Classical music

Nézet-Séguin chose Verdi's Requiem for his 2012 inaugural performance as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He says the piece now helps him find a sense of connection during the pandemic.

Concert halls and music venues around the world have been shuttered due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but before closing its doors, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave one last performance on March 12 — to an empty concert hall. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin describes the experience of playing in a vacant hall and hearing silence at the end of each piece. And we listen to a 2019 interview with Yannick.

Pianist and composer Thomas currently directs the San Francisco Symphony. He'll receive a Kennedy Center award for lifetime artistic achievement on Dec. 8. Originally broadcast in 1995 and 2012.

Counter tenor Anthony Ross Costanzo sings in what's considered a woman's range - in the range of the castrati, men who maintained their high voices by being castrated before puberty. He's about to star in the Philip Glass opera 'Akhenaten.'

Ever since he was a little boy, Yannick Nézet-Séguin knew he wanted to be a conductor. He likens the feeling to something "almost like a religious call." "Making music in the group is what animates me," he says.
Now 44, Nézet-Séguin is the music director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, two of America's most storied musical institutions.

For the composer, life is how the past and the future connect. Glass' memoir, Words Without Music, looks back on his childhood, travels and music. Originally broadcast April 6, 2015.

For the composer, life is how the past and the future connect. Glass' new memoir, Words Without Music, looks back on his childhood, travels through Asia and when his music provoked violence.

The pianists's latest album features some of the most difficult etudes ever written for solo piano by the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. "Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before," he says," and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before."

The pianist's new album features some of the most difficult etudes ever written for solo piano by the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. "Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before," he says, "and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before."