Accessibility links
Marin Alsop on Music In September, 2007, Marin Alsop became music director of the Baltimore Symphony, making her the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She was named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive the award. Here, she offers commentary on a broad assortment of classical music.
thumbnail
Special Series

Marin Alsop on Music

The Baltimore Symphony music director offers commentary on a broad assortment of classical music.

Saturday

Copland: Early Music From America's Composer

Conductor Marin Alsop examines the rarely heard music from early in Aaron Copland's career. With an ear toward Copland's bold and sometimes jazzy rhythms, Alsop says that listeners can hear hints of the wide expanses that would later open up in music such as Appalachian Spring.

Copland: Early Music From America's Composer

Listen
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/98342141/98756686" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Saturday

Revisiting Bernstein's Immodest 'Mass'

Leonard Bernstein wrote his Mass to memorialize John F. Kennedy. But conductor Marin Alsop says that the dizzyingly eclectic work reveals more about its composer than anyone else.

Revisiting Bernstein's Immodest 'Mass'

Listen · 9:59
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/94965140/95128685" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

Robert Schumann: Music Amid The Madness

Marin Alsop, meet Robert Schumann. The Baltimore Symphony conductor reconnects with the composer's symphonies, probing for a deeper meaning within this widely performed but still misunderstood music. The Symphony No. 2, Alsop says, traces Schumann's emotional frailty.

Hear Marin Alsop discuss Schumann with NPR's Scott Simon

Listen
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/91707206/91769951" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

Dvorak's Symphonic Journey to the 'New World'

Czech composer Antonin Dvorak wrote his New World Symphony in New York. Conductor Marin Alsop sees the work as Dvorak's symphony of self-discovery, filled with the sounds of new places and nostalgic nods to his homeland.

Hear Alsop discuss Dvorak on 'Weekend Edition Saturday'

Listen
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/89758808/89785638" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

Sunday

Friday

Breaking Through to Bartok

Conductor Marin Alsop recognizes the challenging aspects of Bela Bartok's music. But after presiding over a Bartok festival this spring, she came to a deeper understanding of the Hungarian composer's music, which she describes as a major influence on her own career.

Hear Alsop discuss Bartok on 'Weekend Edition Saturday'

Listen
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/14418057/14443489" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

Marin Alsop: Orbiting the Symphonies of Brahms

When Marin Alsop heard a piece by Brahms as a youngster, she discovered the transforming power of music. Now the celebrated conductor has recorded each of Brahms' four symphonies and thinks of them as a symphonic solar system filled with tenderness, humor and struggle.

Hear Alsop discuss Brahms on 'Weekend Edition Saturday'

Listen
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/11888689/11947520" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

Rimsky-Korsakov Lets the Symphony Tell the Story

Storytellers of the Middle East have been retelling the tales of Sinbad and Aladdin. But according to legend, the first was a young bride named Scheherazade. Rimsky-Korsakov spins the tale in music.

Alsop discusses Scheherazade on 'Weekend Edition Saturday'

Listen
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/10120287/10139014" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Friday

Getting Hooked on the 'Rite' Sound

Igor Stravinsky's exotic, propulsive ballet The Rite of Spring captured conductor Marin Alsop's imagination at an early age. She says the music's "swing and sheer abandon" got her hooked, and the orchestra became her passion.

Hear Alsop discuss Stravinsky on Weekend Edition Saturday

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/9042552/9136437" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Friday

Mahler's Fifth Symphony: The Everest of Music

Even as a young man, Mahler was after the big picture. When other twentysomethings might have been writing lighthearted music, Mahler was trying to solve the riddles of the universe through his epic symphonies. They were vehicles for him to express his beliefs and pose questions.

Hear Alsop discuss Mahler on Weekend Edition Saturday

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/6925538/7684926" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

'Too Hot to Handel': A Modern 'Messiah'

While talking to friends, Marin Alsop realized that Handel's "Messiah" was in dire need of an update. She had already entertained the idea that "Messiah" would lend itself to a 20th-century remake, and once she got inspired about the idea, everything else began to fall into place.

Hear Alsop discuss Handel on Weekend Edition Saturday

Transcript
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/6653685/7685103" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Saturday

Love, Lust and Drinking Stir 'Carmina'

The music itself toggles between huge forces and a single voice, juxtaposing majesty and intimacy with ease. At its largest, Carmina Burana employs a chorus of 200 or more voices, an orchestra of 100 players and a children's choir of 50 or more, plus three soloists: soprano, tenor and baritone.

Hear Alsop discuss Orff on Weekend Edition Saturday

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/6470188/7685398" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

Hearing History in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony

For Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony beginning in 2007, the centennial of Dmitri Shostakovich's birth presents an opportunity to explore the complexity and lesser-known pleasures of the legendary Russian composer's music.

Alsop discusses Shostakovich on Weekend Edition Saturday

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/6126580/7687320" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">