For this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys , the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents a program of piano etudes.
“Yes, I know, we recently did an all-etudes program, I confess,” says Jed. “But the genre is so vast, so diverse and so interesting that one program cannot do it justice. Nor two or three for that matter.”
The title of Episode #172, “1012 Notes in 12 Seconds,” refers to the final section on Conlon Nancarrow’s Study for Player Player No. 25. Human hands occupy the remaining selections, featuring composers Alfredo Casella, Ferruccio Busoni, Justin Dello Joio, Enrique Oswald, Arthur Farwell, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov and Robert Schumann.
In addition, Jed will compare no less than seven recorded versions of Chopin’s brief “Butterfly” Etude Op. 25 No. 9. “Comparative listening has fascinated me since the days when my friend and colleague David Dubal played back-to-back recordings of different pianists in the same work on his daytime radio show on WNCN. This was back in the mid-1970s, and I was still a teenager, learning the repertoire. Basically David put a bee in my bonnet and I became totally corrupted, falling down the Great Pianists rabbit hole at full speed, and I’m still falling!.”
Listen this Tuesday night October 9th at 10 to Between the Keys, produced, written and hosted by Jed Distler, only here on the Classical Network and WWFM.org.