their different approaches toward bringing eastern European folk music to the concert stage, and Shostakovich continues his cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet government with some piano music inspired by his (mandatory) trip to a Bach festival in East Germany in 1950.
