Beethoven wrote his piano concerti with the specific aim of displaying his talents both as a composer and as a pianist when he moved to the great musical center of Vienna. We'll hear the second concerto, as we go through the cycle of five over these few weeks. Progressive hearing loss was to doom his career as a performer, even as his skills as a composer reached unsurpassed heights.
We'll continue with some music of Brahms and Bach, and then an hour of American music including Gottschalk's Night in the Tropics, Meditations for Cello and Orchestra from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, and William Bolcom's orchestral salute to a certain famous hometown racehorse.
Thursday night at 10:00 on 89.5 FM and streaming live at WFIT.org.