Classical Music: The Stories

In the final episode before the summer, Carl looks at a pivotal moment in musical tonality; Wagner's 'unplayable' Tristan und Isolde.

This weeks episode focuses on Beethoven's intense work scored for 2 violins, viola and cello.

In this extra-terrestrial episode, Carl discusses the piece that British composer Gustav Holst is most famous for: his tribute to the planets!

This week's episode focuses in on an aria from Giuseppe Verdi's groundbreaking opera La Traviata.

What would you do if you were asked to write music for a prestigious awards ceremony? Brahms clearly took it to mean 'Write music for a student party'. Which is exactly what he did. Here is his Academic Festival Overture.

This week's episode focuses on Faure's requiem which has a completely different mood and tone to Mozart's requiem in how it views the topic of death.

It's two for the price of one this week. Or is it? Alessandro Marcello may have written a beautiful oboe concerto, but it's Johann Sebastian Bach we have to thank for it's popularity!

Back from his break, Carl looks at Robert Schumann's Symphony in C major which he wrote at a particularly painful time of his life.

On a completely different note (and tone and genre), Carl looks at American Composer George Gershwin's opera 'Porgy and Bess'.

This week, the longest river of the Czech Republic is the subject, thanks so Bedrich Smetana's gripping tone poem all about his homeland.