Classical Conversations

After an illustrious 20 year career, the members of the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet decided to disband for good this past June. They still had one recording in the queue, however, and it's just been released on the Avie record label: The Brahms String Sextets Op.18 and Op.36, which were recorded in front of a live studio audience at Skywalker Sound. The group's cellist Jennifer Kloetzel joins us to preview that final album, which also features guest artists Barry Shiffman (viola) and Zuill Bailey (cello).

Leading British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor joins us to preview his latest album Homages, a collection of works by Busoni, Mendelssohn, Chopin and others which pay tribute to others.

This weekend, conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn leads the Toledo Symphony Orchestra in Shostakovich's complex and revolutionary Symphony No. 5, and solos in Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. The reknowned conductor (and son of legendary Soviet dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) joins us in the studio for a conversation about these two remarkable composers and their music.

The Nashville Symphony's latest recording of music by composer Michael Daugherty is up for three Grammy Awards next month. One of the works on that disc, the organ concerto "Once Upon A Castle," is coming to the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle with virtuoso organist Paul Jacobs and the Toledo Symphony as part of The Citizen Kane Experience. Michael Daugherty sits down with WGTE's Brad Cresswell for a conversation about the concerto - inspired by the life and times of William Randolph Hearst, Jr.

Eminent conductor Semyon Bychkov has recently embarked on a multi-year series of performances and recordings of the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Russian-born Maestro joins us to talk about the first recording in the project, which includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, The Pathétique.

In his latest recording, pianist Kirill Gerstein turns his attention to Franz Liszt and the Transcendental Études - considered to be among the most difficult pieces in the solo piano repertoire.

Star harpist Yolanda Kondonassis celebrates the centennial of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera's birth with a new album, Ginastera: One Hundred. The recording features guest appearances by the violin/piano duo of Gil and Orli Shaham plus guitarist Jason Vieaux, as well as a centerpiece of Yolanda's repertoire over the years, Ginastera's Harp Concerto.

Superstar violinist Joshua Bell teams up with colleagues Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk for his latest album, entitled For the Love of Brahms.

Mark Kosower, principal cello of The Cleveland Orchestra, stops by the FM 91 studio with the Toledo Symphony's Merwin Siu to preview Mark's appearance with the TSO in one of the most passionately expressive works in the cello/orchestra repertoire, Ernest Bloch's Hebraic Rhapsody, Schelomo.

Violin powerhouse Jennifer Koh discusses her new Tchaikovsky album; modern vs. classic works and the secret that her first violin teacher kept from her for 25 years.