The MTT Files

The MTT Files - Program 8: Five Degrees of Separation

A program about teachers and students – about how teachers pass on technique and musicianship, but also about how they use stories about their own teachers to pass on the spirit of a musical life.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 7: We Were Playing Boulez, But We Were Listening To James Brown!

As a university student, MTT and his colleagues were on the cutting edge of modern classical music. One day, while he was driving on the LA freeway, a song by James Brown came on the radio. That song, and the many that followed, changed MTT’s views about how to perform the music of Boulez, Stravinsky, and the like. The level of energy, the precision, the sense of time, the angularity—all gave the young conductor insight into the music he was performing.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 6: Freud and the Ballet

Some people think the music of Giselle is a piece of fluff. But MTT thinks it’s a masterpiece. The work marks the very beginning of art that looks at internal, emotional explanations of behavior. Art has always predicted the future; in this case, music predicted Sigmund Freud. MTT interviews former prima ballerina Natalia Makarova, the greatest Giselle of our time, about dancing this “heart on the sleeve” role.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 5: The Last Virtuoso

Jascha Heifetz was arguably the last great violin virtuoso – the end of a line.

In this program, MTT examines why Heifetz was so good, and asks whether any violinist living today could ever hope to match his incredible technical ability and immense musicality. What’s changed? What is virtuosity, and why is it so hard to maintain? Featured is an interview/demonstration recorded on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall with Alexander Barantschik, the Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, who now plays Heifetz’s Guarnerius violin.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 4: Igor Stravinsky's Copyright Blues

When Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird premiered in Paris, it was the most sensational hit of the early 20th century. But when the score fell out of the composer’s control because of the Bolshevik Revolution and the arcane realities of international copyright law, Stravinsky spent much of the rest of his life trying to collect some of the money he thought was due him.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 3: What Does America Sound Like? (Part 2)

As a part of Aaron Copland’s move from modernism to populism, he created musical landscapes that were abstractions of the sounds he’d heard all his life—folk tunes, Jewish music, the blues, and jazz. Copland’s populist music was so successful that we now associate it with the sound of America—with prairies, cowboys, and the heartland.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 2: What Does America Sound Like? - Part 1

Before 1900, there was no real American concert music. But only 20 years later, composers had begun to break the hold of European standards for art and were experimenting in earnest with ways to portray an American sound.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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The MTT Files - Program 1: You Call That Music?!

250 years ago, when composers included “noise” in their music, they mimicked the sounds of the physical world, like farm animals and gunshots. But by the late 1800s, they were using harsh, aggressive sounds to represent the internal, psychological anxieties of the coming modern age.

And then, of course, during the 20th century, composers blurred the line between noise and music even more. From the dissonance of early modernism to music that glorified the machine—from musique concrete to the ear-deafening throbs of hyper-amplification—art music gave us just about everything an increasingly noisy world could offer.

What’s music, and what’s noise? In this program, MTT demonstrates that noise is in the mind of the listener. His guest is contemporary composer Steven Mackey.

This is the 1st episode in The MTT Files radio series.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 at (All day)
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