Image courtesy of Acoustic Sounds
Here's the trailer for Part 2 of Hyperion Knight's free Hillsdale College online course on the history of classical music.
The trailer for Part 1, Pythagoras through Beethoven, has had 327,000 views.
(See here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKSc8NL9ZBk)
I want to stress that you can sign up for the course and watch all the lectures without any obligation to take the quizzes. The quizzes are optional. So is sending in a small donation.
Here's what Hillsdale College says about Part 2:
This course celebrates the beauty of classical music and its connection to civilization. Composers from the Romantic Era through the American Century have pushed the boundaries of musical structure to express drama, emotion, culture, and the supernatural. They sought to honor the musical tradition of the looming figures of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but also to broaden the horizons of music and express the unique themes of their own time and place with their unique perspectives and contributions.
Join Hyperion Knight in 'The History of Classical Music: Chopin through Gershwin,' to discover how competing composers developed music into new vistas following Beethoven. Learn the stories of great composers. Understand how their competitions with one another helped to shape and define new cultures. Enjoy performances of pieces by the masters of the Romantic Era and the American Century.
The course includes four lectures, each approximately 50 minutes long, and a 1-hour concert performance. Complete the course and receive a certificate by watching the lectures and taking the short quizzes that follow. These are supplemented with study guides for each lecture. Take the course at your own pace and in a manner that best fits your schedule.
About Hyperion Knight
Born in Berkeley, California, Hyperion Knight graduated at age 19 from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. By the age of 22, he had received both a Master's degree and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he was awarded the Arthur Loesser Prize upon graduation.
Hyperion Knight now lives in New York City, where he has studied with members of the faculty of the Juilliard School. His distinguished teachers have included Paul Hersh, Eunice Podis, Paul Schenly, and Jerome Lowenthal. Hyperion made his New York concerto debut playing the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto no. 1.
Recent guest appearances have included Mozart's Concerto no. 21 (with the Utah Symphony), the Grieg Concerto (with the Maui Pops Orchestra), Rachmaninoff's Concerto no. 2 (with the Kansas City Philharmonia and the Cleveland Philharmonic), and Gershwin's Concerto in F (with the Santa Fe Symphony).
Hyperion Knight is a Steinway Artist.
Representative reviews
Hyperion Knight played with intoxicating élan, brilliant dexterity and a shimmering nuance that made his account of the Saint-Saëns concerto worthy to stand alongside the masterful authority of Jeanne-Marie Darré's classic EMI recording. This was most definitely the work of a Knight in high pianistic attitude.
New York concert review, by Harris Goldsmith
Not since Heifetz has anyone played Gershwin solos with this much panache… the songs glitter like jewels against black satin.
American Record Guide
Hyperion Knight is a lifelong audio enthusiast, who for some time was a contributing editor and columnist for The Absolute Sound magazine. Hyperion's legendary Wilson Audio début LP recording of solo-piano music of Beethoven ("Waldstein" sonata) and Stravinsky ("Scenes from Petrushka") was on Harry Pearson's TAS "Super Disc List."
Sir John Teniel's colorized drawing of Alice and the Caterpillar, in the public domain.
