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'Now Hear This' modeled itself after cooking shows. It found millions of viewers ...
Music • Perspective
‘Now Hear This’ modeled itself after cooking shows. It found millions of viewers with an appetite for classical music.
By Michael Andor Brodeur
Classical Music Critic
September 10, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
The bad news is that the entire classical music world (well, the American part, anyway) is canceled due to technical difficulties. The good news is that the entire classical music world is also technically at our fingertips, ready to play.
Between the pandemic-driven mass migration of various orchestras and organizations to online programming, the rise of specialized classical streaming services like Idagio and Primephonic and video platforms like Medici.tv and Marquee.tv, and the ever-expanding (if chaotic) offerings of YouTube and Spotify, classical music has never been easier to get.
And yet for millions of potential listeners, this hasn’t made classical music any easier to get. Casual listeners trying to get their bearings amid this overwhelming online abundance have fewer and fewer guides to help lead them across the widening interpretive gap between the music and its audience.
And sure, you can school yourself online. Leonard Bernstein’s Norton lectures on YouTube are always worthwhile, as are his influential early episodes of “Omnibus” (watchable via Medici.tv), which brought classical masterworks to human scale. For something more structured, you could immerse yourself in Beethoven’s sonatas via Jonathan Biss’s popular Coursera class.
But for those listeners, novice and not, seeking a way into classical music that swirls together historical and contemporary context, mixes deep scholarship and live performance, and kind of feels like an episode of “Taste the Nation” but for composers, you might try the PBS docuseries “Now Hear This,” which premieres its second season Sept. 18 at 9 p.m.
{snip}
Michael Andor Brodeur
Michael Brodeur is a classical music critic at The Washington Post. Brodeur served as lead music critic and music editor at the Boston Phoenix before serving as an arts editor and cultural critic at the Boston Globe. Follow https://twitter.com/MBrodeur
‘Now Hear This’ modeled itself after cooking shows. It found millions of viewers with an appetite for classical music.
By Michael Andor Brodeur
Classical Music Critic
September 10, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
The bad news is that the entire classical music world (well, the American part, anyway) is canceled due to technical difficulties. The good news is that the entire classical music world is also technically at our fingertips, ready to play.
Between the pandemic-driven mass migration of various orchestras and organizations to online programming, the rise of specialized classical streaming services like Idagio and Primephonic and video platforms like Medici.tv and Marquee.tv, and the ever-expanding (if chaotic) offerings of YouTube and Spotify, classical music has never been easier to get.
And yet for millions of potential listeners, this hasn’t made classical music any easier to get. Casual listeners trying to get their bearings amid this overwhelming online abundance have fewer and fewer guides to help lead them across the widening interpretive gap between the music and its audience.
And sure, you can school yourself online. Leonard Bernstein’s Norton lectures on YouTube are always worthwhile, as are his influential early episodes of “Omnibus” (watchable via Medici.tv), which brought classical masterworks to human scale. For something more structured, you could immerse yourself in Beethoven’s sonatas via Jonathan Biss’s popular Coursera class.
But for those listeners, novice and not, seeking a way into classical music that swirls together historical and contemporary context, mixes deep scholarship and live performance, and kind of feels like an episode of “Taste the Nation” but for composers, you might try the PBS docuseries “Now Hear This,” which premieres its second season Sept. 18 at 9 p.m.
{snip}
Michael Andor Brodeur
Michael Brodeur is a classical music critic at The Washington Post. Brodeur served as lead music critic and music editor at the Boston Phoenix before serving as an arts editor and cultural critic at the Boston Globe. Follow https://twitter.com/MBrodeur