Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

By Joshua Weilerstein

Arts Performing Arts Music

What's Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast about?

Sticky Notes is a classical music podcast for everyone, whether you are just getting interested in classical music for the first time, or if you've been listening to it and loving it all your life. Interviews with great artists, in depth looks at pieces in the repertoire, and both basic and deep dives into every era of music. Classical music is absolutely for everyone, so let's start listening! Note - Seasons 1-5 will be returning over the next year. They have been taken down in order to be re-recorded in improved sound quality!

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The Music of World War II a...

09.28.2023

I had the great pleasure and honor this week(and next week) to speak with the author of the new book Time's Echo Jeremy Eichler. The book chronicles four composers and their varied reactions to World War II and the Holocaust, ...

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast episodes:

09.28.2023 The Music of World War II and the Holocaust with "Time's Echo" writer Jeremy Eichler (Part 1) I had the great pleasure and honor this week(and next week) to speak with the author of the new book Time's Echo Jeremy Eichler. The book chronicles four composers and their varied reactions to World War II and the Holocaust, ...
09.21.2023 Mahler Symphony No. 4, Part 2 If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of this episode about Mahler's 4th symphony, I highly recommend doing that, as every movement of this symphony builds to the "Heavenly Life" of the last movement. On Part 2, we'll be going ...
09.14.2023 Mahler Symphony No. 4, Part 1 After the truly heavenly slow movement of Mahler’s 4th symphony, a soprano emerges and sings a song literally called “The Heavenly Life.” It is a symphonic ending like no other, one that leaves the listener peaceful and contented after taking ...
09.08.2023 Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 2 If you joined me last week, you heard about the severe intestinal illness that Beethoven suffered from during the year of 1825. Beethoven thought that he was near death; he was spitting up blood, in terrible pain, and regularly begged ...
08.31.2023 Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 1 I had long hesitated to write a show about any of Beethoven’s late string quartets. These are pieces that professional quartets spend the better part of their careers grappling with, struggling with, failing with, and much more rarely, succeeding with. ...
08.24.2023 Nielsen Symphony No. 4, "Inextinguishable" At the top of the score for the Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s 4th symphony, he wrote: “Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable.” This could easily be the shortest podcast I’ve ever done. I could leave you with that quote ...
08.17.2023 Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream The stories, legends, and myths about the trials and travails of composers lives are legion, like Beethoven’s battles against fate, Mozart and Schubert’s struggles with finances, Brahms’ failures with women, Mahler’s troubles with just about everyone, and Shostakovich’s near fatal ...
08.10.2023 Elgar Cello Concerto Elgar's Cello Concerto was composed in the shadow of World War 1. It was a piece that marked a profound shift in Elgar's outlook on life and music, and was his last major work before a long silence caused by ...
08.03.2023 Romeo and Juliet in Classical Music The "love theme" from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture is one of the most famous themes in the history of Western Classical Music. The story it accompanies might be the most famous Western play ever written. Just like Eine Kleine ...
07.27.2023 Mozart Symphony No. 38, "Prague" Very few cities have had a relationship with a single person, especially a foreigner, like the city of Prague and its love affair with Mozart. Here’s what Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist for some of his greatest operas, said about ...
07.20.2023 Jean-Louis Duport Cello Concerto No. 4 Thank you to Nicole for sponsoring today's show on Patreon! Have you ever heard of Jean-Louis Duport? I imagine that unless you are a professional cellist, or someone who studied cello as a child, you probably haven’t. Even though my ...
07.06.2023 Brahms B Major Piano Trio When we listen to the music of Johannes Brahms, we often are reminded of the image of the portly bearded Brahms at the piano, eyes closed in a soulful pose. Brahms’ works always, even in his youth, seemed to have ...
06.29.2023 Sibelius Violin Concerto There’s a joke among classical musicians that the only parts of a piece that matter are the beginning, the end, and one place in the middle. I don’t think its something that anyone really believes in, but the value of ...
06.22.2023 Ravel, Bolero + La Valse Maurice Ravel the Magician, the Swiss Watchmaker, the aloof, the elegant, the precise, the soulful, the childlike, the naive, the warm, the radical, the progressive. These are all words that were used to describe a man of elegant contradictions throughout ...
06.15.2023 Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition Have you ever been to an art museum and wished that you had music to accompany your experience? Music that made the art you were looking at more vivid, more immediate, and more emotionally intense? Well, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at ...
06.08.2023 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 Welcome to episode number 200 of Sticky Notes!! On December 22nd, 1808, a day that would live in classical music lore forever, Ludwig Van Beethoven sat down for his very last appearance as a solo pianist to play this new ...
06.01.2023 Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 What did Dmitri Shostakovich intend to portray in his music? There is probably no more debated a question in all of 20th century Western Classica lMusic than this one. On the surface, it seems to have an easy answer. Shostakovich ...
05.25.2023 What Does a Conductor Really Do? Have you ever wondered what it is that us conductors are really doing up there? Are we just waving our arms in time to the music? What role does the conductor actually play in a concert? How about a rehearsal? ...
05.18.2023 All things Piano with Marc-André Hamelin Marc-André Hamelin is one of the world's greatest living pianists. He is known as a virtuoso of the highest order and has made nearly 100 recordings spanning the gamut of the piano repertoire. In this conversation we talk about how ...
05.11.2023 Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 “This is Fate, the force of destiny, which ever prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal, which jealously stands watch lest our peace and well-being be full and cloudless, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over our ...
05.04.2023 My 25 Favorite Moments in Classical Music (Part 2) Last week we covered moments 1-15 in my top 25 favorite moments in classical music, going all the way up towards the end of the 19th century. This week we're going to explore 9 of my favorite moments from the ...
04.27.2023 My Top 25 Favorite Moments in Classical Music (Part 1) What MAKES a moment in a piece of classical music? Sometimes it’s the result of careful pacing from a composer, the slow build to a powerful release. Sometimes it’s about surprise, a sudden explosion, or even a sudden extinguishing of ...
04.20.2023 Mendelssohn Octet in E Flat Major, Op. 20 From 1825-1827, Mendelssohn wrote 3 of his most beloved and most played works: his Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, his String Quartet, Op. 13, and the piece were going to talk about today, his Octet. What is truly astonishing about these ...
04.13.2023 Mahler Symphony No. 5, Part 2 I left you last week after Part 1 of Mahler’s 5th symphony, dazed and defeated. There seems to be no hope, and no way out. But as many of you know by now, Mahler reaches for the entire emotional spectrum ...
04.06.2023 Mahler Symphony No. 5, Part 1 There is a thread of musical theory called Schenkerian analysis, based on the work of Heinrich Schenker. Schenker believed that musical works could be boiled down to their fundamental structures and harmonies. Entire works could be described with single chords. ...
03.30.2023 Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht I’m not sure there’s ever been a composer who changed as much throughout his or her life as Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg would become famous, or infamous, depending on who you talk to, for his invention of atonality; the equalization of ...
03.23.2023 What Does an Opera Director Really Do? W/ Tabatha McFadyen Have you ever wondered what exactly goes on behind the scenes putting together an opera? Have you ever asked yourself how a director make decisions on how to interpret the libretto of an opera? Why do some productions look so ...
03.16.2023 The Life and Music of Clara Schumann Clara Schumann, without a doubt, was one of the greatest pianists of all time. Schumann’s playing didn’t just leave critics and audiences in raptures, it also left other composers amazed that their music could sound so beautiful. Liszt called her ...
03.09.2023 So What's It Like To Be The Principal Horn Of The Berlin Philharmonic? W/ Stefan Dohr Stefan Dohr is one of the greatest french horn players in the world today. He has been the Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world's greatest orchestras, since 1993. In this really fun interview, Stefan and I ...
03.02.2023 Brahms Symphony No. 1 Brahms was only 20 years old when Robert Schumann wrote his famous Neue Bahnen(New Paths) article that proclaimed Brahms as the future of music and the heir of Beethoven. Beethoven had only been dead for 26 years at this point, ...
02.23.2023 Debussy String Quartet Just one year before Debussy wrote his legendary Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, he completed another groundbreaking work. It was a string quartet, which he expected to be the first of many. But in the end, it would ...
02.16.2023 A Conversation with Martin Fröst: "The Highest Feeling You Can Get is that Someone Got Better" Martin Fröst very well may be the greatest living clarinetist. His brilliant sound, feats of virtuosity, eclectic taste, and amazing performing ability has made him a superstar in the classical music world. I recently worked with Martin in Spain and ...
02.09.2023 Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, Part 2 By as early as 1909, composers like Mahler knew that tonality was reaching its breaking point, and composers like Debussy were experimenting with colors and ideas a composer like Brahms wouldn’t have dreamed were possible. Strauss was shocking the world ...
02.02.2023 Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, Part 1 The most famous thing about Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is the riot that took place at its premiere. Perhaps its overcompensating for classical music's reputation for being a bit stuffy, but musicians and musicologists LOVE talking about the riot ...
01.27.2023 Stravinsky: Petrouchka If you listened to my show last week about Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, you know that Stravinsky’s life was never the same after the premiere of the ballet in 1910. Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes and Stravinsky’s ...
01.19.2023 Stravinsky: The Firebird In 1906, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev created a sensation in Paris with an exhibition of Russian Art. This was the first time a major showing of Russian art had appeared in Paris, and from this point forward, the city was ...
01.12.2023 Pavel Haas, Symphony This February, I have the great honor of joining the Indianapolis Symphony for the North American premiere of Pavel Haas’ remarkable unfinished symphony. Pavel Haas, a Czech Jewish composer, wrote the existing music for his symphony between 1940 and 1941 ...
12.22.2022 Vivaldi, The Four Seasons Ask a non-classical music fan to name a piece of classical music. If they don’t say Beethoven 5, or the Ode to Joy, they probably will say The Four Seasons. They might not know that it was written by Vivaldi, ...
12.15.2022 Chopin Etudes (and Godowsky!) You might be thinking, "Why on earth would anyone want to devote an entire podcast to etudes?" For most instrumentalists, etudes are the bane of our existence. They are studies, meant to develop technique on an instrument. Etudes are an ...
12.08.2022 Schubert Cello Quintet In the late summer or early autumn of 1828, Schubert completed an extraordinary work, his String Quintet in C Major. 6 weeks later, he was dead. Nowadays this piece is considered to be one of the most sublime 50 minutes ...
12.01.2022 The Music of Film Composers Film music began as a solution to a problem. Early film projectors were really loud, therefore something was needed to cover up all the noise. In addition, silent movies apparently seemed a bit awkward without any musical accompaniment. Enter, usually, ...
11.25.2022 Janacek Sinfonietta Along with Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana, Leos Janacek is known as one of the three great Czech composers. He was born in Moravia, part of the Austrian Empire at the time, and became passionately interested in studying the folk ...
11.17.2022 The Degenerates: Music Suppressed By The Nazis The center of Western Classical Music, ever since the time of Bach, has been modern-day Germany and Austria. You can trace a line from Bach, to Haydn to Mozart to Beethoven to Schubert to Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner, and finally ...
11.03.2022 David Krauss, Principal Trumpet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra David Krauss is the Principal Trumpet of the Met Opera orchestra, and in this conversation, we talked about his beginnings on the trumpet, the differences between playing in a symphonic orchestra vs. an opera orchestra, how to manage the vast ...
10.27.2022 Beethoven Op. 18 String Quartets, Part 2 Note: This episode will be a lot more enjoyable if you listen to Part 1 first! As we turn towards the final three quartets of the set, we’ll see a lot of the same characteristics of the first 3; a ...
10.20.2022 Beethoven Op. 18 String Quartets, Part 1 In 1798, Beethoven, all of 28 years old, was about to begin a project that would take him to the last days of his life, a project that would result in some of the most far-reaching, most cosmic, most life-affirming, ...
10.13.2022 Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 In almost every one of the past shows I’ve done about Shostakovich, the name Joseph Stalin is mentioned almost as much as the name Dmitri Shostakovich, and of course, there’s a good reason for that. Shostakovich’s life and music was ...
10.06.2022 10 Pieces You've (Probably) Never Heard, But Need to Listen To! Everyone knows Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Even if United Airlines hadn’t made the piece ubiquitous, it seems like the one piece of classical music almost everyone knows besides the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th symphony is Rhapsody in Blue. But did ...
09.29.2022 Ives, "Three Places in New England" In 1929, the conductor Nicolas Slonimsky contacted the American composer Charles Ives about performing one of his works. This was a bit of a surprise for Ives, since he had a checkered reputation among musicians and audience members, if they ...
09.22.2022 Louise Farrenc Symphony No. 3 In the mid 19th century, the way to make yourself famous in France as a composer was to write operas. From Cherubini, to Meyerbeer, to Bizet, to Berlioz, to Gounod, to Massenet, to Offenbach, to Saint Saens, to foreign composers ...

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