Classical music can catch your ear at the oddest moments. A spine-shivering fiddle zings through an open window. A wild soprano revs up a car commercial. A melody your cousin used to practice on your grandmother's piano bothers your mind. What was that? When a classical "song" is haunting you, it's not even usually a song. The increasing popularity of opera notwithstanding, the music called "classical" more often than not is made by instruments other than the human voice. It's also often nameless - or seems to be. Classical music radio announcers use so many names and words to label this music, it's often hard for the newcomer to decide how really to name that tune.Sometimes there is an actual title: "Swan Lake" or "Rhapsody in Blue" or "The Trout Quintet." But more often, the title sounds like just a category: "Symphony No. 6," or "Piano Concerto No. 1." So how do you know which Symphony No. 6 you heard?THE COMPOSER AND THE INTERPRETATIONIn classical music, unlike in pop music, the composer's name makes all the difference. Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 lives in a different sonic world from Mahler's or Leonard Bernstein's or C.P.E. Bach's. A piano concerto combines a solo pianist with an orchestra, all held together by the beat of a conductor. But the universe of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 - a 48-year-old man's mature masterpiece, a work of art that takes 45 minutes to perform - revolves worlds away from that of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 2, a 15-minute work of genius by an 11-year-old. So it's the composer that matters, and the combination of instruments. A whole orchestra? Four string players? One piano? Two flutes? Guitar? Some people can tell the sound of one orchestra from another, or one conductor's style from another, but most listeners don't develop an ear for that much detail. It's common for conductors to favor the music of a particular era, or for a soloist to interpret one composer's work with special sensitivity. The uniquely talented conductors and soloists at the center of KING-FM's great-music play list create plenty of thrills, no matter who wrote the music or when.You might be so haunted by a recording you hear on the radio or on-line that you find yourself checking on the KING-FM website, www.king.org, where the "On the Air" page lists all the music we've played for the last month. If you can remember what day and about what time you were listening, you'll find it there. Some people actually pick up the phone and call us, and while we can't be a constant telephone reference desk, we usually find these calls entertaining - especially in the case of certain callers (you know who you are) who sing the tune into the phone.A WORLD OF MUSICWhen a world of sound opens up for you, when a favorite tune won't let you go, where do you go to hear it played live? Thankfully, the Northwest is home to terrific talents, who generously offer old favorites as well as new discoveries, in venues all around the region. September marks the beginning of the busy concert season, so KING-FM's Northwest Focus this month opens up a big world of music for you. On weeknights, beginning at 8 p.m., we play music that our local performers will play in live concerts around the Seattle area during the coming week. So much of what they program fits into that "what was that?" category, you might call Northwest Focus a public service for the musically anxious.Listen, and put your sonically haunted mind at ease.Gigi Yellen is host of "Northwest Focus" on 98.1 KING-FM.[[In-content Ad]]
