logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2023
55m 13s

(Part 2) - The Music of World War II and...

JOSHUA WEILERSTEIN
About this episode

This is another episode where I highly recommend listening to Part 1 from last week before listening to this episode! It was a great honor to speak with the critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler about his remarkable new book "Time's Echo." In today's episode, we speak about Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, as well as the complicated and hotly debated questions about Strauss' activities during World War II. We also talk about Shostakovich and his 13th Symphony, entitled "Babi Yar," a piece of memorial for a place where no memorial had stood for decades. Finally, we speak about Benjamin Britten and his War Requiem. We talk about Britten's devout pacificism, about his visit to the Belsen Displaced Persons camp after World War II, and why his War Requiem seems to have more connection with World War I than with World War II. It was truly a joy to talk to Jeremy about all of these different great composers, as well as the memories they created with their works. Join us! 

Up next
May 1
Copland Clarinet Concerto
The commission for a new Clarinet Concerto from the great American composer Aaron Copland came from a rather unlikely source: Benny Goodman, the man known as the King of Swing. Goodman was one of the most famous and important jazz musicians of all time, but in the late 1940s, swi ... Show More
48m 13s
Apr 17
Steve Reich: Different Trains
Steve Reich, the great American contemporary composer, provided this program note about his work Different Trains: “The idea for the piece came from my childhood. When I was one year old my parents separated. My singer, song-writer mother moved to Los Angeles and my attorney fath ... Show More
52m 30s
Apr 3
Best of Frenemies: Debussy and Ravel
Debussy and Ravel are often described as the prototypical musical impressionists. It is often said that the two composers are the closest equivalents to the artistic world of Monet, Renoir, Pisarro, Degas, and others. But both Ravel and Debussy (like Monet for that matter), vehem ... Show More
52m 22s
Recommended Episodes
Sep 2023
Jeremy Eichler on his new book 'Time's Echo'
Jeremy Eichler's new book, Time's Echo, just out from Faber (HB; £25) tangles with memory – what we choose to remember, what to forget – as history takes hold, and he argues that music can become in many ways the most powerful form of memorial. To illustrate this argument, he eng ... Show More
30m 34s
Jun 2014
Sound of Cinema - The First World War
Matthew Sweet looks at music for films set against the background of WW1, including Joseph Kosma's music for Jean Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion. The First World War prompted a cinematic response even before the War was over and has continued to exercise the film maker's ... Show More
23m 4s
Feb 2014
The Great War of Words, Episode 1
Michael Portillo reveals how our understanding of the war has been distorted through a century of intellectualising, interpretation and misinterpretation. In this first episode Michael Portillo examines how the German invasion of neutral Belgium in August 1914 transformed Britain ... Show More
42m 22s
Sep 2017
Dan Carlin of Hardcore History on Why the German Military Was Better in WW1 Than WW2
I was honored on this episode to interview Dan Carlin, whose podcast Hardcore History is the biggest history podcast in existence. It regularly features shows of 5-6 hours in length covering everything from the Mongol invasions to doomsday prophets of the Reformation. I met up wi ... Show More
7m 47s
Jun 2024
Beethoven symphonies and 20th century politics
Synopsis No four notes in classical music are more familiar than those that open Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Their powerful psychological resonance has often extended beyond music into overtly political contexts. For example, on today’s date in 1941, the British Broadcasting Comp ... Show More
2 m
Feb 2022
Two authors tell stories of the weird and wild in the classical music world
Both interviews today will transport you into the exciting world of classical music. No, really! The first is with Brendan Slocumb, whose new book, The Violin Conspiracy, is a mystery surrounding a musician trying to recover his stolen violin. It's also about how hard it is to be ... Show More
17m 26s
Feb 2023
Symphonies by Bizet and Harris
Synopsis Two interesting symphonies had their premieres on today's date just eight years apart. Oddly enough, they were composed nearly ninety years apart. The first was the Symphony in C by George Bizet, written in 1855 when the composer was only 17. It was mislaid in his pa ... Show More
2 m
Jun 2021
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem
Regarded as one of the most important pieces in 20th Century English music, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was first played in the newly-built Coventry Cathedral in 1962. The original had been destroyed during World War II. In 2013, Simon Watts spoke to Maggie Cotton, one of the ... Show More
9m 52s
May 2024
La véritable histoire de la 9e Symphonie de Beethoven
Stéphane Bern raconte, pour la 800e d'Historiquement Vôtre, un événement qui fête, lui, ses 200 ans. 200 ans que cette œuvre musicale a résonné, pour la première fois, au Kärntnertor Theater de Vienne. Ou la véritable histoire de la 9e - et dernière - Symphonie de Beethoven… Comm ... Show More
45m 10s