Classical Music Memoir

The following audio is from a television interview from the early 1970s.

John Denver said, “I have a producer who looks like an accountant, and an accountant who looks like a producer”. Soberly dressed, unflashy, and a trained classical musician, in the golden age of the music business, Milt Okun stood out by not standing out. His legacy does that for him. He discovered and launched John Denver, and mentored him throughout his career. He created arrangements for Peter, Paul and Mary that the trio performed for half a century. He brought Placido Domingo a crossover career that made him an international star beyond the world of opera.

At thirteen years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who had captured the hearts of northern Europe, but his father Leopold was now determined to conquer Italy. Together, they made three visits there the last when Mozart was seventeen, all vividly recounted here by acclaimed conductor Jane Glover. Father and son travelled from the theatres and concert salons of Milan to the church-filled streets of Rome to Naples, poorer and more dangerous than the prosperous north, and to Venice, the carnivelesque birthplace of public opera.

Giuseppe Verdi remains the greatest operatic composer that Italy, the home of opera, has ever produced. Yet throughout his lifetime, he claimed to detest composing and repeatedly rejected it. He was a landowner, a farmer, a politician, and a symbol of Italian independence, but his music tells a different story. An obsessive perfectionist, Verdi drove collaborators to despair, but his works were rightly lauded from the start as dazzling feats of composition and characterization. From Rigoletto to Otello, La Traviatato to Aida, Verdi's canon encompassed the full range of human emotion.

Johann Sebastian Bach, baroque music's finest composer: Life and works in a short biography! Everything you need to know, brief and concise. Infotainment, education and entertainment at its best!

This original hour-long audio documentary will take you in the footsteps of the 19th century’s most beloved and most played piano composer in the world: Frederic Chopin. So here we are going to discuss a relatively undocumented musical event (rich in anecdotes): Frederic Chopin's concert at the Hotel de Ville in Rouen on the evening of March 12, 1838. Whether you are a music lover, passionate about history or simply of a curious temperament, I invite you to immerse yourself in this fascinating story, alone or with your family.