Hop on over to this forkin’ good show to enjoy some tasty classical tunes! If it's a great piece and it's remotely classical: I will find it, and I will play it. All YOU need to do is grab a spoon, turn on that microwave, and tune into WRBB 104.9FM at 8am on Wednesdays

Mac’nClassicalCheese

This week's episode is part 2 of the theme: Out to Sea! While part 1 was full of exciting and adventure-worthy music that featured folk tunes and dances, this second half of the them showcases pieces that are more peaceful and contemplative in their energy, and they tend to focus on cultivating a mood, color, or feeling, rather than adhering to a specific form or structure.

Out to Sea Pt.2

Today's theme is going to be split into 2 parts! Queue the excitement! The theme is out to sea and this part 1 is more like adventure on the high seas. Think pirates, think big waves and lots of high energy music infused with folk tunes.

Out to Sea Pt.1

Today's show is going to feature folk music influences. Folk music is any music that is native to a culture or country that likely doesn't have its origins in any written music. Most folk music, regardless of where it is from, is based on pentatonic scales. The scale most of us are used to is a 7 note scale whereas a pentatonic scale is a 5 note scale. Whats more, our scale (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do) has semitones or half steps between the notes. Think of that sound like a musical staircase when something or someone is ascending into the clouds in a cartoon. How all those notes sound squished together? It's half steps. The pentatonic scale has no half steps, what you see, or hear, is what you get. 5 simple notes. Because of this, when classical composers created pieces around folk themes, the entire style of the piece was changed and takes on a very unique, and distinctly non-classical sound. This is because the whole scale that the piece is built on (all of its harmonies and key changes) are built on a less complicated scale. So the unique sounds of these pieces can be traced back to scales. Folk music was not really acceptable or "serious" enough to be used in classical music for many decades. Classical music is built around very specific forms and a decent amount of rules and snobbiness but in the 1800s during the Romantic period of classical music as rules and forms were breaking down, many composers started incorporating pieces from their home countries or places they traveled to. Dvořák in particular popularized the use of folk music in classical music.

Folk Songs

Kicking off season 3 with a different take on a repeat theme: Dawn to Dusk. This time, instead of pieces literally written about specific times of day, we have a selection made based on tone and feeling. We'll start with our first ever Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger with a movement from his symphonic tone poem Pastorale Summer for "dawn," then move onto the 2nd movement of Sibelius' 2nd symphony which will take us through morning &amp; afternoon. Mahler's lost andante from his 1st symphony, Blumine, will take us lead us into early evening followed by a Nocturne for strings by Dvorák for "sunset." Richard Strauss' last song of his Four Last Songs cycle will be our piece for midnight, performed by Jessye Norman, and to close out the day/close out the night we have the beautiful 2nd movement from Mahler's 5th symphony, performed by the Berlin Phil in 2022 with Dudamel conducting.

Dawn to Dusk #2

And just like that we've come to the end of season 2! It's ok, don't cry, we'll be back in the fall with a FULL season of tasty tunes. This episode is the most disorganized moment the show will ever experienced b/c it was a *crazy* week. So this is me compensating by choosing a random collection of pieces that I find relaxing and comforting. We'll start with movt.1 from Tchaik Symphony 6. It's an odd choice for summer because it's got that Tchaikovsky ability to make you think of being cozy in winter, but that's why I thought it would be a nice comfort piece. Then we'll hear two 2nd movements back to back, both very romantic and lyrical, followed by a gentle piece by Fauré and a short interlude (elevator music if you will) to take a breather before closing the show with "The Pines of the Janiculum" from Respighi's Pines of Rome. It's our closer because it's a perfect reset piece – it's like the music equivalent of walking into a forest clearing or the top of a mountain and taking a deep breath.

Reset/Breathe

Criss-cross applesauce on the carpet b/c it's story time! Nearly all these pieces are from operas, ballets, or movie scores. For some context about opera and ballet music: usually a story exists already and then someone writes a score (the music) for that opera or ballet. So in turn, music for operas and ballets are story-driven works – they are not just random melodies with random ups and downs in tempo or feeling, each part of these pieces corresponds to what is going on in the story. Other than this, there are 3 pieces that I'll call out because they aren't self-explanatory: the Prayer of St. Gregory which is based on a Biblical story, Elgar's Serenade for Strings which is included because a "serenade" is actually a specific term that means music played in the evening, outdoors, and usually meant to invoke the image/feeling of one lover serenading another "in the moonlight". I cannot make this up. It is apparently that specific, so I counted it as a story-related song. And then the last piece, the 1st movt. of Tchaik's Symphony 3. I really wanted to play this because there is a beautiful, dark melody hidden in it, AND there is actually a crazy backstory that has to do with this guy named Vladimir Shilovsky if you're interested in some *tea.

Story Time!

Today's show is all about THEMES! A theme in classical music is like a repeated melody that the music is built around, or it circles back to. It can also be tied to a certain person or thing in a story. Like in a movie, or in a ballet, there are themes (so specific melodies) in the music for certain characters that let you know when someone is coming in and out of the story. Today you'll hear a theme from Henry Purcell that Benjamin Britten used for his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (also used in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice on solo violin for that one Darcy &amp; Lizzie dance), a fantasia on a theme and variants on a theme by Ralph Vaughan Williams, then two pieces that showcase character's themes – "Gayane's Adagio" from Gayane Suite, and Yumeji's Theme from Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood For Love. Our first ever guitar work, Fantasía para un Gentilhombre by Joaquín Rodrigo which is based on a theme by the earlier Spanish Baroque composer Gaspar Sanz, then 2 movie themes! The Medallion calls from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, because it sounds JUST like that Gaspar Sanz theme...and then the love theme from the Star Wars prequels. Finally, we get to a bit of a cheat, Soarin, which is theme park music, cuz why not, and then finishing with *the* most famous, the romance variation from Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, played by the incredible Arthur Rubinstein.

On a Theme

Welcome back! It's season 2 and like last season, I'm kicking off the show with some of my favorite pieces. This time, it's all solo piano though! This is the first of what will likely be many Piano Palooza's because there are SO many amazing works for solo piano to enjoy. Unlike any other instrument, a piano can play a piece without any accompaniment and it still sounds so full. The instrument allows for a lot of resonance that most other instruments cannot carry off or sustain throughout a whole piece, and the pianist's ability to play multiple voices at once with both hands lets you write complex pieces with many layers. This Piano Palooza is mainly pieces from the Romantic Era of classical music (so late 1800s, early 1900s) with 2 small exceptions – Mozart &amp; Beethoven – because their selected pieces fit in with the type of pieces I chose for the show, which were fantasies/romances/impromptus. All of these types of music indicate a breaking away from standard form. This means the pieces are much more free, complex sounding, and beautiful. You'll see that the Rachmaninoff and Scriabin pieces don't have these titles, but that's because they were active late enough in the 1900s that most forms had already been broken down.

Piano Palooza 1!

Closing out the end of vol.1 of this show, our theme today is essentially: Magic! Some pieces are quite literally related to magic – Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and (of course) Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter. Other pieces are just ethereal and whimsical, like music from impressionist-romaticist-neoclassicist-toomany'ists'justmakeupyourmindmusichistorians French composers, and some are a bit more intense and dark (i.e. Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela b/c its based off Finnish folklore). AND our first ever contemporary composer, Max Richter, will kick off this episode with a piece that sounds a LOT like the theme for the tree of souls thing in the new Avatar film franchise.

Dreamscapes

Pivoting from last week's nature theme, today's pieces each correspond to a time of day. *Queue the "oohs" and "ahs"* We'll start with a song that's not by a classical group, rather the rock group The Moody Blues who recorded their album Days of Future Passed with The London Festival Orchestra. Their opening piece, The Day Begins, is a beautiful orchestral overture of sorts with some narration at the end. We will move from here into dawn (Pride and Prejudice 2005 score), then morning ("Morning Mood" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite), afternoon (Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), dusk (Gibbs's Fancy Dress Suite), and finish in the night (Transfigured Night by Schoenberg, and Night and Love by Holmès)

Dawn to Dusk

Before there was digital media, fast traveling news, and easy access to transportation that could take you miles from your home, the natural world was much more of an influence for artists. Many composers wrote pieces that were influenced in some way or another by nature – whether it was a pieces written after a specific geological site like Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture, or just a general nod to nature like Glazunov's music for the allegorical ballet, The Seasons. We have a mix of popular pieces and some hidden gems today and will be closing out with likely the most famous piece in the playlist, the 1st movement from Beethoven's 6th Symphony, "Pastoral."

Soundscapes

We're kicking off the show with a selection of second movements! It's not a hard and fast rule, but second movements are usually a bit slower – a time to breathe in a piece – and because of this, they usually showcase beautiful melodies. Some of my favorite melodies are from second movements so it seemed like a nice and easy way to get us into the groove of classical music.