Now Hear This (2019)
Now Hear This is a primetime PBS miniseries now filming its 5th season that brings the greatest music ever written to millions of viewers, with modern storytelling that captivates. Now Hear This opens the world of classical music to new audiences, while giving existing fans new ways to love their music. Now Hear This is presented by Great Performances, celebrating its 50th season on PBS, and this year begins international distribution.
📺 Seasons & Episodes
Season 14 episodes
1. Something Completely Different
⏱ 53 minScott Yoo investigates the story behind Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – and discovers a new Vivaldi work, his connection to Stradivarius, a treasure trove of original manuscripts, and that Vivaldi himself was almost lost to history.
2. The Riddle of Bach
⏱ 53 minIn Germany, Scott discovers a riddle that Bach left in his only official portrait. In trying to solve it, he and his wife Alice Dade, also a star musician, discover Bach’s true personality and his surprising influences, leading them to a spectuacular finale in Paris.
3. Man Out of Time
⏱ 52 minScott goes on the trail of Domenico Scarlatti, the most influential composer you’ve never heard of. From Italian, Spanish, Moorish, Jewish, Gypsy, dance and guitaristic roots, Scarlatti created a new musical language, more relevant today than in his own time.
4. Italian Style
⏱ 53 minBefore becoming London’s most famous composer, Handel did his ‘graduate school’ in Italy. Scott traces his footsteps and his inspirations – not just music, but art, architecture, fashion, food and wine – to understand how Italy shaped this German composer for the rest of his life.
Season 24 episodes
1. The King of Strings
⏱ 56 minScott discovers how Joseph Hadyn combined folk music from across Europe with his own unique style and belief system to create the string quartet, influencing all composers after him.
2. The Schubert Generation
⏱ 52 minScott meets some of today’s leading young musicians, none older than Franz Schubert during his career, to gain a deeper appreciation for the composer’s brilliant work and tragically short life.
3. Becoming Mozart
⏱ 56 minScott teaches pianist Stewart Goodyear to conduct, so he can lead the orchestra through Mozart’s titanic 20th piano concerto — while improvising the solos — just as Mozart would have done.
4. Beethoven's Ghost
⏱ 56 minScott makes a landmark recording, centered around Beethoven's famous Ghost Trio. This summons the ghost of Beethoven, trailed by Sigmund Freud who’s intent on analyzing him, in this eccentric mix of documentary and ghost story.
Season 34 episodes
1. Amy Beach, American Romantic
⏱ 56 minAt his music festival, Scott plays America’s greatest Romantic composer, Amy Beach. In New England, he explores her roots and career. At a time when society looked down on women composers, Beach worked to invent a new American music.
2. Florence Price and the American Migration
⏱ 56 minScott explores the newly rediscovered music of Florence Price, to understand how African-American spirituals — a mixture of West African songs and European hymns — influenced her work and nearly all of American popular music.
3. Dean of American Music
⏱ 56 minScott spends a month each year teaching students, just as Aaron Copland did during his career. Together they’ll play Copland’s music to learn how he drew from his roots and American folk songs to invent the American sound.
4. New American Voices
⏱ 56 minScott meets and plays with modern masters: Sergio Assad shows him how Brazilian music inspires his work, now staples of the classical canon. Reena Esmail draws from traditional Indian rhythms and scales to create her signature sound.
Season 44 episodes
1. Piazzolla’s History with Tango
⏱ 56 minScott and Alice travel to Buenos Aires to discover the music of Astor Piazzolla, who fell in love with tango. Then fell out of love. Then tango fell out of love with him. Scott and Alice play with Argentina’s greatest musicians and dancers, to find out if Piazzolla and tango could reconcile.
2. Genius and Madness
⏱ 56 minScott goes to Scotland, Germany and France, with leading musicians, psychiatrists and scholars, to try to understand the connection between mental health and creativity in the work of Robert Schumann and other great artists. Featuring the great cellist Bion Tsang.
3. Andy Akiho Found (his) Sound
⏱ —Scott follows modern composer, steel pan virtuoso and video artist Andy Akiho through his neighborhoods of New York, to figure out how this unassuming musical visionary has combined Caribbean, Asian and jazz influences to become one of today’s most in-demand composers.
4. Portraits of Spain
⏱ —Scott travels with guitarist Manuel Barrueco and pianist Juan Perez Floristan through the great Spanish cities of Andalusia, to see how Isaac Albéniz captured their culture, history and sounds in a brilliant series of musical portraits, his most celebrated works.
