You might be thinking, "Why on earth would anyone want to devote an entire podcast to etudes?"

For most instrumentalists, etudes are the bane of our existence. They are studies, meant to develop technique on an instrument. Etudes are an essential part of any instrumentalists work, but they had never been known for their musical content. As a violinist, I had practiced dozens of etudes by Kreutzer, Rodé, Dancla, Sevcik, Schraideck, Kayser, Mazas, and more, lamenting the day I chose the violin as my instrument. But pianists have the same dreaded names, like Czerny for example. Chopin changed all of that. Chopin was the first composer to integrate musical content into his etudes, which meant that Chopin's etudes were both extremely difficult technical exercises, but they also were musically interesting enough to be performed live. LIke everything Chopin did on the piano, this was revolutionary, and Chopin's 27 etudes have been part of the piano repertoire ever since. We'll discuss some of these etudes today, along with the nature of virtuosity itself. We'll also spend a lot of time talking about Leopold Godowsky. Leopold Godowsky is not a name you've probably heard very often. But he was one of the great pianists of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with legions of admirers including legendary pianists like Josef Hoffman, Arthur Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Claudio Arrau, and the composer Ferrucio Busoni. Godowsky's pianistic gifts were well known, but what about his compositional ones? Well, to speak of one is to speak of the other.

During the 1890s, when Godowsky was in his late 20s, he began making arrangements of famous piano works of Chopin and other composers music. Over the next 20 years, he became engrossed with Chopin's legendary etudes, or studies, and began writing his own arrangements of them. Now Chopin's etudes are extremely difficult just on their own, but Godowsky's studies are on another level of difficulty. In fact, Godowsky's transcriptions are so difficult that many pianists don't even dare to play them, though some, like the great Marc-Andre Hamelin, have made them an integral part of their repertoire. So today on the show, we'll take a look at some of the studies on Chopin's etudes, analyzing both the original Chopin etudes and then the changes that Godowsky makes to them. This will be a show as much about Chopin as it is about Godowsky, because you can't understand Godowsky's achievement without understanding the Chopin first. Join us!

In the late summer or early autumn of 1828, Schubert completed an extraordinary work, his String Quintet in C Major. 6 weeks later, he was dead. Nowadays this piece is considered to be one of the most sublime 50 minutes to an hour that exists in all of music. But when Schubert completed this quintet, he sent a letter to the publisher Heinrich Albert Probst, to ask him to publish it. Schubert wrote: 'Among other things, I have composed three sonatas for piano solo, which I should like to dedicate to Hummel. I have also set several poems by Heine of Hamburg, which went down extraordinarily well here, and finally have completed a Quintet for 2 violins, 1 viola and 2 violoncellos. I have played the sonatas in several places, to much applause, but the Quintet will only be tried out in the coming days. If any of these compositions are perhaps suitable for you, let me know.'

The quintet was ignored by Probst, and we don't know if Schubert ever heard that rehearsal of his quintet. When Schubert died, it was utterly forgotten until 1850, over 20 years after Schubert had put these notes down on paper. The well known at the time Hellmesberger quartet discovered the quintet, began performing it, and finally, in 1853, the piece was published for the very first time. Slowly, as so many great works of art do, it caught on, until today it is one of the most beloved works in the entire Western Classical music universe. But it's not an easy piece to talk, or to write, about. Long associated with Schubert's impending death, though we have no evidence that he knew he was dying when he wrote the piece, it is often seen as a work full of shadows and shades, despite its C Major key and often ebullient character. Writers, thinkers, and podcasters I should add, have often found it difficult to put their finger on the fundamental character of this remarkable piece, which I actually find to be an asset, not a problem to be solved. Schubert's music is so beautiful because it speaks to everyone in a different way. Unlike Beethoven, who grabbed you and shook you and told you to listen to what he had to say, Schubert invites us in, has us sit down for while, and lets us take part in his remarkably complex emotional world.

Today we'll explore why Schubert wrote a string quintet at all, how he uses that extra cello in such beautiful ways, Schubert's sense of melody, his expansive scope, and so much more. Join us!

Film music began as a solution to a problem. Early film projectors were really loud, therefore something was needed to cover up all the noise. In addition, silent movies apparently seemed a bit awkward without any musical accompaniment. Enter, usually, a pianist, who would improvise musical accompaniments to the events on the screen. None other than Dmitri Shostakovich got his first job as a cinema pianist, honing his improvisatory skills, and sometimes receiving cat calls and boos for his fantasy filled musings that tended to stray away from the action on the screen. Music in the silent film era had to help the audience in pointing out important moments to the audience, enhancing the emotional effects of the story, and most importantly, it had to give a certain musical line to every character, giving to them the emotional depth that the audience couldn't get since they weren't going to hear their voice. To do this, early film composers turned to the idea of the Leitmotif, an idea developed by the opera composer Richard Wagner. This idea would take hold even once "talkies" took over the screen, with composers such as Max Steiner, Charlie Chaplin, and others setting the stage for a century of brilliant music, by composers like Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Dmitri Shostakovich, Rachel Portman, Hans Zimmer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Christopher Willis, and dozens and dozens more. Today on the show we'll talk about this development of film music, and also hear some of the greatest and most recognizable film music ever written. We'll also talk about why film music is sometimes looked down upon in the classical music world, and how we might begin to change that perception. Join us!