Theme & Variations introduces a new topic each week, presenting a wide range of music associated with that theme. Drawn from a millennium of Western classical music, the selections are an eclectic mix of familiar favorites and rarities. Theme and Variations is produced locally in Discover Classical's studios by host Joe Law.
WDPR went on the air on November 11, 1985. This week’s program is an early celebration of that anniversary with nine pieces of music identified as Opus 39. It’s by Amy Beach. Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Antonín Dvořák, Ruth Gipps, Sergei Prokofiev, Camille Saint-Saëns and Dimitri Shostakovich.
Time to return to the musical form this program is named for, with five multi-movement works containing a theme and variations movement. The composers are G. F. Handel, Paul Hindemith, Carl Nielsen, Franz Schubert and Louis Spohr.
This week’s theme is provided by the Frankfurt Group, six friends who all studied in Frankfurt with Iwan Knorr: H. Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger, Frederick Septimus Kelly, Norman O'Neill, Roger Quilter and Cyril Scott.
