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 a beginner just looking to get into classical music but don't know where to start, or a seasoned musician interested in the lives and ideas of your fellow artists, this podcast is for you. The show will feature interviews with the top artists of today, in-depth looks at specific pieces from the repertoire, and deep dives into each era of classical music, plus much more.

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Mahler Symphony No. 1, Part 1

12.02.2021

No one makes a grand statement quite like Gustav Mahler, and his first symphony, nearly an hour long, was one of the boldest statements ever made by a young composer. Today I’ll take a look at the history behind the ...

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast episodes:

12.02.2021 Mahler Symphony No. 1, Part 1 No one makes a grand statement quite like Gustav Mahler, and his first symphony, nearly an hour long, was one of the boldest statements ever made by a young composer. Today I’ll take a look at the history behind the ...
11.24.2021 The Music of Heinrich Schutz (and Brahms!) There are composers whose influence outstrips their popularity. The Baroque composer Heinrich Schutz falls into this group, due to his total focus on writing sacred vocal music. But for those who know his music, he is essential. He was the ...
11.18.2021 Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste Bartok’s Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste is a perfect encapsulation of Bartok’s musical output. Each movement provides us with a magnifying glass into some of the qualities that made Bartok one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. ...
11.11.2021 Bach Transformed Arrangements of Bach's music have been happening essentially since his music was “rediscovered” by Mendelssohn in the 19th century. But Mozart and Beethoven arranged Bach's music too, and Bach himself would recycle works for different groupings of instruments. Today, I'm ...
11.04.2021 Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3, "Scottish" Mendelssohn was only 20 years old when he wrote to his friend Karl Klingemann: "...I am going to Scotland, with a rake for folk songs, an ear for the lovely, fragrant countryside, and a heart for the bare legs of ...
10.28.2021 Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances Rachmaninoff’s music is often described as many different kinds of chocolate cake, but this piece, if it's chocolatey at all, would be that 85% dark chocolate - more bitter than sweet. It might be Rachmaninoff’s greatest orchestral work, and one ...
10.21.2021 Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, "The Year 1905" In 1956, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote: “I am now writing my 11th symphony, dedicated to the First Russian Revolution...I would like in this work to reflect the soul of the people who first paved the way to socialism.” Soviet loyalists were ...
10.14.2021 Sticky Notes Vs. Wagner w/ Rafael Payare Wagner is probably the most admired AND the most reviled composer in Western Classical Music history. I've always been uncomfortable with Wagner's music, so I decided to sit down with the wonderful conductor(and my brother-in-law), Rafael Payare to try and ...
10.08.2021 Elgar: Enigma Variations Elgar told us all about how the inspiration for his first great success: “I began to play, and suddenly my wife interrupted by saying: “Edward, that’s a good tune!... ‘What is that?’ I answered, ‘Nothing – but something might be ...
09.30.2021 Fantasia 2021: 7 Pieces to Get You Started with Classical Music Almost everyone classical music fan has a memory of the first time they saw Fantasia. The brilliant combination of music and visuals made lifelong classical music fans out of millions of people. There's no audio only version of Fantasia, so ...
09.23.2021 Debussy La Mer It's 1905 and you've just come to the premiere of Debussy's La Mer. The orchestra begins playing, and a magical and completely unique journey begins. Gone are the peaceful and placid portrayals of water in music of the past. Instead, ...
09.16.2021 Mozart Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter" Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is a piece that can practically define the classical era symphony. Mozart pulls out every trick in the compositional book and practically sums up everything written before him. It is a symphony full of musical cliches, self-references, ...
09.09.2021 Schumann Symphony No. 2 Schumann’s life was marked with severe mental health issues. In 1844, Schumann suffered one of his worst breakdowns yet. He was dizzy, weak, had vision problems, couldn’t sleep, and couldn't listen to music. By 1845 Schumann slowly began to recover ...
09.03.2021 Brahms Symphony No. 2 Brahms spent much of his life battling with his ambition to write great symphonies and his terror at the spectre of Beethoven looming over him. His first symphony was a success, and with immense relief, Brahms quickly turned out a ...
08.26.2021 How to Understand(and Enjoy!) Atonal Music, Part 2: The Wars of the 1950s The 1950s featured a musical battle, pitting composers like Boulez, Carter, and Babbit against Bernstein, Copland, and Messaien. But how did the Post World War II movement towards total serialism and the avant-garde came about? And how did even the ...
08.19.2021 How to Listen to (and Enjoy!) Atonal Music, Part 1 This week we're talking all about atonal music! I'm going to tell you all about the history of this controversial development in classical music, its development, and perhaps most importantly, I’ll try to find a way to help you enjoy ...
08.12.2021 The Degenerates: Music Suppressed by the Nazis From the end of WWI until 1933, classical music in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe was flourishing, with composers such as Zemlinsky, Weill, Krenek, Korngold, Schreker, Schulhoff, Haas, Krasa, and Ullmann writing spectacularly innovative and thrilling music. The Nazis exiled ...
08.05.2021 Sibelius Symphony No. 2 In 1901, in the throes of the Finnish Independence movement, Jean Sibelius composed his legendary 2nd Symphony. Sibelius’ close colleague, the conductor Robert Kajanus, said that the symphony "strikes one as the most broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that ...
07.29.2021 Dvorak Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" Within three months of his arrival in New York, Antonin Dvorak was enamored with the sound of American music. Quickly he put forth what was at the time a controversial idea: "In the Negro melodies of America I discover all ...
07.22.2021 Havergal Brian, "Gothic Symphony" Havergal Brian’s ambitious Gothic Symphony has been called many things - massive, ambitious, barbaric, incompetent, insane, moving, brilliant, awful, torture, and much more. It is almost never performed due to the forces it requires and its two hour duration. Today ...
07.16.2021 Bruckner Symphony No. 7 With the rise of Wagner, the symphony seemed to be left for dead. But one composer in particular, Anton Bruckner, decided to take the plunge back into the symphonic genre, though he did it with a markedly Wagnerian touch. His ...
07.08.2021 A Conversation with Gabriela Lena Frank, Composer Gabriela Lena Frank is currently serving as Composer-in-Residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra and was included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history, I've always been a huge fan of Lena Frank's music, ...
07.01.2021 Shostakovich Symphony #13: "Babi Yar" In 1961, a poem appeared by the young poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, entitled Babi Yar. The first line of this poem is: “There are no monuments over Babi Yar.” In September of 1941 at least 33,771 Jews were murdered at the ...
06.24.2021 The Story of "Blind" Tom Wiggins, w/ Deirdre O'Connell Never heard of Tom Wiggins? You're in for a treat with this episode! Tom Wiggins was a fantastic 19th century pianist and composer who was ruthlessly exploited by his owner/guardian on account of his race and his mental condition. He ...
06.17.2021 Bach Chaconne for Solo Violin The Bach Chaconne is one of the great masterpieces of Western Classical Music, and today we're going to be diving straight into this monumental work. We'll talk about the legends behind its composition, the work itself, different interpretations of the ...
06.10.2021 Wynton Marsalis and the "Blues Symphony" I had the chance to sit down with virtually with the legendary Wynton Marsalis for a conversation about Jazz, comparing jazz and classical pieces, why so many classical composers writing jazz fail and vice versa, and about his massively ambitious ...
06.04.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Part 2 The cycle is complete! Would it surprise you to find out that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony wasn’t his last piece? Would it surprise you that he was actually considering an all instrumental movement for the last movement? Or how about that ...
06.01.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Part 1 More has been written about the meaning of Beethoven’s 9th than any other symphony. There are more recordings of it, more performances of it, and more uses of its most famous theme, the Ode to Joy, than any other piece. ...
05.27.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 8 In 1812, Beethoven's life was in ruins. He was embroiled in court battles, pining away for his "Immortal Beloved," and profoundly depressed. His musical response is one of his funniest, most charming, and most "classical" symphonies - the 8th. This ...
05.20.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 7 The composer Carl Maria Von Weber called it the work of a madman. Clara Schumann’s father, Friedrich Wieck, called it the work of a drunk. Beethoven’s 7th has been popular ever since its premiere, but as you can see, not ...
05.17.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral" Beethoven once said: “No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear.” There's no better example of Beethoven's love of nature than in his ...
05.13.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 5 They are the most famous 8 notes in all of Western Classical Music. If you walk down the street and ask someone to name a piece of classical music, they will surely say Beethoven 5. But why? What's the deal ...
05.10.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 4 Beethoven often gets the reputation of being a composer of extreme seriousness, shaking his fist at the heavens while dealing with a litany of medical ailments and heartbreak, and there is some truth to that as well. But the 4th ...
05.06.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 3, "Eroica" Two of the most famous chords in classical music propel us into this revolutionary, wild, and remarkable symphony. At the time, the Eroica symphony was the longest symphony ever written. At the time it was definitely the loudest symphony ever ...
05.03.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 2 We continue the Beethoven cycle this week with his underrated 2nd symphony. Written at the height of Beethoven's despair over his increasing deafness, you might think that the symphony would be a dark and stormy one, but instead Beethoven writes ...
04.29.2021 Beethoven Symphony No. 1 Today begins a pretty massive project for Sticky Notes - a complete Beethoven cycle over the next few weeks! We start of course with Beethoven's 1st symphony. Some people tend to think of Beethoven’s 1st as a cautious foray into ...
04.22.2021 Overtures, Overtures, Overtures! Imagine compressing a 3 or 4 hour opera into 8 minutes of music. You’ve just imagined an overture! Overtures are an integral and beloved part of the opera and concert experience, and the best overtures live on as separate pieces ...
04.15.2021 Bach Cello Suites Bach's Cello Suites are now an indispensable part of the cello repertoire, but this wasn't always the case. After Bach's death, they were forgotten. But starting in the 1890s, a cellist named Pablo Casals began playing the Suites, and the ...
04.08.2021 Haydn & Henle w/ Stephen Hough and Norbert Müllemann Have you ever wondered how music gets from the manuscript to the printed page? Today we’re talking about Haydn, and a project by Henle Publishers to reissue all 55 of Haydn’s piano sonatas with fingerings from 55 different pianists! I ...
04.01.2021 Baroque Music in 60 Minutes Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Purcell, Monteverdi. These are some of the biggest names in the history of Western Classical Music, and they were all writing in one of the most innovative periods in musical history - the Baroque Era. Spanning from ...
03.25.2021 Mozart, "The Marriage of Figaro," Part 2 Acts III and IV of the Marriage of Figaro are complicated in many ways. They are difficult for the singers, for the conductor, and especially for the director. So in honour of the many experiments that have been made with ...
03.18.2021 A Conversation with Frederica Von Stade Frederica Von Stade needs no introduction. She is one of the legends of our time, and one of the most beloved singers in the world. She has made over 60 recordings and has appeared with all of the world's great ...
03.11.2021 Introduction to Opera + Mozart, Marriage of Figaro (Part 1) In the late 16th century, a new art form emerged, borne out of a desire to re-engage with Greek dramas of the past. This art form was incredibly ambitious; it would involve music, words, and dance, all written to entertain ...
03.04.2021 Renaissance Music in 60 Minutes There are indelible images associated with the musical Renaissance period. This 200 year era saw an astonishing growth in productivity, an expansion of education, both musical and otherwise, and repeated religious upheavals. The music of this period existed both as ...
02.25.2021 William Levi Dawson, "Negro Folk Symphony" William Dawson is not a household name to classical music lovers. But for one week in 1934, he was the talk of the classical music world. The legendary Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra had chosen to program a new ...
02.19.2021 Nathan Milstein, Django Reinhardt, Playing with Only Two Fingers, and More, w/ Clayton Haslop Clayton Haslop might not be a name that is familiar to all of you, but I bet that you've heard his playing. He has appeared as concertmaster on over 1000 TV Shows and Movies, such as The Matrix, Ratatouille, UP, ...
02.11.2021 Bartok Divertimento for String Orchestra It might surprise, or even shock you, to learn that a piece that crackles with joy and excitement like Bartok's Divertimento was written in November of 1939. But the circumstances of the Divertimento are among the most unusual in the ...
02.04.2021 Medieval Music in 60 Minutes When we hear Medieval music performed live, it speaks to us in a different way than almost any other music. It seems to have just appeared, as is, from the earth itself. Medieval music was originally passed down by oral ...
01.28.2021 Beethoven Violin Concerto December 23rd, 1806 should have been one of those dates etched into musical history; it was the premier of a new violin concerto by Beethoven, performed by one of the great soloists of the day. But the performance was a ...
01.21.2021 Berlioz, "Symphonie Fantastique" Symphonie Fantastique, which was written just 3 years after Beethoven’s death, redefined what music could portray. Its color, fire, narrative arc, vulgarity, descriptiveness, and drug-induced hysteria put it in a class of its own in the classical music world. As ...

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