Classical Conversations

At more than 70 minutes, Ferruccio Busoni's wildly inventive Piano Concerto stands as a holy grail of the repertoire – a tour-de-force of virtuousity and stamina that has rarely been set down on disc. With his latest album, powerhouse pianist Kirill Gerstein adds to the collection his own formidable interpretation, which has been years in the making. Kirill joins us for a conversation about the work, and his long-time fascination with Busoni's music.

Violinist Philippe Quint and pianist Marta Aznavoorian team up (with guest Joshua Bell) for a rich compendium of tunes by the legendary filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, in original arrangements by the composer Charles Colman. Philippe and Marta join us to preview the album and talk about its genesis and the process of bringing it to disc.

One of contemporary music's brightest lights, pianist Sarah Cahill is presenting her provocative program "The Future is Female" at the Detroit Institute of Arts and also at Bowling Green State University. Sarah joins us for a conversation about the program and her longtime championship of music by living composers.

Cellist Hee-Young Lim was (at age 15) the youngest student ever accepted to Korean National University. Afterward, she attended Boston's New England Conservatory and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris. In 2016, at the age of 28, she was appointed Principal Solo Cello of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin – making her one of the first female Asian cellists ever to lead a section in a major European orchestra. Hee-Young Lim joins us to discuss her latest release, a dynamic album of French Cello Concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra.

German-born composer Reiko Füting writes highly unique music with a social conscience, that maintains an awareness of the past while looking to the future. Füting's musical voice is on full display in his second recording for New Focus Recordings, called Distant Song. The composer joins WGTE's Brad Cresswell for a detailed conversation about the works on the disc, and his musical process in general.

You know her from the NPR News Quiz Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! The one and only Paula Poundstone returns to Toledo on March 15 for an appearance at the Stranahan Theater (details and tickets here). Listen to Brad Cresswell's entire interview with the comedy legend, which covers a wide range of topics: from how she hates her name, to fake karate belts, to – of course – her many years on one of NPR's highest-rated programs. Added bonus: still in classical music mode, Brad decides to pronounce her name in Italian. Not the best way to start an interview, but it worked out!

Opera star Joyce DiDonato joins us to talk about and sample her new album Songplay, which delightfully mixes jazz, Latin, and tango rhythms into arrangements of Italian Baroque arias, jazz standards, and picks from the Great American Songbook.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine surveys her groundbreaking album of blues-influenced classical works for solo violin and violin and piano by 20th and 21st century composers of African descent, Blues Dialogues from Cedille Records.

Morten Lauridsen is the country's most-performed choral composer and with over 200 albums containing his work, one of the most recorded. He joins us to talk about the latest album made up entirely of his music: Light Eternal, from Deutsche Grammophone records.

Since 2012, Israeli-born cellist Amit Peled has famously played the 1733 Matteo Goffriller cello formerly owned by the great cellist Pablo Casals. For the first time, Peled has recorded the solo cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, which were made world-famous in the 1930s through Casals' recording of them, with that same instrument. Amit joins us to discuss the disc and Casals' legacy with these suites.