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

The great and somewhat controversial conductor Leopold Stokowski said this about Tchaikovsky: "His musical utterance comes directly from the heart and is a spontaneous expression of his innermost feeling. It is as sincere as if it were written with his blood." I couldn't agree mo ...  Show more

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony. Well, how about this one: how many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end i ...  Show more

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 ill ...

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

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

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