Mar 21, 2015
Raymond Bisha introduces the latest Naxos recording of the Elora Festival Singers in performances of Poulenc’s unaccompanied choral works. Transcending a backcloth of geopolitical and personal turmoil, these gems marry a delicacy of form with harmonic pungency, described by conductor Noel Edison as “like putting...
Mar 14, 2015
Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein—names such as these are familiar friends. But what constituted the musical bedrock from which they sprang? In this week’s podcast, conductor JoAnn Falletta discusses with Mark Simmons the vital contribution that composer John Knowles Paine made to the burgeoning roots...
Mar 6, 2015
There’s certainly something impressively expansive about the American composer Alan Hovhaness. The numbers alone command respect: having lived for almost 90 years, he notched up 434 compositions, including 67 symphonies. Conductor Gerard Schwarz weighs in with an equally admirable discography of more than...