Between the Keys with Jed Distler

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 all twelve of Debussy’s Preludes Book II, featuring different pianists.

On 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 pays tribute to celebrated piano teachers who also happened to be fabulous pianists.

Featured artists include such luminaries as Frank Scott, Marguerite Long, Russell Sherman, Dimitri Bashkirov, Alexander Goldenweiser, Rosina Lhevinne, Howard Karp and Vera Gornostaeva .

  On 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 explores piano music that is contrapuntal in nature, where independent musical lines converse, interact and sometimes get in each others’ way. Tune in to Between the Keys for works by Mendelssohn, Louis Pelosi, J.S. Bach, Michael Kieran Harvey, Dimitri Shostakovich and Paul Hindemith, this Tuesday night April 27th at 10, with a rebroadcast Wednesday April 28th at noon, exclusively on The Classical Network and WWFM.org  

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 single, large-scale composition that he feels deserves serious attention: Marga Richter’s Variations and Interludes on Themes from Monteverdi and Bach.

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 offers a stylistically diverse bag of works.

“Sometimes the works I've selected relate to one another easily,” explains Distler, “yet a few items were included simply because I wanted to share some wonderful pieces that I recently discovered.”

This week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys commemorates the 50th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’’s death on April 6th 1971, with a program exploring the composer’s relationship with the pop and jazz worlds. 

On this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence features the fourteen Chopin Waltzes.

Between the Keys marks three milestones this week,  The ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program celebrates its sixth anniversary on the air, as well as its 300th episode, plus the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach.

For Episode 299 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler returns to one of his frequently explored themes, the art of the composer/pianist.

“The composer/pianist tradition is far richer on disc than you’d suspect,” says Distler. “True, we can’t hear Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin or Liszt. But we can hear Rachmaninov, Bartok, Prokofiev and Medtner. And on this particular episode, I go way back to showcase Cécile Chamindae in 1901, and R. Nathaniel Dett in 1919.”

For Episode 298 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler has put together a program entirely consisting of minuets. Or menuets. It’s the same dance, no matter how you spell it.

Episode 297 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys centers upon the art of Vladimir Sofronitsky, a pianist who amassed a cult following in his native Russia, yet whose Western reputation remains somewhat shadowy.

The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler has put together a program featuring a wide range of Sofronitsky’s recordings, including works by Borodin, Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Liadov and, of course, Alexander Scriabin.

On Episode 296 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler invites listeners on a cinematic musical tour with the piano in tow.

On Episode 295 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler takes listeners for a journey “Under the Radar.”

“Under the Radar means many things,” says Distler. “Unusual repertoire. pianists who deserve more attention, or recordings that you might not be aware of. Or all of the above.”

On Episode 294 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler features symphonic music transcribed for piano duet, either with four hands at one piano or involving two pianos.

On Episode 293 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents all twelve of Chopin’s Etudes Op. 25, in performances by different pianists

“We’ll hear at least one interpretation of each etude with a different pianist, yet not repeating a pianist,” Distler explains. “The artists represent many generations of Chopin playing, with pianists born between 1874 and 1982.”

On Episode 292 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler pays tribute to pianist Alfred Brendel, who celebrated his 90th birthday on January 5th. Although Brendel retired from concertizing in 2008, his recorded legacy remains a vast and wide-ranging musical testament.

For Episode 291 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler features a wide variety of pianists in selections from Books One and Two of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

“The 48 Preludes and Fugues not only are the foundation of piano music,” says Distler, “they also embody the full gamut of emotions, and always convey a sense of order, which is something we so desperately need in these challenging days.”

For Episode 290 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler pays tribute to friends and colleagues who helped lift his sprits in a troubled year, as well as those who are no longer with us.

The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler rings in 2021 with an eclectic playlist on his ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys.

How do such playlists evolve?

As the Beethoven 250th anniversary year winds down, we continue our two-part survey of Schubert’s Impromptus on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award winning program Between the Keys.

The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler has picked four recordings of each Impromptu from Schubert’s D. 935 ( or Op. 142), each with a different pianist: Annie Fischer, Rudolf Firkusny, Massimo Giuseppe Bianchi and Rudolf Serkin. Also featured will be impromptus by Bernard Rands, Jean Sibelius and Georges Enescu.

As Beethoven’s 250th anniversary celebrations wind down in this unprecedented year, there’s nothing like the first lyric poet of music to calm the nerves and warm the heart.

Yes, we’re talking about Franz Schubert.

The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler will offer the composer’s complete Impromptus D. 899 and D. 935 in a two part “Impromptu Session” mini-series on the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys.

“Originally I planned to present a Beethoven 250th anniversary program this week,” explained the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler. “But I kept thinking that maybe instead I should look back on this crazy year, and reflect on the musical milestones. Which, of course, include Beethoven, but not exclusively.”

On Episode 285 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler offers a program devoted to the New, the Old and the Unexpected. A wide variety of music is in store, featuring an eclectic roster of pianists including Egon Petri, Roland Pöntinen, Stan Freeman,  Cy Walter, Eduardus Halim, Marcelle Meyer, Francis Poulenc, and the young Liberace, among many others

The Classical Network’s Artist-in Residence Jed Distler starts out Episode 284 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys with an exploration of Beethoven’s “greatest hit,” the piano bagatelle Für Elise.

“First we’ll hear a relative ‘normal’ performance by Artur Schnabel ,” says Distler, “followed by what may be the most perverse and willful interpretation of this work ever recorded. But I won’t tell you who is playing, you’ll have to tune in to find out. And as you listen, you may get angry or irritated , but you won’t be bored!”

Some may think that the old saying “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” applies to piano teachers. Yet the fact is that some of the world’s most influential piano teachers happened to be great pianists and artists in their own right.

On 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 “goes mazurk.” As in “mazurkas.”

“As longtime listeners know, I am obsessed by the Chopin Mazurkas,” says Distler. “And perhaps even more obsessed with the wide range of Mazurka playing on record, and with comparing different pianists in the same works.”

Charles Coleman’s e vocative piano composition Lay Bare the Heart is just one of the major offerings this week on Episode No. 279 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, hosted by the Classical Network’s Artist-in Residence Jed Distler.

This particularly eclectic episode also features works by Margaret Bonds, Erkki-Sven Tuur, Alan Hovhaness and Niels Viggo Bentzon , along with music by Chopin, Rachmaninov and Brahms.