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.
This week brings you a second program paying tribute to some of the composers and performers who died in 2025: Roberta Alexander, Alfred Brendel, Stuart Burrows, Ronald Corp, Alan Cuckston, Andrew Davis, Gary Graffman, Isaiah Jackson John Nelson, Gary Karr, Rodion Shchedrin, Benita Valente and Richard Wernick.
This week’s theme is literary, with music inspired by the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The composers are Dominick Argento, André Caplet, Gordon Getty, Josef Holbrooke, John Ireland, Nikita Koshkin, Darius Milhaud, Christopher Rouse and Florent Schmitt.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, you’ll hear American music every month this year. Since February is also Black History Month, this week’s program brings you music by African American composers: Basile Barès, William Levi Dawson, Ulysses Kay, Jessie Montgomery, Robert Owens, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and Florence Price.
