Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin

Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm

The Four Seasons

Exploring Music is an adventure — an expedition through the world of classical music. We pick a theme each week and follow the music wherever it leads us. Over the years we’ve explored Shakespeare and music, have followed the lives of many composers (a sort of five-part mini-series), and visited the music of various locales — Paris, Venice, Spain, Hungary, the Pacific Rim. Each five-episode program is a musical journey that focuses on a particular, genre, music festival, or classical theme. It’s a sort of Outward Bound for music, with Bill McGlaughlin as our guide to make sure we all get home safe and sound.

Listeners' emailed suggestions have played a very important role in choosing themes. We’ve recorded over two hundred adventures, and the ideas keep turning up. We don’t think we’ll exhaust the possibilities. Exploring Music is familiar and welcoming, and is where you feel at home on your first visit and can’t wait to get back to sample what the series has come up with for its next five-episodes.

The player below features a continuous five hour loop of the most recent Exploring Music episode.

The Four Seasons

March 18, 2024

This week, Bill welcomes the vernal equinox with music inspired by the seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. We’ll be able to envision the boundless majesty of the summer sun in Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten, and the frosty and shivering winds of Vivaldi’s Winter, and then to spice up our week, Astor Piazzolla’s tango, Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Cuatro Estaciones ...

Shostakovich, Dmitri, Part II

March 11, 2024

This week we conclude our two-part series on the life and times of Dmitri Shostakovich. From his later symphonies to the Jazz Suite No. 2, Bill explores all forms of Shostakovich’s writing. Starting with Shostakovich’s Four Romances after Pushkin, Op. 46, and his Symphony No. 5, The Market Place from The Gadfly, Op. 97, Bill ends the week with Kim ...

Shostakovich, Dmitri, Part I

March 3, 2024

“He forged a musical language of colossal emotional power” says Grove’s Dictionary. This week will be the first of a two-part series exploring the life and times of Dmitri Shostakovich. From his four-note “D-Es-C-H” signature to the musical sounds of the KGB knocking on his door, Bill will help us understand these hidden meanings in his music. Born in Tsarist ...