Music Matters: Recent Episodes
BBC Radio 3
Tom Service talks to Sir Mark Elder about the legacy that he is leaving behind him after 24 years as Music Director at the Hallé Orchestra. He talks to Tom about Charles Hallé and his mission to set up an orchestra for all the people of Manchester, and how his ethos is still central to the orchestra today. Not only has mark Elder evolved the sound of the orchestra and transformed music-making in Manchester, putting generations of choral singers associated with the Hallé centre stage, but he has forged an identity for Hallé as the orchestra to play British music, and particularly the works of Elgar.
Mark Elder also talks to Tom about his tenure at English National Opera, and the current funding crises that face music in the UK. As he prepares to step down from the Hallé, he also reflects on how coincidental it is that he should have been destined for Manchester, once the home of his great Uncle. Norman Cocker, who was a well-known organist at the Cathedral there.
Tom Service talks to pianist and writer, Susan Tomes, about her new book Women and the Piano - a History in 50 Lives. Those lives include well-known names today, from Clara Schumann to Nina Simone, but also many women like Marianne Martinez who have been eclipsed from previous histories of pianists. Tom and Susan discuss how women went from being the Queens of the piano in domestic settings to being excluded from public performances and conservatoires during the development of the concert piano. Pianist, Lucy Parham, talks to Tom too about the impact that Susan's book has had on her, and she talks about life today for female pianists.
The Afghan Youth Orchestra is embarking on its first UK tour - Breaking the Silence. Currently exiled in Portugal, the young musicians live and study, having escaped the Taliban’s censorship of music. The orchestra's founder, Dr Ahmad Sarmast and two of his violinists, Sevinch Majidi and Ali Sina Hotak, talk to Tom about their hopes of keeping Afghanistan's situation on the international radar through their music, which fuses traditional and Western instruments into a bold new sound.
Tenor Allan Clayton and Aurora Orchestra join forces in a new and highly imaginative theatrical production of Hans Zender's composed interpretation of Schubert's Winterreise. Tom Service finds out more when he visits them in rehearsal. He talks to Allan alongside Aurora's conductor Nicholas Collon and creative director Jane Mitchell about Zender's interpretation of Schubert's original song-cycle.
Tom Service also talks to Kerry Andrew, multi-talented composer, singer, performer and writer. Kerry's third novel, We are Together Because, is out now and Tom talks to them about how music infuses their writing. Tom also talks to Kerry about their last album - Hare - Hunter - Moth - Ghost - recorded as You Are Wolf and in which they turn folk songs and myths inside out.
Presented by Tom Service.
This week, Tom talks to the American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato about her life in music, and her creative mission to challenge the status quo. From her work in refugee camps, to her long relationship with the maximum security prison SingSing in New York State, as well as in concert halls and opera stages, DiDonato confounds expectations of an international classical artist. She talks about the joy of engaging differently with young audiences, and of recording and touring projects like Eden, which makes real connections with the natural world and includes the publishing of new music for anyone to sing.
Conductor Edward Gardner and artist Ben Cullen Wiliams talk about their reimagining of Szymanowski's ballet Harnasie: a story of love, bandits, and how the robbers of the Tatra mountains in Poland win out over the civilisation below. Also featuring filmed choreography by Wayne MacGregor, the production has received its premiere in Katowice and comes to London this month, and uses human and digital intelligence to form a kinetic, sculptural video installation opening a portal to new worlds of dance.
And Caroline Potter reveals the mission behind her new book, 'Pierre Boulez: Organised Delirium', which aims to change perceptions about the French composer. A leading figure of the musical avant-garde in the mid-20th century, Boulez is known for the mathematical and structural elements of his music, but Caroline Potter places just as much importance on the influences in his early career from the worlds of literature, magic, surrealism and the music of other cultures.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to renowned American pianist, Jeremy Denk, ahead of his Wigmore Hall recital of Bach Partitas. He discusses his passion for Bach and the profound impact and connection he has when he plays his music.
Sara talks to Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli ahead of the day-long immersion into her work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Together they explore what it means for Missy Mazzoli to be a composer today and the stories that she likes to tell through her work.
Writer Gillian Dooley discusses her new discoveries when researching her new book, “She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and music”. She tells Sara more about the role music held in Jane Austen’s life and highlights the importance of it on the characters in her novels. With the help of film critic, Lillian Crawford, we are also taken on a journey through the pastiche film scores that have accompanied adaptations of Austen’s novels over the last 30 years.
Plus Donne foundation founder Gabriella di Laccio talks to Sara ahead of her record-breaking acoustic concert, 24 hours of continuous music by female and non-binary composers.
Tom Service talks to composer Anna Meredith as her soundtrack to the poetic British film The End We Start From, and starring Jodie Comer, is featuring in cinemas across the UK. She talks in detail about the compositional process; from the very beginning as she hums a tune and records it onto her phone, to the workings required to produce music that is full of irresistible energy.
Pianist Igor Levit talks to Tom about his new album featuring Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. He talks about his admiration for Busoni and the deep emotion and connection he feels when he plays music by Mahler.
Kate Molleson talks to pianist Tamara Stefanovich. A champion of 20th and 21st century music, Tamara explains her deep connection with the music of now, how global politics have shaped her life in music, and her insatiable appetite for learning which meant she skipped seven years of school.
Kate meets Irish fiddler Martin Hayes who shares his thoughts on the meaning of tradition, putting traditional music on the concert platform, and how the musicians who played and ate around the kitchen table of his childhood home in County Clare continue to inspire his musical life.
Chief Executive of the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) Deborah Annetts reflects on the new House of Commons committee report on misogyny in music and whether it can bring about lasting change in the music industry. Plus we hear from choir members in Hackney as they take part in Sing East - a showcase for talented choirs from across East London in which the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus joined over 200 local performers for a celebration of song.
Tom Service meets French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet during his recital tour where he performs both books of Debussy’s Préludes. His 1996 recording of the pieces has just been re-released on vinyl with artwork created by his friend Vivienne Westwood, shortly before she died. Jean-Yves talks to Tom about the need to collaborate, his love of Debussy, Gershwin and Bill Evans, and why challenging conventions and being yourself as an artist are the keys to success and happiness. He also shares his excitement about an upcoming multisensory performance of Alexander Scriabin’s 1910 tone poem 'Prometheus, The Poem of Fire' - a collaboration with Cartier in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and San Francisco Symphony which involves not only light and colour in addition to the music, but scent too.
Tom talks to pianist Alice Sara Ott and composer Bryce Dessner about a new piano concerto he's written for her, which receives its UK premiere in February. Inspired by Alice’s playing, the piece is also dedicated to Bryce’s sister Jessica, a dancer and choreographer who has shaped his musical life. Alice talks about her love of Bryce’s music and the challenges of getting inside a new piece. Bryce discusses his approach to the concerto, the power of acoustic music and how his work as a composer for the concert hall relates to his life as guitarist and writer in the band The National.
Tom Service meets Finnish soprano, Karita Mattila as she prepares for her role as Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal Opera House in London. She talks to him about the roles her voice now allows her to sing 40 years after winning the Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
Tom drops in on rehearsals at Song in Sign, the latest project from FormidAbility, the opera company founded to put accessibility at the centre of creativity. Tom talks to director, Caroline Parker and to founder and soprano, Joanne Roughton-Arnold ahead of the company’s forthcoming tour.
Musicians, Mary Dullea and Darragh Morgan and composer, Matthew Shlomowitz join Tom in studio to pay tribute to composer, John White who died earlier this month.
And finally, Tom talks to double-bassist, Edgar Meyer as he prepares for his visit to Glasgow to perform his Concertino with the Scottish Ensemble at this year’s Celtic Connections. He talks to Tom about his collaborations, his sound and how he is influencing the next generation.
Tom Service speaks to the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director of the Montreal Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He is one of the starriest and most sought-after conductors in the world. also one of the most loved by the musicians who work with him. Nézet-Séguin is guest conductor to some of the world's top orchestras, like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Berlin Philharmonic, and he has recorded cycles of symphonies by Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner, plus operas by Mozart, Gounod and Wagner. Alongside the core repertoire, he's on a mission to perform new works that represent all of society and thereby draw new audiences to the orchestras that he leads and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He tells Tom about the richly fulfilling experiences of putting on Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut up in My bones and Kevin Puts' The Hours, and how these two new operas are both bringing in audiences who have never been to the MET before, whilst also refreshing the cherished classics traditionally staged there.
2024: what does the new year hold for the musical scene? What's the impact of cuts across classical music, from education in schools to opera companies, and what are the opportunities of the moment for those who run our orchestras and lead music education? Tom Service convenes a Music Matters counsel of musical sages to discuss their thoughts of the state of music as we step into 2024: Sophie Lewis, Chief Executive of the National Children’s Orchestras and Chair of the Association of British Orchestras; Gillian Moore, Artistic Associate of the South Bank Centre in London, writer and consultant; and Phil Castang, Chief Executive of Music for Youth.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to one of the 21st-century's leading creative artists – the American composer and interdisciplinary artist, Meredith Monk.
Celebrating her 80th birthday the year before last, Meredith’s creativity spans decades and traverses site-specific works and happenings in the 60s, through films during the 70s and 80s, to an impressive catalogue of recordings - many of which involved the acclaimed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble.
She tells Sara about her journey towards Buddhism, about approaching music as a ritual, and how her meditation practice has had a profound impact on her creative life. She shares, too, the process by which she found her own voice and describes how she traces her bloodline back from the cantors, through the popular ballads of her mother, to the folk music she sang.
Kate Molleson travels to Budapest to meet Hungary’s greatest living composer, György Kurtág, now 97 years old. Kurtag talks to Kate about the musical homages that he has made to friends, his early focus on the clarity of single notes at the time he wrote his Op.1 String Quartet, the influence of languages on his compositional style, and his new opera, a work based on the life of the German mathematician, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Above all, he talks about his Marta, his wife of over 70 years, with whom he performed piano duets, and he reveals to Kate why he stayed in Hungary in 1956.
Kurtag once said that his mother tongue is Bartok, and Kate visits the Bela Bartok Memorial House where she talks to the curator, Zoltán Farkas, about the composer’s relationship with Hungary and the folk traditions that he collected both at home and in neighbouring countries. During a break in a busy rehearsal schedule, the conductor Ivan Fischer also shares his views on Bartok and the distinctive sound of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
Kate joins the director of the Hungarian Radio Choir, Zoltán Pad, and the composer Daniel Dinyes, to learn how the Hungarian language is expressed in music, and hear more about the unique sound of the choir. Kate also meets Hungary’s queen of song, Márta Sebestyén, who is at the very heart of Hungary’s folk music. Márta Sebestyén talks with pride about her mother, a celebrated student of Zoltan Kodaly, about her own travels in search of pure folk music. She treats Kate, too, to a traditional Christmas carol.
Tom Service talks to Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinettist with the New York Philharmonic, as he commences his tenure as Artist-in-Residence at Milton Court in London. They discuss his recent performances of Anthony Davis powerful and operatic work for clarinet and orchestra, You Have the Right to Remain Silent, and his Grammy nominated album, American Stories, on which he collaborated with the Pacific Quartet.
On the 400th anniversary of the death of the composer Thomas Weelkes, Music Matters visits Chichester Cathedral - the scene of some of his greatest music and noted misdemeanours. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, Dr. Ellie Chan, and Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chichester Cathedral, Charles Harrison, discuss how he advanced the English choral tradition.
Following the recent news that the Music Department at Oxford Brookes University it set to close, Professor of music at Oxford University, Jonathan Cross, shares his thoughts about the place of music education in our society.
And, Sara Mohr Pietsch sits down with the pianist Imogen Cooper to talk about her life in music, studying with Alfred Brendel, her love of Schubert, and how she’s curating darkness and light into her forthcoming concert programmes.
Ahead of the release of Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s long-awaited film about Leonard Bernstein, Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to the conductor and composer’s daughters - Jamie and Nina - about their parents' relationship, listening to music with their father as children, and how it feels to see their lives recreated on screen. Sara is joined by critics Jessica Duchen and Lillian Crawford who share their thoughts, among other things, about Bradley Cooper’s conducting of Mahler’s Second Symphony in Ely Cathedral - a central scene in the film.
Sara talks to American/Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith about a new recording of her chamber works by long-time collaborators Thin Edge New Music Collective. Linda has become a leading voice in Canadian musical culture and she tells Sara about her love of spacious and sparse music, and how stepping away from her composition to weed or wash-up can inspire new ideas.
Tomorrow's Warriors is an organisation which has supported and nurtured young musicians in jazz for over 30 years, including artists such as Soweto Kinch, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, Shabaka Hutchings and recent Mercury Prize winners Ezra Collective. Sara meets its co-founders, Gary Crosby and Janine Irons, to talk about how Tomorrow's Warriors began, how they've gone on to have such a big impact on the UK jazz scene, and the vital need for young people to have access to musical experiences.
As his new recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra of the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner - all eleven of them - hit the record stores, Tom Service speaks to the German conductor Christian Thielemann. He tells Tom about what had, for him, been a burning desire to embark on the journey to record all of the composer’s symphonies, as well as the consolations of working with one of the world’s greatest orchestras. Thielemann shares his vision, too, for audiences in the German capital following the recent news he’ll succeed Daniel Barenboim as the General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera.
With preparations well underway for this year’s London Jazz Festival, Tom catches-up with the ‘Queen of African Music’ - Angélique Kidjo. She describes her first encounter with Beethoven among the vinyl records of classical music her father had collected before the disruption of Benin’s dictatorships, and speaks about her escape to Paris in the 1980s, as well as the joyous spirit of defiance and power of music in the conflicts she’s witnessed in Sudan and Uganda.
And as ensembles around the country gear up for the finals of this year’s National Brass Band Championships, Music Matters eavesdrops on the preparatory rehearsals of last year’s winner’s, Foden’s Brass Band. With contributions from principal cornet, Mark Wilkinson, principal trombone and Chairman, John Barber, flugel horn player, Melanie Whyle, and conductor, Russell Gray, Tom also speaks to the composer of this year’s test piece, Edward Gregson, about his ‘Of Men and Mountains’, which will be performed by twenty bands at this year’s championships.
Presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch speaks to one of the most treasured and celebrated British mezzo-sopranos, Dame Janet Baker. Following the recent celebrations of her 90th birthday, she reflects on her life in music, the physical and mental toll of performance, and a singer’s responsibility to always serve both the composer and the musical score.
Serving the score of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, the much-lauded conductor John Wilson joins Sara to discuss his sumptuous new album - the first ever complete recording of the musical’s original Broadway manuscript. He explains the painstaking research behind the restoration of Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations, how he approaches the task of preparing repertoire for the stage, and how to create the magical sound of musical theatre during its ‘golden age’ in the 1940s.
Recently returned from filming concerts performed for soldiers fighting on the frontline, the BBC correspondent Mark Urban tells Music Matters about the current situation inside Ukraine. Sara speaks to composer and performer Ihor Zavhorodnii, and violinist Vera Lytovschenko, about their efforts to bring musical relief to residents in schools, hospitals and bomb shelters, and hears how they’re trying to reach and serve audiences inside their war-torn country. She hears, too, from the Chief Music Editor of Ukrainian Public Radio’s cultural station, Oleksandr Piriyev, who describes how he’s promoting Ukrainian music through the European Broadcasting Union.
Kate Molleson is joined by South African cellist, singer and composer Abel Selaocoe with his cello in tow, as he prepares to tour this autumn with The Bantu Ensemble. Abel talks about the "swirling cultures" from which he takes his inspiration, whether it's the different church traditions in South Africa or the music of JS Bach, and he treats us to a live improvisation.Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes joins Kate for a walk on the windy slopes of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. With a new boxset featuring Leif Ove's recordings from 1990-2010 due out in October, he reflects on how his approach to music has changed over the years, why there are certain composers whose music he preserves for listening not performing, and how the natural world is at the heart of how he plays.And as the new school year gets underway, we visit Acland Burghley School in Camden, North London, where three years ago the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment moved in. The orchestra's Chief Executive Crispin Woodhead gives us a tour of the school and explains how students, teachers, orchestral musicians and the wider community benefit from the collaboration and how he believes this model answers many of the problems faced by the arts and by education right now.
As a new collaborative production of Britten's one-act opera Noye's Fludde hits the stage in Leeds and Manchester this week, Tom Service speaks to staff and children from the Ingram Road Primary School during rehearsals in Holbeck to learn about the resonances of this Biblical story in today’s world and why it’s important for their community to be doing a project of such scale. He talks to Slung Low theatre company’s Artistic Director, Alan Lane, and the conductor Nicholas Chalmers, to learn how they’ve put community of 180 children at the heart of this show.
Tom joins Kitty Ross, curator at Leeds Museums, to hear about the venue’s role at the heart of the city’s former Triennial Music Festival, and how it played host to the premieres of ambitious works including oratorios as famous as Walton’s Belshazzar's Feast, as well as a work which has since fallen into obscurity - Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s The Blind Girl of Castél-Cuillé. She reflects on the relative health of Leeds’ musical ecosystem and a recently rediscovered trove of forgotten works by the city’s female composers.
Tom talks to the editors of a new book ‘Popular Music in Leeds: histories, heritage, people and place’, Paul Thompson and Brett Lashua. He drops by the city’s Sela Bar, the current incarnation of the ‘Studio 20’ jazz club where Sarah Vaughan sang and George Melly signed his name, to discuss Leeds’ place in, and contribution to, the UK’s popular music scene.
And with a new production of the folk opera Anoush about to open at Marylebone Theatre, in London, conductor Aris Nadirian and director Seta White tell Tom why Armen Tigranian’s opera is rarely heard outside Armenia. The scholar Knar Abrahamyan explores how the work’s music has percolated into popular culture, how the piece was viewed in Soviet times, and why it still enjoys such popularity in its home country.
As Radio 3 marks the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death, Tom Service visits Lincoln Cathedral, the centre of musical activity where the composer held positions as organist and master of the basilica’s choristers early in his career. He talks to the scholar Magnus Williamson about how the building’s acoustics shaped Byrd’s compositional voice, and speaks to both the cathedral’s current Director of Music, Aric Prentice, and Lay Vicar, Thomas Wilson. He’s also joined by four leading British composers and musicians who have worked with Byrd's music: Cheryl Frances-Hoad, James Weeks, Gabriel Jackson and Laura Cannell. They each discuss how they have worked Byrd into their own compositional voices.
Ahead of her Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra later this month, Tom also hears from the conductor Elim Chan. Winner of the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition in 2014, she tells Tom about her journey at the helm of several of the world’s leading orchestras and why being on stage feels like being a rockstar.
As the Royal Northern College of Music celebrates its 50th anniversary, Tom Service talks to current students at the college and former alumni - including the pianist Alexandra Dariescu and conductor Alpesh Chauhan. He meets the RNCM’s Principal, Linda Merrick, as well as the college’s archivist, Geoff Thomason, to learn more about the college’s past, the role it currently plays in the city’s musical life, and its aspirations for the future.
Formed of present and former students of the college, Tom catches-up with three members of an all-female genre-defying string quartet, Vulva Voce, to hear how their approach to repertoire and performance is winning over audiences.
With Manchester’s leading classical ensembles descending on Bridgewater Hall for a weekend-long festival celebrating the city’s rich musical heritage, Tom Service meets the Director of the BBC Philharmonic, Beth Wells; Chief Executive of the Hallé Orchestra, David Butcher; Creative Director of the Manchester Camerata, Samantha McShane; and Artistic Director & Chief Executive of the Manchester Collective, Adam Szabo.
And, Music Matters hears from the composer John Luther Adams, whose new work 'Prophecies of Stone' is set to premiere next month at the Manchester International Festival. We chat too to the biennial festival’s Head of Music, Jane Beese, about the ambitions for Manchester’s new cultural venue - Aviva Studios.
Presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores the musical legacy of the Windrush generation, as part of the BBC's coverage of the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush's arrival at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June 1948.
The composer Shirley J. Thompson joins Sara to discuss a new piano version of her one-singer opera with film, Women of the Windrush, and we hear specially recorded excerpts from the work by soprano Nadine Benjamin and pianist Caroline Jaya-Ratnam. The composers Errollyn Wallen and Des Oliver talk, too, about their own family connections and musical influences, and we hear the story of Belizean folk singer Nadia Cattouse as told by her son, Level 42 keyboardist Mike Lindup.
The French-Canadian conductor Nicole Paiement, Founder and Artistic Director of Opera Parallèle in San Francisco, speaks to Sara from her home over-looking the bay while preparing to give the UK premiere of Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer's opera Everest - a work which tells the harrowing story of climbers caught in a blizzard in 1996 - in what will be a semi-staged version with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Plus the conductor, composer and arranger Nigel Brooks discusses his life in music, from his first job during a Proms performance of music by Vaughan Williams with the BBC Singers in 1950, to his own group the Nigel Brooks Singers, and what drives him to continue writing music - including an orchestral piece inspired by that first Proms appearance - at the age of 96.
As the CBSO prepares for a summer of tours to Aldeburgh, Japan, and the BBC Proms, the orchestra’s new Chief Conductor Kazuki Yamada speaks to presenter Tom Service about the joy of music and the goosebumps he experiences while conducting.
Tom travels to the South Downs to speak to Australian director Barrie Kosky about a new production, opening this weekend at Glyndebourne, of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. He’s joined by sopranos Golda Schultz and Sally Matthews, as well as conductor Robin Ticciati, to talk about the story of sixteen nuns who meet their death at the hands of the French Revolution.
Amid rehearsals at the Royal Opera House, Music Matters hears about the World Premiere of a new ballet, Untitled 2023 – a collaboration between the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. They discuss the somatic relationship between body, dance and music, and why listening to Thorvaldsdottir’s compositions is not a passive experience.
And one hundred years after its premiere at the Aeolian Hall in June 1923, Tom speaks to the writer and broadcaster William Sitwell about his great-aunt Edith Sitwell’s creative relationship with the composer William Walton – a collaboration which resulted in the entertainment, Façade. He’s also joined by writer and researcher Lucy Walker. Together they discuss the work’s nonsensical parody of popular music, jazz, and poetry and knotty issues it presents to contemporary audiences.
With his new memoir ‘Formation - Building a Personal Canon, Part I’ hitting bookshops, and a new collaborative album with the tenor Ian Bostridge released this week, the American Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau joins Kate Molleson to discuss his childhood in small town New England, his forays into the New York Jazz scene of the 1990s, his encounters with kind musical heroes and future collaborators, and what it means to be a musician.Telling the story the 18th-century “Irish giant” Charles Byrne, whose corpse was stolen to order and put on public display, Kate speaks to composer Sarah Angliss about the World Premiere of her new opera Giant at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival. She explains how she’s treating this surprisingly tender tale of grave robbing and dissection.As Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month gets under way, Music Matters learns about a new project to highlight the invaluable recorded collection of gypsy and traveller voices archived within the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. We speak to the University of East Anglia’s Dr. Hazel Marsh about the impetus to make collections, housed at the English Folk Dance and Song Society, more accessible to Gypsy and Traveller people seeking engagement with their cultural heritage, and hear from the Scottish Traveller Ian McGregor. Celebrating two decades of music making with Les Siècles, Kate hears from conductor François-Xavier Roth as he prepares to tour with the orchestra to the Barbican, Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms. With new albums of works by Ravel and Ligeti about to be released this month, too, he tells Kate about the energy of discovery which drives the ensemble’s prolific recording activity, and why performance needs to be dangerous.
Marking the centenary of Hungarian composer György Ligeti, Tom Service talks to musicians who knew him and who love his music.Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and composer and conductor Thomas Adès explore the musical universe of the Violin Concerto; pianist Tamara Stefanovich describes meeting the composer and the intensity and fragility required to perform his music; Tom joins composer Anna Meredith in her studio to listen to one of his last works, the Hamburg Concerto; and György Ligeti’s son, the composer and instrumentalist Lukas Ligeti reveals the passion he shared with his father for creating imaginary worlds, both musical and non-musical.Tom also talks to conductor Iván Fischer - the founder of the acclaimed Budapest Festival Orchestra - ahead of his appearances at the BBC Proms and at Edinburgh International Festival this summer. They discuss the difficulties of changing how symphony orchestras work, how his orchestra’s mission to bring music to the communities of Budapest translates when they’re on tour, and why mistakes are a very good thing.Plus musicians and noise. With recent stories about noise complaints against both musicians rehearsing at home and long-established music venues, we talk to Clara Cullen from the Music Venues Trust, Stuart Darke from the Independent Society of Musicians and Lisa Lavia from the Noise Abatement Society about the law, the psychology and how to balance the needs of musicians with the rights of communities for peace and quiet.
On the verge of receiving the coveted George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music and Dance in America, the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard joins Sara Mohr-Pietsch. He discusses his ventures into the operatic world, the success of The Met’s recent production of his opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and returning to the New York opera company’s hallowed stage for their current run of his first opera, Champion, which is based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith.Sara travels to the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, in Chelsea, to hear from a modern von Trapp family lineage of singers – the Bevan Family Consort. We hear from sisters Sophie and Mary Bevan about their new album, following in the musical footsteps of their parents’ generation, and singing together as a family. David Price, Director of Analysis at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, gives Music Matters the latest news about how listeners access and engage with classical music recordings.And, as his new collection of lyrics – Never Good with Horses – hits the bookshelves, the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage discusses the art of writing words that can be set to music. We hear too about a special speed-dating project, as part of the Leeds Lieder festival, which paired-up 12 poets from the city with 12 young composers to create a songbook. Sara talked to composers Georgia Barnes and Daniel Saleeb, and the poet Dalton Harrison.
Tom Services talks to German baritone Christian Gerhaher during rehearsals for Alban Berg's Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House. Having recently recorded all the songs of Robert Schumann as well as Mahler, Brahms and Schubert, Christian reveals how he sees the differing role of the singer when performing lieder and opera, and why he believes celebrating the complexity of classical music will secure its future. Tom also meets singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Rhiannon Giddens whose opera 'Omar' has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. The opera tells the story of Omar Ibn Said, a scholar who was one of tens of thousands of enslaved Muslims who were taken to the United States in the 19th century. Rhiannon discusses the power of collaboration, the future of opera and her ongoing mission to reclaim the history of the banjo as an instrument created by black communities.For Mental Health Awareness Week, we explore the world of gong baths to find out how sound therapy can be used to help reduce levels of anxiety and stress. Tom goes for a gong bath with sound therapist and musician Simone Salvatici and talks to British Academy of Sound Therapy Director Lyz Cooper.Plus, Chris West, author of 'Eurovision! A History of Modern Europe Through the World's Greatest Song Contest', explores how the songs of Eurovision have reflected the traditional music and cultural identity of the countries taking part, as well as telling stories of peace, conflict and resolution since it was established in 1956.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to violinist Nicola Benedetti as she prepares for her inaugural programme as Edinburgh International Festival director, becoming the first Scot to hold the position in the festival's 75-year history. Nicola discusses the challenges of balancing the festival job with life as a performer and sets out her vision for opening up music to a wider audience and deepening the culture of listening. We visit English National Opera to find out about a new staging of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, 30 years after the first commercial recording of the piece shot to fame reaching number six in the UK pop album charts. Sara talks to Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and director/designer Isabella Bywater about their new production of the piece and how the operatic setting changes our experience of the music.Baritone Lucia Lucas and composer Tom W Green discuss The World’s Wife - a chamber opera from 2017 for string quartet and singer which uses text from the poetry collection by Carol Ann Duffy, who presents world history through the eyes of the wives and partners of the men in the history books. They talk to Sara about the use of material by historic women composers, the power of the poetry, and what it means to rework the piece with a transgender opera singer in 2023.And with stories in the media of a sector in decline, we look at what the numbers tell us about the state of classical music in the UK, with contributions from Anne Torreggiani at The Audience Agency on concert-going, Janis Susskind at Boosey and Hawkes on commissioning and audiences, and Dr Adam Whittaker at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on uptake of A-levels and grade exams.
Presenter Tom Service is joined by the Spanish pianist Javier Perianes, ahead of his concert at Wigmore Hall, to discuss the creative and musical connections between Enrique Granados and the trio of German composers – Robert and Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Javier explains why you don’t necessarily need to be a native to play Spanish music, and how composers from both the Iberian peninsula and across Europe draw inspiration from the folk music of their native land. Javier talks too about his plans to direct, from the keyboard, Mozart and Beethoven piano concerti with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. As artificial intelligence hits the news this week with stories like the AI-crafted image that won the Sony World Photography Award, and the withdrawal by streaming platforms of an AI-generated song – purportedly by the artist Drake – due to possible infringement, Tom is joined by composers Robert Laidlow and Emily Howard, as well as music technology lecturer and journalist Karl Hodge, to explore both the creative possibilities and the challenges surrounding this evolving technology. The singer and marketeer Ruth Hartt shares her perspectives about the shifting trends of concert hall audiences in America, and what organisations around the world can do to make their work more relevant to society – which she sees as crucial for the future of Classical Music – as well as to appeal to broader demographics.And Music Matters speaks to the National Open Youth Orchestra's Doug Bott, plus two musicians from the ensemble – Oliver Cross and Holli Pandit – about their ethos and objectives, as well as a new report, launched in connection with Sound Connections, about the learnings from NOYO’s pioneering approach to working with young disabled people.
Tom Service talks to conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner at his home in Dorset as he celebrates his 80th birthday later this week. His work as Artistic Director of his Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique has made him a central figure in the early music revival and a pioneer of historically informed performance. Together with the musicians from his performance groups, John Eliot Gardiner has performed and recorded repertoire which spans five centuries, from Monteverdi to Berlioz, Schutz to Schumann as well as the two composers he’s especially associated with – J.S. Bach and Beethoven.
Tom Service explores classical music's place in British society, in light of the current national debates around funding from Arts Council England and the proposed cuts to the BBC's performing groups. The programme asks questions about how classical music and opera is valued, and how it resonates with today's diverse communities, through perspectives from within the UK and from abroad, from former culture minister Ed Vaizey to multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie.Richard McKerrow, the producer behind Channel 4's The Piano, on classical music on TV and the impact he hopes the series will have on our musical life.Sarah Price from Liverpool University, on her research into audiences: why do we return to the familiar when choosing which concerts to attend?Kully Thiarai, creative director and CEO of Leeds 2023, on the importance of the arts and culture for community and belonging.Andrew Mellor, a British journalist in Denmark, on the relationship the Nordic countries have with classical music, and why it's different in the UK.Bobby Duffy from the Policy Institute at King's College London, on how the arts and classical music fit into the culture wars debate.Nwando Ebizie, the multidisciplinary artist, on working with Aurora Orchestra on "Inside Beethoven" and making events work for D/deaf audiences. Ed Vaizey, Member of the House of Lords and former culture minister, on perceptions and political decision-making around the arts and music.
Kate Molleson marks the 150 anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninov's birth. She visits his home in Switzerland - after years of renovation, the beautiful Villa Senar, on the banks of Lake Lucerne, is reopening to the public. This is the peaceful summer residence where Rachmaninov lived in in the 1930s and where he composed the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini and the Third symphony. Kate is shown around the Villa by its director Andrea Loetscher. They are joined by pianist Boris Giltburg, who is about to release his new Rachmaninov piano concertos disc, and who performs specially for Music Matters on Rachmaninov's original Steinway grand piano in the Villa's studio. Also joining Kate at the Villa is Fiona Maddocks: music critic and author of the upcoming book 'Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile'. Together they discuss Rachmaninov's life, work and his time spent at Villa Senar.
Kate Molleson talks to composer Anna Clyne, clarinettist Martin Frost and violinist Pekka Kuusisto together about the concertos Anna has written for the acclaimed soloists. The UK premiere of her clarinet concerto for Martin - Weathered - took place at the Royal Festival Hall this week, with Pekka conducting. Her violin concerto for Pekka - Time and Tides - will have its UK premiere in March 2024, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.Also, Marques L.A. Garrett tell us about The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers, which he has edited. It features 35 pieces from countries including Brazil, Canada, Portugal, the USA and Britain, which span from the 16th century to the current day.Kate visits a new musical opening in London this month about Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian former Prime Minister and tycoon. At rehearsals, Kate met composer Ricky Simmonds, director James Grieve, and actor Emma Hatton who plays Veronica, Silvio Berlusconi’s second wife.Plus, we look into the business of music streaming ahead of the launch of the classical music streaming app, Apple Classical. We hear from Sophie Jones, Chief Strategy Officer and Interim Chief Executive of the British Phonographic Industry; Naomi Pohl, General Secretary of the Musicians' Union; and Chris O'Reilly, CEO of Presto Music.
Tom Service visits the installation Bigger and Closer at Lightroom in London, a journey into the creative mind of David Hockney, with images of his work projected on huge walls with a score especially written to accompany it by the American composer Nico Muhly, who explains how he devised music for such a project. Also Tom is taken through the installation by Lightroom's Chief Executive, Richard Slaney.Tom takes a look at 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', an opera which receives its world premiere in Seattle this week, based on Khaled Hosseini's novel spanning a generation about two women going through political and social changes in Afghanistan, including the first Taliban rule, amid a tale of despair and sacrifice. He talks to Hosseini, to the composer Sheila Silver, to the opera director, the film-maker Roya Sadat and to the opera's cultural consultant, Humaira Ghilzai.Also, the book 'Troubled Inheritances: Memory, Music and Aging' featuring research in different parts of the world looking into how music accompanies us, both individually and collectively, changing and shaping our memories as we age. With contributions by two of the editors of this collection of essays, Sara Cohen, who's done research with older people in Liverpool, and Line Grenier, who's worked with deaf communities in Montreal. Also, another new opera, The Emperor’s New Waltz, by 18-year-old Alma Deutscher, commissioned by Salzburg State Theatre, to be premiered on March 4th. Tom talks to Alma about the piece, a romantic story about two young lovers, which she sees as leading a revolution bringing 'beautiful melodies' back to the present.
Tom Service visits Evelyn Glennie to discuss her life and career. As a soloist and improviser, the profoundly deaf musician created a role that had never existed in the classical world before, that of a solo percussionist. Growing up on a farm in Aberdeenshire, Evelyn Glennie’s journey to musical stardom took her through the Royal Academy of Music to playing at the Proms in 1992; she was a household name on TV throughout the late 80s and 90s, and led hundreds of musicians at the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. She's commissioned an entire repertoire of concertos, has a vast archive of percussion instruments and has a determination to make the most of every moment. With Tom, as she shows him around her many instruments, she explores the essential principle that's been the cornerstone of her life - listening.
As her career takes flight, the French-Italian mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre talks to presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch about her love of baroque music, how her ballet training has influenced both her voice and stage presence, and the special musical alchemy that she experiences while collaborating with Thomas Dunford and the Jupiter Ensemble. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the late American composer Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations – a series of text-based scores that instruct groups of people to practice ‘sounding’ and listening together – Music Matters speaks to the improviser and saxophonist, Artur Vidal, and sound artist and researcher, Ximena Alarcón ahead of a weekend of performances at Café Oto in London. They describe how Oliveros’ works broke with the conventions that separate composer, performer, and audience, and discuss how her Sonic Meditations became the blueprint for the composer’s hugely influential Deep Listening school. As China eases its Covid restrictions, Sara speaks to the Shanghai-based journalist Rudolph Tang to learn how the country’s classical music sector is returning to business after the pandemic.And, during rehearsals for Richard Jones’ new production of Rheingold at English National Opera, Sara joins the musicologist John Deathridge backstage to hear more about his new translation of the first instalment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. She asks the musicologist Barbara Eichner about the nuances of creating a convincing, contemporary translation of High German epic poetry, and is joined by ENO’s Head of Music, Martin Fitzpatrick, and music critic at the New York Times, Zachary Woolf, to discuss whether the enterprise of translating foreign language operas into an audience’s vernacular remains relevant.
Stephen Hough talks to presenter Kate Molleson about his new memoir, Enough, a candid exploration of his love for the piano. He discusses growing-up in a household with little music, through his education in Cheetham’s School in Manchester as a young teenager, to his experience studying as a young man at the Juilliard in New York. He tells Kate about his experiences with teachers – some encouraging and others emotionally challenging – and describes the almost confessional nature of revealing his inner soul to the public as both a composer and performer. Following a collective statement issued last week by the boards of several opera houses, which called on Arts Council England to develop a strategy for opera provision, Tom Service hears from Aidan Lang, general director of Welsh National Opera; general director of Opera North, Richard Mantle; and Robin Norton-Hale, general director of English Touring Opera, about what they’d like to see in the analysis ACE has promised. They tell Tom how new audiences and productions are helping the genre to thrive, despite the difficult cultural environment at present. The singer and TV presenter Elzara Batalova left her homeland in Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation, and fled Kyiv last year for the safety of Scotland. As she prepares for a concert to mark the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh later this month, she tells Kate about her roots in Tatar culture, how she finds it difficult to sing after fleeing Ukraine, and the ways in which she’s discovering new ways to make her voice heard for the benefit of fellow Ukrainians.Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize, emeritus professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, and notching-up a quarter century as poetry editor at Picador Macmillan, Kate speaks to the Scottish poet and author Don Paterson, whose memoir Toy Fights is hot off the press. He describes the crucial influence of his father who was himself a respected musician, how he got into Jazz, how the guitar proved crucial during a time of mental breakdown, and the parallels between music and poetry.
Composer Dobrinka Tabakova talks to Tom Service about her artist residency at The Hallé in Manchester. She discusses her love of melody, the thrill of writing for youth orchestra, the importance of understanding the character of the musicians she writes for, and how meeting composer Iannis Xenakis when she was 14 shaped her musical path.Tom visits the site of the new Shireland City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Academy in West Bromwich, which opens in September 2023. As the first state school in the country to be established in collaboration with an orchestra, the academy is built around a central performance space which will also be open as a venue in evenings and throughout the year for the wider Sandwell community and beyond. Tom takes a tour of the site with CBSO Chief Executive Stephen Maddock, Principal Designate David Green and architect Claire Mantle to find out more.Emily MacGregor joins Tom to talk about her new book ‘Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity and the Sound of 1933’ which explores how symphonies in Europe and America reflect and shape the politics of their time, and how they resonate with us today. The book looks at symphonies by composers such as Kurt Weill, Hans Pfitzner, Roy Harris and Florence Price which were written or premiered in 1933 – a year in which Hitler came to power in Germany and the Great Depression reached its peak in the United States.We explore the past, present and future of immersive performances with David Owen Norris who takes us on a whistle-stop tour of how composers and musicians have played with sound and space throughout the centuries. Tom also visits the d&b Audiotechnik demo facility in Stroud to find out about the latest technology being used to create immersive audio performances in halls, theatres and opera houses across the world.
Ahead of her performance in the Royal Opera House’s production of Tannhäuser, Tom Service joins the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen backstage at Covent Garden during rehearsals for Wagner’s story of love, redemption, and mythical depiction of the Wartburg Song Contest. She tells Tom about inhabiting the role of her character, Elisabeth, and how opera is a space in which we can connect with world events.As Celtic Connections celebrates its 30th anniversary in Glasgow, Tom is joined by musician, producer, and festival director Donald Shaw; Chief Executive of Fèis Rois, Fiona Dalgety; singer-songwriter, Karine Polwart; and the piper, fiddler, composer and instrument-maker, Malin Lewis, to discuss the festival’s impact in the Celtic musical world and beyond.Music Matters talks to the American harpsichordist and author Leslie Kwan about her new book for toddlers, A is for Aretha, which features 26 portraits of inspirational black women in music.And, Tom visits violinist Daniel Pioro and organist James McVinnie as they prepare for a deep-dive into the soundworld of the 17th century Austrian composer, Heinrich Biber, and his virtuosic Rosary sonatas. He hears about the series of performances and talks, Daniel and James have curated, which stretch from sunrise to sunset this weekend at the Southbank Centre in London.
Ahead of his concert with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Tom Service travels to Poole to talk to the German virtuoso horn player Felix Klieser. Born without arms, Felix is celebrated for his wide range of expression and colours and has developed a unique technique to play the valves of his instrument with his left foot – something he explains can help expand the instrument's palette for both him and others. He tells Tom about the collaborative dialogue in which composers and performers engage, and how the relationship affects the way he performs material written especially for him.Discrimination and harassment have increased significantly in the music industry, according to the latest report published by the Independent Society of Musicians. Tom hears from the ISM’s Chief Executive, Deborah Annetts, about these findings and hears testimonies from musicians who've been subject to harassment during their careers.Music Matters joins the designer and video artist Netia Jones, and composer Brian Irvine, to hear about the UK performance of 'Least Like The Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy' which is staged this month in the Royal Opera House's Lindbury Theatre. Commissioned by Irish National Opera, the work received its premiere in 2019 and both Netia and Brian explain how the story behind John Fitzgerald Kennedy's sister, who was lobotomised in 1941 when she was a young woman, is a mirror to the way in which society treated women both at the time and still.And, Tom speaks to the conductor and author Alice Farnham about as her new book, 'In Good Hands: the Making of a Modern Conductor'. They discuss what it means to be a conductor in modern times and Alice’s efforts to make the profession more open, gender-equal and diverse.
As part of Radio 3's New Year New Music, Kate Molleson talks at length to one of the 21st-century's leading creative artists – the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Celebrating her 70th birthday this year, Kaija describes music as a study of self and the human spirit. Kate meets her at home in Paris where she reflects on her life in music, describing the the conviction with which she pursued compositional classes with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy, and the distinctive musical style she developed as a result. Kate hears how Saariaho found herself in the musical milieu of Paris and the draw of the city’s research institute for music and sound, IRCAM, where she cemented her place on the world stage with a dazzling work for small chamber orchestra and electronics inspired by the aurora borealis, Lichtbogen (1986). She tells Kate too about the challenges of writing her opera Innocence, whose subject matter deals with the legacy of trauma surrounding a shooting in a Finnish International School, and the inevitability of embodying the emotional pain of the story’s characters during the composition process. And as 2023 commences, Kate is joined by the Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Kathryn McDowell, and the music journalist and author, Norman Lebrecht, to discuss the major challenges and opportunities awaiting the musical world in the year ahead.
Kate Molleson travels to Paris to join Olivier Latry, titular organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral, as he reflects on the possibilities of making music outside the iconic building following 2019’s devastating blaze. He describes how the spirit of the cathedral has seeped into musicianship as well as its absence while the basilica is rebuilt and its congregation worship at a different site, as well as his hopes for the musical life of the building after it reopens in 2024, and how performing in religious ceremonies differs from recitals in concert halls.Kate is joined by the musicologist Roger Nichols whose new book, 'From Berlioz to Boulez', surveys the story of French musical history through the country’s most important composers. The French music expert Caroline Potter shares her thoughts on Nichols’ new tome too. Music Matters learns about a new archive of contemporary repertoire, commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music for students and people consulting their website, called 200 Pieces. We hear from 3 composers who've written material especially for the modern-day compilation: Helen Grime, Howard Skempton and Daniel Kidane.And Betto Arcos, whose journalism focusses on Latin American music, tells Kate about his favourite Mexican Christmas music traditions, including the rituals of Las Posadas, La Rama, and the villancicos which has echoed across Oaxaca Cathedral’s interior since the time of the conquistadors.
Beloved by choirs and audiences all over the world, John Rutter is one of the most popular and successful choral composers of the last half-century. In particular, for many people Rutter’s carols and carol arrangements are the sound of Christmas. The festive season would be unthinkable today without the joyful tunes of Shepherd’s Pipe Carol or Star Carol resounding in school halls, churches and concert halls. Tom Service visits the composer at his home in rural Cambridgeshire to try to learn the secret of writing a great carol, and to chat about an illustrious career that has also included major choral works such as his Requiem and Gloria, and the large-scale Mass of the Children, written in 2003 following the sudden death of Rutter’s son Christopher at the age of 19. We also drop in on a rehearsal with the Bach Choir in London, as John prepares them for his gala Christmas Celebration concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Produced by Graham Rogers.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali about his work with the Philharmonia, currently busy with his second season leading the London-based orchestra. He discusses the composers who challenge him when conducting, and tells why humour is so important in his music making.We take a look at the nature of national anthems and why they're so popular at sports events like the current football World Cup, with an expert on the subject, Dr Ruth Dockwray, associate professor of Popular Music at the University of Chester.Also, we talk to Mary Cohen, co-author of the book Music-Making in U.S. Prisons: Listening to Incarcerated Voices (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, November 2022); to Robin Harris from Finding Rhythms, an organization running song-writing workshops with prisoners in the UK; and to two former inmates who've benefited from these programmes as part of their process of rehabilitation back into society.And composer, vocalist and artistic director Laura Bowler, who's just been granted the 2022 Paul Hamlyn Foundation award, given to support artists in their future paths, talks about her projects about climate change and about violence against women, and why working on these subjects have impacted both her physical and mental health. Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo
Kate Molleson speaks to Irish soprano Ailish Tynan at home with her dog. She reminisces about growing up in Ireland, learning her craft as a young artist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and working with students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance in Greenwich where she has been recently announced as International Artist in Voice.
Kate travels to rehearsals to meet members of the Glasgow Senior Citizens Orchestra where she finds them preparing for their next concert; and she talks to music therapist, Grace Meadows from the Utley Foundation and David Cutler Director of the Baring Foundation about the benefits music brings to older people.
Author Frederick W. Skinner introduces his new book 'Beethoven in Russia: Music and Politics' which explores how the composer's music interfaced with politics in Russia and the revolutionary struggle that culminated in the Revolution of 1917. Marina Frolova-Walker, Professor of Music History and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge sets the context and describes the current musical climate in Russia.
Plus, Kate speaks to Ammo Talwar from UK Music about their newly published Diversity Report. And Charisse Beaumont joins us from Black Lives in Music to explain some of the findings of the report.
Produced by Marie-Claire Doris.
Ahead of her concert next week with the LSO, Tom Service speaks to the pianist Alice Sara Ott who is also preparing to embark on a tour which features lighting and images alongside performances of Chopin’s Op 28 preludes, and other contemporary works from her recent Echoes of Life album, to create a multi-media experience that extends the boundaries of what’s possible in concert halls.
As the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference concludes, Music Matters hears from Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Kathryn McDowell, Chief Executive of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Eakin, Executive Chairman of Harrison Parrott, Jasper Parrott, and Professor of Geosystem Science and leader of the group responsible for climate modelling at the University of Oxford, Myles Allen, about the degree to which the classical music industry is delivering its own promises to reduce its impact on the environment.
With all eyes on Qatar for the opening of the FIFA World Cup, Tom hears from the BBC’s Series producer for Arabic Digital Investigative Documentaries, Rosie Garthwaite, about the construction she witnessed of Doha’s opera house in the Katara Cultural Centre. He learns how the country has nurtured both Western art forms and cultural institutions, and the potential projection of soft power.
Tom joins the soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Frederick Ballentine during rehearsals for a new production, by English National Opera, of Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life. The composer shares how he adapted the story behind Frank Capra’s classic movie, and Tom speaks to the journalist, broadcaster, and author, Matthew Sweet, about the phenomenon of setting operas from film, as well as different roles music plays on both the screen and the stage.
On the eve of the launch of her new album, ‘Seraph’, featuring works for trumpet and string orchestra by James Macmillan, Grieg, and Satie, Tom Service speaks to Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth about her diagnosis with cancer last year, her relationship with music during gruelling treatment, and the conscious decision she made after her recovery to commit again to a career in music.
As Arts Council England reveals its 2023-26 national portfolio of funded organisations, Music Matters speaks to ACE’s Director of Music, Claire Mera Nelson, about the body’s investment decisions. We hear from a cross section of organisations who’ve seen changes to their public funding, as well as first-time recipients, with contributions from Chief Executive of the Paraorchestra, Jonathan Harper; Artistic and Executive Director of MishMash productions, Liz Muge; and Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Britten Sinfonia, Meurig Bowen.
And as the EFG London Jazz Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary, Tom’s joined by jazz author and presenter, Alyn Shipton, former Director of Serious (the creative company who administer the festival) Claire Whitaker; and the British-Bahraini jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer, Yazz Ahmed, who discuss how the British jazz scene has evolved since the early 90s.
Producer: Marie-Claire Doris
The Labeque Sisters, Katia and Marielle Labeque, shot to fame in 1980 with their arrangements of Gershwin, including the Rhapsody in Blue, and for more than half a century have made a unique musical life together. Tom Service talks to Katia and Marielle about the broad range of music that they are creating, the boundaries that they are constantly pushing, and their sound-world within two pianos.
Before the release of their award-winning Gershwin disc in 1980, Katia and Marielle Labeque predominantly performed contemporary music, and encountered the composer Olivier Messiaen, who overheard them practising his Vision de l’Amen while they were still students at the Paris Conservatoire. They’ve since worked with Boulez and Berio, and it was on tour in Los Angeles, performing Berio’s Concerto for Two Pianos, that they happened across Gershwin for the first time. As students at the Paris Conservatoire, they had to fight to be accepted into the chamber music class, and they tell Tom about perceptions of piano duos and the mission to constantly seek new repertoire.
The sisters’ continual curiosity and creativity has led them on a journey, as Marielle describes it, where one chance encounter leads to another. They have commissioned new works from musicians of backgrounds from rock to classical, from Bryce Dessner to Nico Muhly, and they have worked alongside Giovanni Antonini who helped them to acquire two reproductions of Bach’s Silbermann keyboards, which they keep in their Palazzo in Venice.
The sisters speak to Tom at length about all their musical projects, delve into what keeps them going, and discuss how their distinct two-piano sound really works.
Presenter Tom Service visits the Pit Theatre at the Barbican to learn more about a new theatrical meditation on the bittersweet consolations of sorrow. He speaks to countertenor Iestyn Davies about the melancholy of John Dowland’s music and its power to process grief, while the director Netia Jones tells Tom how she’s weaved together creative visuals with philosophical musings of Robert Burton’s 17th-century treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy as well as those of Freud and other contemporary experts of the human condition.
As the BBC celebrates its centenary, Music Matters is joined by composers Matthew Herbert and Anna Meredith, and Artistic Associate of the Southbank Gillian Moore, to discuss the corporation’s role as a commissioner of contemporary repertoire during the past 100 years.
Tom catches-up with composer Tom Floyd, singer Sophie Goldrick, and Professor Marion Thain during rehearsals of a new opera, Veritable Michael, which charts the creative life and love affair of two women who operated together under the pseudonym Michael Field – a 19th century fictional author whose work was celebrated by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Robert Browning.
And Tom takes a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum where he’d joined by Harriet Reed, the co-curator of Re:Imagining Musicals – a new display of glittering costumes and musical memorabilia – to explore the craftmanship, creative renewal, and evolutionary impetus behind some of the most iconic musicals of the past seven decades.
Tom Service joins Rachel Podger and her violin for a walk in the Brecon Beacons to talk about her new album ‘Tutta Sola’ which features lesser-known solo violin music of the 18th century. Rachel discusses the new musical discoveries she’s made through making the album and what it means to play solo, and she treats us to some solo Bach live on a hillside.
Tom talks to Ukrainian musicians and musical leaders about their musical life in Ukraine right now and how music and music-making is both an escape from the trauma of everyday life during the war, and a strong representation of Ukrainian national identity. We hear from conductor Ivan Cherednichenko at Lviv National Opera, Tetyana Kostorna at Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Sergey Didok at the National Operetta of Ukraine in Kyiv and pianist Antonii Baryshevskyi.
Edward Dusinberre, violinist and leader of the Takacs Quartet, discusses his new book ‘Distant Melodies - Music in Search of Home’ which explores ideas of home and exile through the lives and music of Elgar, Britten, Bartok and Dvorak, together with his own musical childhood in England and life as a touring musician living in America.
Gabriella Di Laccio, soprano and Founder of Donne, Women in Music, joins Tom to look at the latest Equality & Diversity in Global Repetoire Report which reveals that only 7.7% of pieces performed by 111 orchestras worldwide in 2021/22, were written by women. Artistic Director at London Philharmonic Orchestra Elena Dubinets reflects on the findings and shares her vision for change.
Producer: Matthew Dover
This week Kate Molleson focusses on Northern Ireland.
Kate visits pianist Ruth McGinley at her studios in The MAC in Belfast to chat about her upcoming album of Irish airs and her unique approach to music making.
Beyond Skin is an arts collective using music as a means for cultural education and exchange. Darren Ferguson explains how the collective has been working with musicians seeking asylum and refugee status through creative collaboration and social support. Kate meets with some of these musicians including Shiva, a guitar teacher from Iran.
The Lambeg Drum is one of the loudest acoustic instruments and Kate gets to hear one in Co. Antrim, in the company of Willie Hill and Dr Diana Culbertson. They talk about the role the drum plays in the Ulster-Scots community.
Back in Belfast fiddle player Kevin McCullagh talks about his journey into experimental improvisation and subverting audiences' expectations of traditional music.
Kate hears about the Ulster Orchestra’s new home embedded in the community at Townsend Street, Belfast and she takes a short walk to visit pupils at Malvern Primary School in the Lower Shankill as they begin their cello class as part of the orchestra’s Crescendo Project.
Producer: Marie-Claire Doris
To mark World Mental Health Day, Tom Service presents a special programme in collaboration with Professor Sally Marlow, a mental health specialist at King’s College London and BBC Radio 3’s first ever Researcher in Residence.
Composer Gavin Higgins talks to Tom about how his early musical life in brass bands helped him to deal with his symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We visit Bethlem Gallery to meet composer and artist Gawain Hewitt and Fiona Lambert from City of London Sinfonia's 'Sound Young Minds' project, a music-making programme with young people under the care of psychiatric hospitals. Daisy Fancourt talks about a large-scale study looking at how singing can be used to treat postnatal depression, and James Sanderson from NHS England sets out what he sees as music's role in social prescribing.
We explore mental health among musicians with writer, musician and mental health advocate Tabby Kerwin reflecting on the situation in the brass band movement, and James Ainscough from the charity Help Musicians discusses the recent increase in the number of musicians from across the industry seeking help from their new charity Music Minds Matter. Plus we talk to soprano Patricia Auchterlonie, composer Oliver Leith and director Anna Morrissey about their new opera Last Days at the Linbury Theatre and how the mental health and wellbeing of the cast is being supported.
And we're in Crook in County Durham to catch up with the community arts organisation Jack Drum Arts, which provides music sessions to help support the mental health of children and young people in the local area.
Kate Molleson talks to the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff as he prepares for a recital in London. They discuss the intensity of performing live, the joy of playing chamber music, and playing one last time with his musical partner - and soul mate - Lars Vogt, who passed away recently.
Also, in light of rising living costs and of the latest Government measures, Kate is joined by critic and broadcaster Ivan Hewett, and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Chief Executive of UK Music, to assess how the music industry is being affected.
There's also news of a recently launched orchestra in Colombia, consisting entirely of female players, the Women's Philharmonic Orchestra.
Writer Mark Katz tells Kate about his new book 'Music and technology: a short introduction', in which he suggests music and technology have co-existed for much longer than we might think, to explain why technology can be used for good or evil, and how technology have empowered marginalised communities in societies across the world.
Kate Molleson talks to the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff as he prepares for a recital in London. They discuss the intensity of performing live, the joy of playing chamber music, and playing one last time with his musical partner - and soul mate - Lars Vogt, who passed away recently.
Also, in light of rising living costs and of the latest Government measures, Kate is joined by critic and broadcaster Ivan Hewett, and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Chief Executive of UK Music, to assess how the music industry is being affected.
There's also news of a recently launched orchestra in Colombia, consisting entirely of female players, the Women's Philharmonic Orchestra.
Writer Mark Katz tells Kate about his new book 'Music and technology: a short introduction', in which he suggests music and technology have co-existed for much longer than we might think, to explain why technology can be used for good or evil, and how technology have empowered marginalised communities in societies across the world.
Kate Molleson talks to the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff as he prepares for a recital in London. They discuss the intensity of performing live, the joy of playing chamber music, and playing one last time with his musical partner - and soul mate - Lars Vogt, who passed away recently.
Also, in light of rising living costs and of the latest Government measures, Kate is joined by critic and broadcaster Ivan Hewett, and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Chief Executive of UK Music, to assess how the music industry is being affected.
There's also news of a recently launched orchestra in Colombia, consisting entirely of female players, the Women's Philharmonic Orchestra.
Writer Mark Katz tells Kate about his new book 'Music and technology: a short introduction', in which he suggests music and technology have co-existed for much longer than we might think, to explain why technology can be used for good or evil, and how technology have empowered marginalised communities in societies across the world.
Kate Molleson talks to Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson about his concerts at the opening weekend of the Southbank Centre's new season, and about his new double album, From Afar, on which all the pieces are recorded twice, on two different pianos. And, as a new production of Verdi's Aida opens at the Royal Opera House, Kate talks to director Robert Carsen, and to opera historian Flora Willson about how the famous ancient Egypt-set opera by an Italian composer is viewed by Egyptians. We also hear from Egyptian mezzo-soprano Gala El Hadidi, and from Cairo-based journalist Ati Metwaly about music education in Egyptian schools.
Plus, Tom Service visits the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff to investigate Welsh National Opera's new production of Janacek's opera about immortality, The Makropulos Affair.
Producer: Graham Rogers
Kate Molleson talks to Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson about his concerts at the opening weekend of the Southbank Centre's new season, and about his new double album, From Afar, on which all the pieces are recorded twice, on two different pianos. And, as a new production of Verdi's Aida opens at the Royal Opera House, Kate talks to director Robert Carsen, and to opera historian Flora Willson about how the famous ancient Egypt-set opera by an Italian composer is viewed by Egyptians. We also hear from Egyptian mezzo-soprano Gala El Hadidi, and from Cairo-based journalist Ati Metwaly about music education in Egyptian schools.
Plus, Tom Service visits the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff to investigate Welsh National Opera's new production of Janacek's opera about immortality, The Makropulos Affair.
Producer: Graham Rogers
Kate Molleson talks to Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson about his concerts at the opening weekend of the Southbank Centre's new season, and about his new double album, From Afar, on which all the pieces are recorded twice, on two different pianos. And, as a new production of Verdi's Aida opens at the Royal Opera House, Kate talks to director Robert Carsen, and to opera historian Flora Willson about how the famous ancient Egypt-set opera by an Italian composer is viewed by Egyptians. We also hear from Egyptian mezzo-soprano Gala El Hadidi, and from Cairo-based journalist Ati Metwaly about music education in Egyptian schools.
Plus, Tom Service visits the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff to investigate Welsh National Opera's new production of Janacek's opera about immortality, The Makropulos Affair.
Producer: Graham Rogers
In an extended conversation with Tom Service, the American composer John Adams, who's turned 75 this year, discusses his life in music, the importance of his legacy, and focuses on his new opera 'Antony and Cleopatra'. It was premiered this week, with a libretto adapted by the composer from Shakespeare, Virgil, and the Egyptian book of the dead and it's Adams' very first stage work inspired by characters from Ancient history. Sir Nicholas Kenyon, who was at the premiere of Adams' new piece in San Francisco, reviews the opera for us. And J.S. Bach’s mysteriously unfinished ‘Little Organ Book’ is finally completed with the composition of 118 new pieces by contemporary composers - we visit a church in Chelsea to hear from one of the contributors, Roxanna Panufnik, as well as from organist William Whitehead, who conceived the project and who leads its premiere in London later this month.
In an extended conversation with Tom Service, the American composer John Adams, who's turned 75 this year, discusses his life in music, the importance of his legacy, and focuses on his new opera 'Antony and Cleopatra'. It was premiered this week, with a libretto adapted by the composer from Shakespeare, Virgil, and the Egyptian book of the dead and it's Adams' very first stage work inspired by characters from Ancient history. Sir Nicholas Kenyon, who was at the premiere of Adams' new piece in San Francisco, reviews the opera for us. And J.S. Bach’s mysteriously unfinished ‘Little Organ Book’ is finally completed with the composition of 118 new pieces by contemporary composers - we visit a church in Chelsea to hear from one of the contributors, Roxanna Panufnik, as well as from organist William Whitehead, who conceived the project and who leads its premiere in London later this month.
In an extended conversation with Tom Service, the American composer John Adams, who's turned 75 this year, discusses his life in music, the importance of his legacy, and focuses on his new opera 'Antony and Cleopatra'. It was premiered this week, with a libretto adapted by the composer from Shakespeare, Virgil, and the Egyptian book of the dead and it's Adams' very first stage work inspired by characters from Ancient history. Sir Nicholas Kenyon, who was at the premiere of Adams' new piece in San Francisco, reviews the opera for us. And J.S. Bach’s mysteriously unfinished ‘Little Organ Book’ is finally completed with the composition of 118 new pieces by contemporary composers - we visit a church in Chelsea to hear from one of the contributors, Roxanna Panufnik, as well as from organist William Whitehead, who conceived the project and who leads its premiere in London later this month.
Presenter Tom Service visits Blackpool to explore the iconic seaside town’s rich musical history and learn more about the energy of a musical ecosystem famed for its ballrooms, dance bands, and Wurlitzer organs; to hear from the those responsible for creating new musical opportunities for the area’s residents and visitors; and to speak those nurturing the next generation of musicians from across the town.
Tom starts at the world-famous Tower Ballroom, where he hears organist Phil Kelsall after his turn at the Wurlitzer Organ. He also tours the wider Blackpool area with Andrew White, Head of Blackpool Music Hub, who tells Tom about his organisation’s work to break down the barriers that often exist in providing all children with access to musical instruments as well as giving them memorable opportunities to perform in Blackpool’s many entertainment venues. Music Director Helen Harrison also joins Tom to discuss the role of Blackpool Symphony Orchestra and its place at the heart of the town’s musical community.
Tom speaks to luminaries of Blackpool’s long tradition in band music, including David Windle, who directed the Tower Circus Band, as well as Bandleader Albie Hilton, and discusses the legacy of music making within the town’s dance circuit. And, local resident Elaine Smith reminisces about tripping the light fantastic in Blackpool’s many dance halls.
We’ve contributions, too, from Blackpool brethren including singer Alfie Boe and the singer-songwriter Rae Morris, eavesdrop on the George Formby Society convention, and talk to the visiting guitarist Alexander Hacke reflects on how the town inspired his experimental band Einsturzende Neubauten while recently recording their new album on location.
Tom Service is joined in the studio by Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, chief executive of UK Music; Kate Whitley, composer and founder of the Multi-Story Orchestra in south east London; and Olivia Giovetti, music journalist and editor of VAN Magazine, who joins the panel from Berlin. They deliberate on the pressing issues concerning the music industry this year.
They hear from Ukrainian musicians, Herman Makarenko and Valeriy Sokolov about how the war in Ukraine is affecting their lives and their music. The panel also responds to Arts Minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay as he presents the new National Plan for Music Education, which applies to England only, and sets out the government's vision for music education running to 2030. Eight months after COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, Tom talks to Luke Jenkinson, Managing Director of the climate conscious Global Music Vault in Norway about his commitment to safeguarding and preserving music on glass. And finally, the irrepressible violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja shares her thoughts on how to creatively safeguard classical music audiences as the industry continues to recover post-pandemic.
Tom Service talks to composer Max Richter about his latest project, ‘The New Four Seasons’, a new version of his critically acclaimed take on Vivaldi's piece, played this time on period instruments by Chineke! Orchestra and soloist Elena Urioste. Why period instruments and what new did he learn from the experience?
We visit Welsh National Opera, in Cardiff, to see rehearsals for the epic production of Migrations, to open this month, exploring the good and bad of both humans’ and birds’ movements across centuries - from a slave in Bristol, to NHS doctors arriving from India, to the challenges refugees face today. Tom hears from composer Will Todd and some of the 6 librettists, among them Sir David Pountney, Eric Ngalle Charles, Shreya Sen-Handley and Miles Chambers.
There’s news of a concert next month called ‘Looking Forward: the Orchestral Music of Afghanistan’, blending traditional folk instruments with Western instruments, featuring the Oxford Philharmonic and Afghan soloists. The repertoire includes new pieces by Afghan composers, in exile or still living in hiding. Tom talks to curators of this event, the conductor Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey and composer and conductor Arson Fahim, and also to two of the composers taking part: flute virtuoso Zalai Pakta, who's in Kabul, and Elaha Soroor, who lives in the UK.
Vera Wolkowicz talks to Tom about her book Inca Music Reimagined, published this month, examining how South America looked to the ancient past, in the early 20th-Century, to rebuild national cultural identities, in a fascinating cultural process. We learn about the opposing approaches by two composers in Perú: Daniel Alomía Robles and José María Valle Riestra, and also how popular music appropriated this legacy.
As Scottish Opera celebrates its sixtieth anniversary, Kate Molleson talks to key figures and artists from the company about its past, present and future including the company's General Director Alex Reedijk, Emerging Artist Lea Shaw, critic Ken Walton and conductor Donald Runnicles. Kate speaks to Josie Dixon, curator of the exhibition ‘Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh’ which tells the story of Felix Yaniewicz, a Polish-Lithuanian virtuoso violinist who founded the first ever Edinburgh Festival, and to the satirist, writer and director Armando Iannucci who is giving a talk about music, migration and Scotland. Novelist, short-story writer, and community arts worker Jan Carson talks to Kate about her new collaboration with the Ulster Orchestra and children from Carniny Primary School in Ballymena, County Antrim. And as music venues across the UK prepare for a summer of live music free of covid restrictions, we look at the extent to which audiences are returning to the concert halls and what impact that has on a venue’s programming. Kate speaks to David Dodd of the Hall for Cornwall, Jane Ann Purdy, co-director of the Soundhouse concerts which take place at the Traverse in Edinburgh, and Neil Bennison from the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham.
Producer: Graham Rogers
Tom Service talks to drummer, conductor and composer Tyshawn Sorey. A musician very much in demand across both classical and jazz circles, Tyshawn discusses his continuing mission to break down boundaries in music and his recent piece ‘Monochromatic Light’, written for the 50th anniversary of Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, for which he took inspiration not just from the artwork of Mark Rothko, but the piece Morton Feldman wrote for the opening of the space in 1971.
Tom also speaks to conductor and writer John Mauceri about his new book, The War on Music: Reclaiming the Twentieth Century, in which he argues the extent to which 20th-century music was shaped by World War I, World War II and the Cold War. John tells Tom why he believes a century of cultural politics has resulted in certain composers not being sufficiently appreciated, and thus not played enough in concert halls today.
We also hear from the composer Lavender Rodriguez who tells us how they’re inspiring young people across the north west of England to become the next generation of music creators through Manchester Camerata’s Hidden Histories project; and we turn to TikTok, speaking to some of the finest young musicians and classical institutions about how they are using the hugely popular social media app to take classical music to new audiences. Tom talks to violinist Esther Abrami, composer and conductor Alma Deutscher and London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Kath Trout.
Tom Service talks to Sir Bryn Terfel about an extraordinary life performing at opera houses and concert halls all over the world. He talks about how his career took flight after winning the Lieder Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World in 1989, as well as his partnerships with conductors like Georg Solti and Claudio Abbado and the composer Stephen Sondheim. Bryn Terfel brings drama to the stage through great characters such as Wotan, Scarpia, Sir John Falstaff and Leporello, with music by Wagner, Puccini, Verdi and Mozart. He tells Tom about the importance of being a great storyteller and gives advice on how to deal with the emotional intensity of the drama. Sir Bryn Terfel talks about how it all began, singing folksongs in Wales, and about how we can look forward to hearing him perform in the future as he prepares for The Flying Dutchman by Wagner at Grange Park Opera this summer and a UK tour in the autumn.
Tom Service meets the British Italian tenor Freddie De Tommaso ahead of his starring role in Madame Butterfly at the Royal Opera House. Conductor André J Thomas, who has just been announced as LSO Associate Artist, tells Tom about his life in choral music and his project to unite the voices of gospel and community choirs from across London.
There's also a report on the innovative music programme to help rehabilitate inmates at Karachi Central Jail in Pakistan, and news of a project taking music into schools in Bristol.
Kate Molleson visits Glyndebourne Festival Opera to hear about its new production of Ethel Smyth’s ‘The Wreckers’ – the first major staging of this tale of a hostile coastal community in many, many years, heard, as the composer intended, with its original French libretto. This new edition of the opera was researched and typeset by Martyn Bennett, Head of Music Library and Resources at Glyndebourne, using source material from the original score, with missing fragments orchestrated by Tom Poster, and additional help from the British Library.
‘Briefly: A Delicious Life’ is a new novel by the writer Nell Stevens, a ghost story based around Fryderyk Chopin and his partner – the French novelist – George Sand, set in a monastery retreat in Mallorca. Kate meets the author to discover more about this tale of love, creativity and sexuality.
The folk singer Angeline Morrison, writer and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre and folk singer and academic Fay Hield all join Kate to discuss the overlooked black history in English folk music.
And Tom Service meets conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, recovering from major surgery, still working, and in the UK recently to continue his long association with London Symphony Orchestra.
Tom Service is joined by Dan Grimley for a walk in the Surrey Hills where Vaughan Williams grew up to explore the ways in which the community, sound and landscape of this area shaped his music and his thinking. They also visit Dorking town centre where Vaughan Williams played a central role in the community, especially during World War Two and in the local music scene as conductor of the Leith Hill Musical Festival for almost 50 years.
Tom visits folk singer Shirley Collins at her home in East Sussex to talk about the folk songs Vaughan Williams collected and how his legacy continues today. Violinist Midori Komachi talks about taking Vaughan Williams’s music to Japanese audiences and a new dual language release featuring his works for violin and piano, including his tortured Violin Sonata from the 1950s; conductor Vasily Petrenko delves into what makes his music distinctly British; and writer Rob Young discusses the composer's patriotism, socialism and the lens through which we see him today.
Tom Service meets the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and conductor Sir Simon Rattle: partners in life and music. The husband-and-wife team talk to Tom about their collaboration on Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with London Symphony Orchestra. Also, they talk about how this, and other music, has a special resonance in our conflicting times.
Tom also hears from musicians in Ukraine about their experiences of the conflict. Viola player Stas Sagdeyev is a member of the orchestra at Odessa Opera House, currently silenced, while conductor Theodor Kuchar has returned to the country to work with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine in Lviv, one of the busiest ensembles in the country.
And ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week, Tom meets Alyson Frazier of Play for Progress, an organisation which helps young asylum seekers in Croydon, south London, through music. Alyson tells Tom of the progress the young people have been making and some of the remarkable musical talents which have been unearthed.
Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo
Photo credit: Tom Zimberoff
Ahead of this weekend’s Tectonic’s festival in Glasgow, Kate Molleson meets the pioneering electronic music composer at the centre of this year’s programme, Janet Beat, and learns how the studios she inaugurated at universities in Birmingham and Glasgow – from the late 1950s – blazed trails for future generations.
Following a performance of Matthias Pintscher’s La Linea Evocativa at Wigmore Hall earlier this week, presenter Tom Service speaks to the American-Canadian violinist Leila Josefowicz about her life making music on the concert stage, her role championing contemporary repertoire for the instrument, and the inspiration she finds in Bach's mighty Chaconne.
The composer Hannah Peel and conductor Charles Hazlewood join Tom to discuss their new album, The Unfolding. Written during lockdown especially for the Paraorchestra, the album has shot to number one in the classical music charts, and we hear from the musicians in the ensemble, Hattie McCall-Davies and Lloyd Coleman, as they tour with live performances of the project this spring.
And, the composer Michael Zev Gordon tells Tom about his new chamber opera, Raising Icarus, which explores the harm parental expectations and aspirations can have on their children. It’s staged by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group this week.
Tom Service is joined by Russian music and history expert, Marina Frolova-Walker and BBC journalist, Olga Ivshina to discuss the effect the war in Ukraine is having on Russian music and culture.
Clarinettist and conductor, Martin Fröst talks to Tom about reshaping the classical musical arena through multi-media spectacular as he prepares to launch his newest project, Xodus.
Singers, Jess Dandy and Joanna Harries take Tom on a musical walk through a woodland in south east London ahead of their "SongPath" at RSPB St Aidan’s nature reserve near Leeds this week. They immerse themselves in the sounds of birds, rain and song as they talk about the benefits connections through nature and music have on mental health.
And Tom visits the Coronet Theatre in London where the theatre company, Gare St Lazare Ireland begins rehearsals for a production of Samuel Beckett’s novel, "How It Is." One of Beckett’s most experimental and beautiful works, "How it is" is an extraordinary exploration of language and this production explores the beauty, sound, rhythm and meaning of the words while the strains of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra enhance the dystopian atmosphere of Beckett’s writing. Tom is joined by director, Judy Hegarty Lovett; composer and sound designer, Mel Mercier, and performers, Stephen Dillane, and Conor Lovett.
The Russian born pianist Kirill Gerstein joins presenter Tom Service, fresh off the stage after his recent Ukraine solidarity concert with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin where he featured alongside a starry line-up of soloists, to discuss his thoughts about the tragedies of the war, and his series of online seminars – Kirill Gerstein Invites – in which he’s chaired discussion throughout the pandemic with leading creative figures, including Ai Weiwei, Ivan Fisher and Steven Isserlis, about the artistic subjects which matter to them.
The American guitarist Pat Metheny shares his thoughts about collaborating with artists like the vibraphone-player Gary Burton and composer Steve Reich, his first records in the 1970s, and his most recent album – Side-Eye NYC project – which he tours to the UK in June. He tells Tom about the creative search for new sounds which has permeated the course of his career.
Music Matters talks to the creative team behind a new chamber opera, The Paradis Files, based on the life of the Austrian musician and composer who lost her sight as a child – Maria Theresia von Paradis. With contributions from the composer Errollyn Wallen, director Jenny Sealey, and librettists Selena Milla and Nicola Werenowska, we hear about their collective instinct to tell the remarkable story of Theresia’s life, and how the life of this 18th Century figure has lessons for the 21st century.
The BBC’s Secunder Kermani reports on the recent edicts stopping education for school-aged girls in Afghanistan, and describes the impact on the country’s musicians caused by the hardening attitude of the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue towards live and recorded music.
And we speak to Sinfonia Cymru’s Chief Executive Peter Bellingham, the Chief Executive of St George's Bristol Samir Savant, and the Associate Music Director of the Paraorchestra, Lloyd Coleman, about how the cost of living crisis is affecting the musicians, venues and institutions at the heart of the UK’s musical culture.
Image: Marco Borggreve (c)
Tom Service talks to virtuoso vocalist Bobby McFerrin about the latest chapter in his musical life and his ceaseless creativity. He’s been inspiring audiences to make music with him during concerts for decades, and now, following a Parkinson’s diagnosis, he is taking this further as he starts to perform live again. Bobby reflects on his early solo shows, the improvisation technique ‘circle singing’ which he developed in the 1980s and whether music can really bring peace to the world.
Folk musician Mari Kalkun comes to the studio with her kannel, a traditional Estonian plucked string instrument with a long history which plays a central role in much of her music. Mari talks to Tom about her personal and artistic response to the war in Ukraine and how musical activism is now an essential part of her role as an artist.
We visit English National Opera to find out more about a new production of Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid's Tale, based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel. Tom is joined by director Annilese Miskimmon, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey who sings Offred and soprano Emma Bell who sings Aunt Lydia, to explore how the story is being brought to life on stage and why it is a shattering story of our times.
Plus conductor and harpsichordist Rinaldo Alessandrini tells us about the irresistible theatrical energy of Vivaldi's 'L'estro armonico' concertos from 1711 and why placing them alongside reworkings by JS Bach on his new recording with his ensemble Concerto Italiano offers a new perspective and a thrilling ride.
Image: © Carol Friedman
To coincide with the release of his debut recording of all seven of Jean Sibelius’s symphonies, Tom Service talks to 26-year-old Finnish conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, about his meteoric rise as conductor of the Orchestre de Paris and the Oslo Philharmonic.
In response to the government’s levelling up agenda, Tom also talks to Professor Katy Shaw about her own report “The Case for Culture” – the role that culture can be playing. Plus, Tom hears from Angie Burnett of Grimsby Central Hall and Scott O’Hara, director of the Seed organisation in Somerset about their own experiences when it comes to funding and government support.
Author and violinist, Brendan Slocumb, also joins Tom from Washington DC to discuss the success and subject of his debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, a thriller that draws heavily on Brendan’s own experiences of racial discrimination.
This weekend marks the culmination of Radio 3’s After Dark Festival broadcasts, with a unique 5 hour edition of Night Tracks that was recorded live last weekend from Sage Gateshead. Tom talks to presenter Hannah Peel about her own dream-like experience there and also hears from DJ and sound artist, Jason Singh and explores his concept of music-making for different times of the day.
Producer: Calantha Bonnissent
Photo: Klaus Mäkelä (c) Marco Borggreve
Ahead of a new production of Britten's Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House, Sara Mohr-Pietsch hears from members of the creative team bringing this compelling tale of an outsider to life, in a post-pandemic, 21st-century context.
The composer Anna Clyne also talks to Sara about her latest work, including a Handel-inspired piece to be premiered later this month by the Academy of Ancient Music and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain.
As the situation in Ukraine continues, Sara looks talks to Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, about the company's parting of ways with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, and to conductor Thomas Sanderling about the decision to leave his post at the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra, asking the question of how one effectively balances art and politics.
And the phenomenally successful Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi joins Sara from his home studio in the Italian Alps, where the pandemic allowed a break in his usual hectic schedule to reappraise his creative process.
Producer: Sam Hickling
Image: Ludovico Einaudi (c) Duet Postscriptum
Tom Service talks to the composer Eleanor Alberga about the premiere of her first symphony, 'Strata’. They discuss her creative process, the challenges she faces as well as her influences, which can be found in her native Jamaica and in the music of Bartok and Schoenberg.
Also, an oratorio in Hebrew which was written in 1774, has its UK premiere! Tom eavesdrops on rehearsals of 'Ester' by Cristiano Lidarti with words by Rabbi Saraval. He learns about the fascinating history of the piece from David Conway, members of Hampstead Garden Opera and conductor Andrew Griffiths.
With the help of the Sonica Festival in Glasgow, we ask: 'What is sonic art?' The festival is celebrating its tenth anniversary and we hear from the festival's Artistic Director Cathie Boyd and from artist Kathy Hinde.
And, Jazz guitarist and genre-challenger Bill Frisell on his life as well as his fears and joys in music as his biography, 'Beautiful Dreamer', written by Philip Watson, is published this month.
Producers: Elizabeth Arno and Juan Carlos Jaramillo
Photo: Bill Frisell (c) Carole D’Inverno
As he prepares for concerts in the UK with the Czech Philharmonic, conductor Semyon Bychkov talks to Tom Service about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and about the relationship between art and politics, and draws a fascinating comparison with events in recent European history.
We also hear heart-rending accounts from Ukrainian musicians, some still in the country, some abroad, about how the conflict has affected their lives, about whether they're prepared to answer the call to arms to defend their homeland, and about how they see their future. We hear from Oleksander Piriyev, cellist and broadcaster in Radio Kultura, in Lviv; from the leader of the Lviv National Philharmonic, Marko Komonko; from Dartsya Tarkovska, co-founder of Music Export Ukraine, an organisation promoting artists; and from Kirill Karabits, chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Also, Concert Fieri premieres recently found madrigals from Italian late Renaissance composer Maddalena Casulana; we talk to musicologist Laurie Stras who discovered them, as well as Hannah Ely, from the ensemble.
And leading up to Radio 3's programmes on International Women’s Day next Tuesday, we take a look at female sound engineers and record producers, a role traditionally associated with men only. With contributions from Classical producer Martha de Francisco, who recorded artists such as Jessye Norman, Alfred Brendel, the Vienna Philharmonic and Simon Rattle, and also from Marta Salogni, whose creative drive has led her to collaborate with Bjork, Holly Herndon and Anna Meredith, and bands like Django Django and Groove Armada.
Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo
Photo: Semyon Bychkov (c) Umberto Nicoletti
As the Barbican Centre in London celebrates its 40th anniversary, Tom Service asks if the future of music venues and cultural hotspots is going big or small, and how should they engage with the communities around them. We talk to the Barbican’s Artistic Director Will Gompertz about the challenges they face with diversity and inclusion, and put those same questions to two other different sized arts centres – the CCA in Glasgow and the ARC in Stockport – in order to find out how arts centres can best serve the communities they are rooted in.
Tom takes a trip to The Holbeck in Leeds where, during the pandemic, Alan Lane’s ground breaking Slung Low Theatre company operated the venue as a food bank, serving the local community with a mission to ‘provide the best cultural life for the people of Holbeck’. Slung Low’s work has been an inspiration for Kate Whitley, the composer and founder of the Multi-Story Orchestra; she tells us how in making the connections between an arts organisation and the communities where they work, there are resonances for the whole of classical music culture.
Food and Music are undoubtedly two things that bring people together. We talk to author Pierpaolo Polzonetti about the importance of food in opera with reference to his new book, ‘Feasting and Fasting in Opera - From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet’, and to mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston about her online resource and cookbook, ‘Notes from Musician’s Kitchens’. Plus, we find out what she really eats on stage…
And we talk to conductor Giovanni Antonini about his 'Haydn 2032' project, in which he aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by 2032, and immerse ourselves in the world of Haydn’s life-affirming music.
Producer: Martin Webb
Image: © Simon Fowler
The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins Tom Service to discuss her immersion in Beethoven’s late piano sonatas during Italy’s lockdown, and her relationship with one of the most famous works in the canon – the composer’s ‘Emperor’ concerto. She reflects on how the circumstances of Chopin’s life are articulated in his Scherzi, and on thanking audiences for being part of performances.
With Robert Nathaniel Dett’s Oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, receiving its first outing in the UK with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on Wednesday, some 85 years after the live broadcast of its premiere at Carnegie Hall, Music Matters is joined by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, soprano Nadine Benjamin and researcher, horn player, and conductor Dwight Pile-Gray to explore what Dett’s music can tell us today.
As Lindisfarne Castle welcomes back visitors after its winter recess, we speak to the sound artist Paul Rooney and cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir about their collaboration on a new project, Song (After Nature) – a contemporary soundscape installation which will be heard throughout parts of the 16th-century stronghold. They reveal how the calls of Lindisfarne’s resident grey seals provide the creative impetus for their work. We hear, too, from the scholar Hannah E. Collins about a frequent guest at the castle, Guilhermina Suggia, and the role the cellist played as a trailblazer for female performers in the early 20th century as well as the legacy she left.
And, we speak to the pianist Lucy Parham and author Gillian Opstad, ahead of the launch of her new book Emma and Claude Debussy – The Biography of a Relationship, and learn more about the composer’s marriage to one of the titans of early 20th-century Parisian life, Emma Bardac, and the role she played in supporting his creative output.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to Ruth Slenczynska, the last living pupil of Rachmaninoff, from her home in Pennsylvania ahead of releasing a brand new solo piano album entitled My Life in Music. She reminisces about her childhood as a prodigy, connecting with her audiences, and performing still in her ninth decade.
The writer, musician and composer Richard Thomas, and contemporary BAFTA and multi award-winning artist, photographer and filmmaker Alison Jackson, join Sara to discuss their new collaboration at the Birmingham Rep – The Covid Variations: A Piano Drama – which takes the form of a unique film-and-concert-in-one depicting everyone from Donald Trump to the Royal Family, and provides an imaginary glimpse into the lived experience of celebrities during the pandemic.
As Mali's military leaders expel the French ambassador for comments made by the French foreign minister about the transitional government, ethnomusicologist Lucy Duran and the BBC’s reporter Lalla Sy explain more about the fragile situation inside the former French colony following the imposition of sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States. We hear, too, from Malian musicians including the singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, the balafon virtuoso Fodé Lassana Diabaté, and kora player Ballaké Sissoko, as they describe how years of civil war, military coups, and insurgencies by Islamist militants are collectively impacting music making in the country.
And, as we celebrate the centenary of the publishing of James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, scholar Katherine O’Callaghan explains the musical references which litter the work and how music informs Joyce’s language, while the composer Betsy Jolas remembers accompanying James Joyce at the piano as he sang.
Photo credit: Marco Borggreve
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to viola virtuoso Tabea Zimmermann about her dazzling career on the concert platform. She first picked up a viola at the age of three, and in the decades since she’s performed with the world’s greatest orchestras and has become a hugely respected chamber musician and teacher. She discusses the music that means the most to her, the curiosity that comes from working with young performers, and the future of classical music.
Theatre artist Femi Elufowoju jr is making his debut as an opera director with a new production of Verdi’s gruesome tragic opera, Rigoletto at Opera North. He’s drawn on his own life as a British Nigerian to update the drama and the staging, dealing with issues of identity and discrimination, as a way to open up and illuminate the story. He joins Sara along with baritone Eric Greene (Rigoletto) and soprano Jasmine Habersham (Gilda) as they discuss the new staging and their relationship to Verdi’s music.
We explore the extraordinary story of the 20th century Russian pianist Maria Yudina, brought to life in a new biography ‘Playing with Fire’ by Elizabeth Wilson. Maria Yudina became one of the most respected and famous, but also controversial Soviet pianists and was a friend and champion to the great composers of her day such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Boulez. She was also an active revolutionary, an advocate for the oppressed, and a carer for the sick. Sara talks to Elizabeth Wilson and composer Gerard McBurney about the musician, her recordings, and the urban myths which surround her life.
Plus, Sara is joined by composer Nitin Sawhney and Coventry's Poet Laureate Emilie Lauren Jones to discuss 'Ghosts in the Ruins' - a new site-specific work to mark the 60th anniversary of Coventry Cathedral. The project was commissioned as part of Coventry UK City of Culture and takes Britten’s War Requiem, written for the consecration of the new cathedral, as the starting point. We find out about how the new piece brings together local musicians, choirs, poets and projections.
In the final episode of 2021, Tom Service meets mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and composer and pianist Jake Heggie whose album ‘Unexpected Shadows’ has been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in the 2022 Grammy Awards. Jamie recently sang in Atlanta Opera’s production of Jake’s first major opera, Dead Man Walking, which tells the story of a nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row. They discuss the power of opera and song in tackling existential stories of life and death, engaging with new audiences and the need for greater representation and inclusion in opera and on the concert stage.
Since the major explosion in the Port of Beirut in 2020, Lebanon has been in crisis with economic collapse, severe poverty, fuel shortages and political instability. But musicians are continuing to make their voices heard there, including the players of the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra and their conductor Lubnan Baalbaki, despite a significant number of the orchestra’s players having to leave the country. Tom talks to the BBC Middle East correspondent in Beirut Lina Sinjab and conductor Lubnan Baalbaki about the fight to save the cultural life of Lebanon.
Tom is also joined by Morag Grant whose new book ‘Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture’ traces the emergence of the song made famous by Robert Burns, and explores the traditions and rituals that emerged around its use as a song of parting, and as a song of New Year. Plus, we explore the sounds of Christmas and how they affect us with the BBC Big Band’s Barry Forgie, music psychologist Alex Lamont and record producer Chris Alder.
Tom Service talks to Lin-Manuel Miranda about making musicals, including Hamilton and tick, tick … BOOM! The soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn talks about the songs she has uncovered by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. And two musicians who have had to leave their homes in Afghanistan share their hopes for the future.
Today Tom Service talks to superstar violinist and conductor, André Rieu about his passion for sharing the joy of music across the world with his Johann Strauss Orchestra. Tom also visits the Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, now a resident of London, whose recordings of Chopin and Bach have earned widespread acclaim. Bach's Goldberg Variations also feature in a radical new reworking, which has been occupying the pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett. She tells Tom more about Gold.Berg.Werk.
Tom Service travels to the Monastery in Gorton, the new home of the Manchester Camerata, to find out how the orchestra is embedding in to the community. Gorton was once the engine-room of the world as it kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, building the engines for the cotton mills. Having since suffered from socio-economic decline, Gorton is now being regenerated and the Manchester Camerata is doing something very new in its move to The Monastery, providing a weekly Music Café for local residents living with Dementia, making lasting connections with a local youth charity, and providing affordable concert tickets for the local community.
Andreas Staier has just released a new disc of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2. Tom talks to Andreas about Bach’s decision to compile a second book of Preludes and Fugues for keyboard and how the work fits in his overall output, and especially his later works.
Tom also visits director of Dash Arts, Josephine Burton, and musicians Yuriy Gurzhy & Mariana Sadovska, as they rehearse for their new work, Songs for Babyn Yar. He finds out about the horrors of Babyn Yar and talks to the musicians about how they are creating a fitting musical memorial to this dark chapter in Ukrainian Holocaust history.
We also hear from Claire Mera-Nelson, Director of Music for Arts Council England, about the findings of a new 'Creating a more Inclusive Classical Music' report, launched as part of the Fair and Inclusive Classical Music project.
As the COP26 climate summit continues, Tom Service is joined by a panel of guests to discuss how musicians, orchestras and cultural organisations can respond to climate change. Live guests include violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto, London Symphony Orchestra Managing Director Kathryn McDowell and founder of the cultural and environmental charity Julie's Bicycle, Alison Tickell. We also hear from the environmental consultant Natalja Andersson about her work on Gothenburg Opera's sustainable production of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
Tom talks to Norwegian musician and composer Terje Isungset about his Ice Music project and gets his unique perspective on the changing planet after 20 years of making ice instruments. Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq discusses the relationship between her music and the natural environment and we explore environmental soundscapes with music writer Kate Galloway. Plus, journalist Zack Ferriday shares his thoughts on the limitations of musical activism.
Music clips from COP26 include: Brìghde Chaimbeul RSNO Junior Choir Musicians in Exile Emma Donald and Isbel Pendlebury
Following the death of Bernard Haitink this week, Tom revisits the last Music Matters interview the Dutch conductor gave at his home in 2017, a moving account of his beginnings in music, his love for the musicians he worked with in the world's top orchestras, and his thoughts on the power of music to transcend.
Also this week, Tom looks into the issues affecting young people transitioning from studying music at 16-19 to Higher Education, following a recent report by Adam Whittaker from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire showing declining numbers at A-level. Tom discusses with Adam, and with Bridget Whyte of Music Mark, and we hear how two universities are responding: Royal Holloway, University of London, and Keele University in Staffordshire.
Tom catches up with the contralto turned conductor Nathalie Stutzmann following her appointment as the next music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, hearing about her bold plans for the orchestra's repertoire and for its engagement with the city's many and varied communities.
And Daniel Grimley talks about his book, Sibelius: Life, Music, Silence, a new biography which explores the Finnish composer's relationship with nature, politics and culture. Sakari Oramo, the Finnish chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, reflects on his own experiences with the complex life and music of Sibelius.
In 1999 the musician Warren Ellis clambered onstage at the Royal Festival Hall to retrieve a piece of chewing gum. The gum was deposited there by Nina Simone, who had chewed it throughout her concert that night. Fast forward twenty-two years and Ellis has written a book inspired by the piece of gum, now enshrined in its own glass case, on a specially built gum plinth. Kate Molleson caught up with him to find out more about a story which goes to the heart of artistic belief, generosity and affirmation. It was a book he never really set out to write, but then couldn’t not write.
Following on from Music Matters’ meeting with Steve Reich two weeks ago, Kate delves further into the origins, development and lasting legacy of minimalism. She talks to composers Linda Catlin Smith, Nate Wooley and Julia Wolfe to find out how a disparate group with new ideas continues to inspire, and also hears from pioneers such as Philip Glass and Pauline Oliveros about the mentality of anti-hierarchy and participation which changed the musical landscape.
Laurence Crane is one of the most beloved figures in British contemporary music, his work is full of surprise, fondness, wit and wisdom. As a successor to a certain sort of minimalism, he lets us hear humble wonders in the everyday. Celebrating his sixtieth birthday this year, he met up with Kate at one of his favourite performance spaces to look over his constantly surprising career and oeuvre.
And as orchestras and musical institutions look at ways to represent diversity among their ranks, Kate talks to John Shortell of the Musicians’ Union, and Diversity and Inclusion consultant Chico Chakravorty, about what are the most effective ways to achieve this.
Kate Molleson presents a live edition of Music Matters from the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Coventry, featuring live music and a panel of guests discussing the parallel rhythms and sounds of music and language from the ancient oral tradition of folk music to right through to the contemporary sounds of today. Kate's guests include Netia Jones, Liz Berry, Martin Carthy and Andy Ingamells.
Pianist Igor Levit talks to Tom Service about his latest epic recording project – three and a half hours of music by Dmitri Shostakovich and the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson. No stranger to large-scale works he live-streamed Erik Satie’s Vexations during lockdown playing 840 repetitions over 16 hours as part of his online House Concerts. He discusses the huge challenges on every page of Stevenson’s Passacaglia and the contradictions of his life as a pianist and his political beliefs.
Folk singer Martin Carthy and former High Court judge and part-time song collector Stephen Sedley join Tom to talk about their new book, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment’, which explores the legal and moral basis of some of the most moving songs in the folk traditions of the country. We hear recordings by Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Rachel Newton and a 1953 archive recording of Ewan MacColl singing ‘McCaffery’, provided by the School of Scottish Studies Archives.
As Russians go to the polls, we look at what the recent decline in freedoms means for artists and musicians in and out of the country. Tom speaks to Masha Alekhina, co-founder of the musical and protest collective Pussy Riot, who has just been sentenced to a year of ‘restricted freedom’ for promoting protests in support of the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. We’re also joined by the BBC's Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford who was recently expelled from Russia after more than 20 years of reporting from Moscow, and pianist Katya Apekisheva who, alongside hundreds of other classical musicians, signed a letter to Vladimir Putin in February calling for the release of Alexei Navalny.
And composer Joseph Horovitz shares stories from his life in music. Having fled Vienna as a child in 1938, he began his musical career in Britain as a music lecturer for the army before working as a ballet conductor and finally a composer. His music draws on a huge range of styles, especially jazz, as can be heard in his Jazz Harpsichord Concerto which was performed by Mahan Esfahani and the Manchester Collective at this year’s Proms. He talks to Tom about how his deeply personal fifth string quartet reflects his experiences of escaping Vienna, and how he finds new inspiration every day from the music around him.
As Music Matters returns to the airwaves for the Autumn, and classical music emerges from Covid along with the rest of the world, Tom Service assesses the current state of play with musicians and industry leaders, and asks them how much has really changed in the last eighteen months and what the future holds. Gillian Moore, Director of Music at the Southbank Centre in London, and Roger Wright, Chief Executive of the newly-merged Britten Pears Arts in Suffolk, explain how they navigated the issues raised for their organisations by Covid restrictions, and what they take from these experiences moving forward.
Freelance trumpeter Chris Cotter spoke to Music Matters last year about finding a new living from painting and decorating when his concerts dried up in lockdowns, and he updates Tom now on his return to live music. Soprano Juliet Fraser talks, too, about her adventures with the TC Helicon during lockdown and her experiences of returning to the stage. Tom Service also speaks to Igor Toronyi-Lalic, arts editor of the Spectator and director of the London Contemporary Music Festival, who points out what went wrong for classical music in its digital online ventures.
To discuss the many issues raised by these experiences of the classical music world during the Covid era, Tom Service is joined by Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Chief Executive of UK Music, Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Sarah Willis, horn player with the Berlin Philharmonic.
When the Taliban held power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, they banned music and persecuted musicians. Two decades later as they regain control of the country, we speak the Director of Afghanistan's National Institute of Music, Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, about his fears of a clampdown on music by the new regime. We talk to the BBC reporter Yalda Hakim about the evolving situation inside the country and hear from Afghanistan’s most famous pop-star, Aryana Sayeed, about why musicians’ lives may be endangered as they become political targets. We speak, too, to Massood Sanjer, who’s in charge of Afghanistan’s Tolo TV network, and hear how the Taliban’s disapproval of music affects their output.
Kate Molleson looks back on a year of musical connection and reflection as she revisits some of the guests we have featured on Music Matters.
Kate talks to American composer, vocalist, dancer and film artist, Meredith Monk and she shares her thoughts on nature, art and resilience through the age of pandemic.
Tom Service and South African soprano, Golda Schultz look back on Golda’s memorable appearance at the 2020 Last Night of the Proms.
Earlier this month, the celebrated opera director Sir Graham Vick died at the age of 67. He founded Birmingham Opera Company in 1987, and we hear Tom Service’s report from the community production of Verdi’s Otello.
And finally, Kate talks to Betsy Jolas, the French composer who moved to the US in the 1940s, as she approaches her 95th birthday in August. They talk about composition, analysis and how to start writing a new piece.
Kate Molleson talks to some of today's greatest writers about how music shapes their work and explores the ineffable intersection between words and music. Featuring Colm Tóibín, Elif Shafak, Ishmael Reed, Simon Armitage and Lavinia Greenlaw.
Best-selling Irish author Colm Tóibín’s writing is infused with sound and music. His latest book is a fictional account of the life of Thomas Mann and is steeped in Mahler and Schoenberg. He discusses the powerful role music plays in his fiction and reads from his book ‘Nora Webster’, in which the main character finds resilience through music after the death of her husband. Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak talks about the sound of Istanbul, the social implications of sound and silence and how her books can give voice to those in society who are otherwise voiceless. She reads from her acclaimed book ‘10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World’ and talks about the influence of heavy metal on her writing. US writer Ishmael Reed explores the role of improvisation and rhythm in his work, including his 1972 classic ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ and a new collection of poetry called ‘Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues’. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage discusses how music and words mix in the poetry he writes for his band LYR and the volatility of language when set to music. And poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw explores the fundamental way in which music has shaped her writing throughout her life, as well as the interconnectedness of music, memory and emotion.
Image credit: The Japan Art Association
As the celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter prepares for the premiere of John Williams’s new violin concerto, she talks to Tom Service about making music in and out of the pandemic. She reflects on how her relationship to music has changed over the past 18 months and the need for urgent change when it comes to supporting music and culture in German and beyond.
A New Topography of Love Part II is an animated video-game opera experience currently being developed by writer and director John McIlduff and composer Brian Irvine at Dumbworld productions, in collaboration with artists and game developers. Tom catches up with Brian Irvine and Vicky Potts from Whitepot Studios to find out how they plan to put opera inside arcade cabinets.
The Berlin-based Belarusian conductor Vitali Alekseenok travelled back to Belarus last August to join protests against the latest election of Alexander Lukashenko as the country’s leader – a result which has not been accepted by the EU or the UK. Vitali took part in daily musical protests on the streets of Minsk and has written a book about his experiences. He knows he can’t now go back to Belarus for fear of being arrested - something that’s already happened to many of his musician friends there. He talks to Tom about his hopes and fears for Belarus and the musicians and artists who speak out.
American musician Jessie Montgomery is one of the most distinctive and communicative voices in the US, as a player and a creator. She writes chamber works and orchestral music, as well as improvising with double bassist Eleonore Oppenheim in her duo Big Dog, Little Dog. As she begins her new role as Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence, she talks about her work and a newfound urgency to engage, connect and reflect through her music.
And from the Music Matters archives, interviews with two composers whom the world has lost in recent days – Frederic Rzewski and Louis Andriessen.
Linton Stephens is joined by the soprano Nadine Benjamin ahead of a performance of her autobiographical opera BEAM, part of the Summer at Snape season. She reflects on how music has the power to heal and why she finds strength in her voice.
The music psychologist Natasha Hendry talks to Linton about her research into race and racism in music education and the music industry.
As Radio 3 celebrates the London Festival of Architecture, Music Matters visits Bold Tendencies at its unique home in Peckham’s former multi-storey car park, and speaks to the organisation’s founder Hannah Barry, the acoustician Dave Parsons, the pianist Samson Tsoy and producer Fraser Smith, to learn how the building’s fabric impacts sound quality and informs artistry.
And, Linton also hears from soprano Stephanie Corley, director James Brining, and conductor James Holmes, about a new collaborative production of A Little Night Music by both Opera North and the Leeds Playhouse, and learns how Sondheim’s portrayal of human relationships speaks to audiences today.
Kate Molleson celebrates Coventry as UK City of Culture 2021, exploring the musical life there, its rich musical history, and talking about what the future holds for Coventrians.
She begins at the heart of Coventry in the ruins of the old cathedral, which was destroyed the November night in 1940 when the German Luftwaffe flattened the city centre. It is poignantly connected to the new cathedral by Basil Spence. With its consecration began a distinctive new choral tradition, particularly under music director David Lepine. Kate talks to one of the first choristers, David Sleath, who sang at the premiere of Britten's War Requiem, conductor Paul Daniel who joined the choir in the mid-60s, and organist Rachel Mahon who is the current music director.
Composer Dan Jones talks to Kate about his new work, Coventry Moves Together, which was commissioned by Coventry UK City of Culture for their inaugural day of events on 5th June, and which takes the ideas of the city's most pioneering composer, Delia Derbyshire. Kate talks to Chenine Bhathena, the Creative Director of Coventry UK City of Culture about the promises that she is making to the people of the city.
Birmingham-born conductor, and recently appointed Music Director of Birmingham Opera, Alpesh Chauhan, has made Coventry his home over the last few years and talks to Kate about his impressions of the city and its cultural significance.
Arguably Coventry's biggest musical export is 2-Tone Music, and Kate follows the 2-Tone Trail with Neville Staples of The Specials and visits the Coventry Music Museum set up by Pete Chambers, who has devoted his life to finding out about Coventry's music history from Roman Times to the now. Central to his museum is his homage to The Specials' chart-topping song, Ghost Town.
Tom Service is joined by the pianist Stephen Hough, and over a cup of coffee they discuss living in the moment during music during performance and how Stephen has spent much of the past year working as a composer.
Double-bassist and artist Kirsty Matheson talks about the challenge she set herself to create 100 paintings about 100 pieces of music in 100 days. Responding to works by Arnold Schoenberg and Steve Reich, she describes how their works shaped the images she created as well as restored her love for music during a time when live performance wasn’t possible.
Tom speaks to Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, about his ambitions for music in schools as the government announces a new Model Music Curriculum to support music education for 5 to 14 year-olds. Carolyn Baxendale, Head of Bolton Music Service, and James Dickinson, Head of Kingston-Upon-Hull Music Service, discuss how live music participation is returning for children across the country.
And, ahead of the release of his memoirs, Lowering the Tone and Raising the Roof, Raymond Gubbay shares a lifetime of stories about his time as a modern day music impresario!
Tom Service takes a look at the influence of horn player Dennis Brain in his centenary year - We hear from two of today's leading horn players Ben Goldscheider, who is releasing an album centred around Brain's legacy, and Sarah Willis who talks us through some iconic Dennis Brain recordings. Plus we speak to retired horn player Andrew McGavin, who played second horn to Dennis in the Philharmonia in the 1950s, for some first hand memories of the legend that was Dennis Brain.
As live music venues start to open their doors to audiences with the easing of COVID restrictions we take a look at the issues surrounding physical access for disabled and neurodiverse audiences. We speak to Susanne Bull, founder of 'Attitude is Everything', Andrew Miller co-founder of the UK Disability Arts Alliance, #WeShallNotBeRemoved and audience ambassador Vivien Wilkinson about the issues and also the potential for a hybrid form of concert going that includes live streaming.
As part of Mental Health Awareness Week writers Horatio Clare and Stephen Johnson reflect on how music, literature, art and nature have helped them through some of the darkest times imaginable, and Alex Smalley updates us on the results of The University of Exeter's Virtual Nature Experiment.
Composer Gerard McBurney and Ann McKay from the BBC Symphony orchestra pay tribute to composer Anthony Payne.
Producer: Martin Webb
Kate Molleson is joined by the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja as she releases two new albums of works by Schoenberg and Francisco Coll. She explains why the music education system should encourage young minds, and tells us why vulnerability is vital on the concert stage.
As the trustees of Mills College announce their decision to close admissions to the college’s courses, Kate learns about the school’s legacy of training musically free thinkers with the flautist, composer, and a former co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Maggi Payne, as well as the cultural journalist Geeta Dayal.
We hear from the Grammy-nominated musician and scholar Benjamin Lapidus about the recent launch of his new book New York and the International Sound of Latin Music, 1940-1990. The ethnomusicologist Lucy Duran and the band leader, composer and pianist Gilberto ‘Pulpo’ Colón describe the unique sound world of the Big Apple.
And, Kate talks to lecturer Helen Reddington, author of a new book She's at the Controls: Sound Engineering, Production and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century, and is joined by sound engineers Jo Langton and Úna Monaghan to discuss the role of female studio professionals in the UK music industry.
Tom Service talks to two world-class conductors of today, Sir Antonio Pappano and Sir Simon Rattle, as they swap roles at the London Symphony Orchestra, and looks back at one of music history's first great conductors, Richard Wagner.
Four weeks ago, Sir Antonio Pappano was announced as the new Chief Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra - he will leave his current role of Music Director at the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in 2024. Pappano also has a continuing role at the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - and it’s from the Orchestra’s home in Rome that he speaks to Tom about his early life growing up in London, his plans for the LSO, and his thoughts on conducting during lockdown.
Richard Wagner was one of the great conductors of his day, and he wrote extensively about the about the philosophy as well as the technique of conducting. Chris Walton has made a new translation of Wagner's Essays on Conducting - writings which influenced generations of conductors for the next hundred years, and that still resonate with conductors today. Wagner's orchestral players used to say that they felt he was watching them all the time - Chris will be revealing why he thinks this might be so.
Sir Simon Rattle shocked the musical world in January when he announced that he would be graduating his role as Music Director at the London Symphony Orchestra to take a lifetime position as their Conductor Emeritus, and joining the Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra. He speaks to Tom about his relationship with the two ensembles, reflects on Wagner’s conducting legacy, and discusses the struggles of musicians during lockdown as well as the LSO’s recent special concert with and in support of freelance musicians.,He reveals who his number one composer is.
Tom pays tribute, too, to the German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, who died last weekend at the age of 93, He introduces a highlight from his visit to her for Music Matters in 2016, where she made a fascinating comparison between some of the great conductors she had worked with.
Kate Molleson is joined Claire Booth, Juliet Fraser and Loré Lixenberg, three major contemporary music voices, as they pay tribute to the soprano Jane Manning who died this month. They discuss Jane's thirst for contemporary repertoire, her collaborative instinct which saw her premiere more than 350 new works by leading composers and her legendary fearless performances.
We hear from the writer and Managing Director of the Barbican Centre in London, Nicholas Kenyon. His new book The Life of Music is published this month. He describes how performance remains the life force of music, and how the classical music cannon is constantly evolving.
And finally, the composer and conductor Tania León speaks to Kate about her extraordinary journey from her native Cuba in 1967, to New York where she has become one of the leading music figures in the U.S.
Kate Molleson is joined by musicians in Kabul to discuss the new restrictions on women singing - the ban, from the Afghan Ministry of Education, has caused concern that the Taliban is increasing its influence in the Afghan government as western forces prepare to pull out of the country. With contributions from Ahmad Sarmast, Director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and pianist Maram Abdullah.
Following the death earlier this month of the conductor James Levine, Kate hears from the American music critic Anne Midgette and conductor Kenneth Woods as they discuss the moral questions surrounding Levine’s recorded legacy in the light of the controversy over his personal life.
Ahead of World Autism Awareness Week, Kate talks to Adam Ockleford, who has worked extensively in the field of autism and music, and to Joe Stollery, a composer who regards his own autism as both a help and a hindrance in his musical life.
And, the broadcaster Jennifer Lucy Allan speaks about her new book 'The Foghorn's Lament', which documents the role this coastal 'music' has played in our life and culture.
Photo credit: Dario Acosta
As the Countdown to Spring reaches zero, Tom Service hears from the South African soprano Golda Schultz as she looks back on a year where the few musical performances that have taken place have assumed a special importance, including her memorable appearance at the 2020 Last Night of the Proms, as well as last month's live stream of Weber's Der Freischutz from Munich. And she optimistically predicts a new flourishing of arts and music after the pandemic.
The sound artist Jez riley French introduces us to a range of alternative spring sounds as heard by species much tinier than ourselves: the creaks and groans of a tree as it bends in the wind and fills anew with sap; the sound of an apricot begin eaten from the perspective of an ant; and the remarkable noise made by pond weed photosynthesising.
And, one of the most charismatic of violinists around today, Gil Shaham joins the programme from New York to talk about his new recording of the Beethoven and Brahms Concertos with The Knights – a chamber orchestra collective who bring a fresh approach to these two familiar works. Gil describes the links and the contrasts between the two works with live demonstrations on his fiddle.
Tom Service presents the latest news from across the classical music industry. He speaks with the French soprano Sandrine Piau about her new CDs of music by Handel, Haydn and Strauss, and to cellist Steven Isserlis about his latest projects, including CDs of music by John Tavener and the music of Proust's salons. Tom also profiles Scottish composer Geraldine Mucha, who lived most of her life in Prague, with contributions from Mucha's son John, Chris Vinz of the Geraldine Mucha Archive, and Prague-based American pianist Patricia Goodson, who has played many of Mucha's works. Plus, a preview of the 2021 conference of the Association of British Orchestras this week with its Director Mark Pemberton, Vanessa Reed of New Music USA on programming new and underrepresented voices, and Sarah Derbyshire, Chief Executive of Orchestras Live, on a new UK report Orchestras in Healthcare.
Tom Service is joined by the artist Edmund de Waal and composer Martin Suckling as they discuss the relationships between the crafts of porcelain and contemporary composition. We hear how Edmund’s book, The White Road, and his work as a master potter, inspired Martin to pen his flute concerto.
The American composer, John Corigliano, speaks to Tom about writing music which chronicled the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, and looks forward to his new opera, The Lord of Cries.
Ahead of a year-long festival at Kings Place, London, the journalist, broadcaster and author Kevin Le Gendre, and the historian and writer Leanne Langley share their perspectives on the way migration has shaped music making in the capital city.
And the soprano Anna Prohaska tells Tom how, as well as making space for four recording projects during lockdown, she’s found room to concentrate on projects she might not otherwise have had time for.
Credit: Library of Congress, Carl Van Vechten Collection [LC-USZ62-94955]
Kate Molleson talks to Scottish writer and poet Jackie Kay about the extraordinary life of the pioneering blues singer Bessie Smith, and asks what Bessie's blues can tell us a century on.
Kate also hears from American composer Meredith Monk about the recurring nature of the big themes of her work, from plagues to dictatorships, and we hear about the piece she’s currently working on, Indra's Net – 10 years in the making and a work dedicated to humanity’s relationship with nature.
Plus, as part of the BBC's 'Soundscapes for Wellbeing' project, we look at how natural and musical soundscapes can affect mental health, including a groundbreaking study by the University of Exeter called 'The Virtual Nature Experiment', which explores how digital experiences of nature might impact wellbeing. Kate is joined by Alex Smalley from the University of Exeter, the sound recordist Chris Watson, and composer Nainita Desai.
Bleak news on the classical music front this week, including Sir Simon Rattle's departure from the London Symphony Orchestra in favour of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich; and reports that musicians touring in the EU will need work permits for each individual country they perform in. Tom Service talks to Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian, and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin of UK Music to make sense of it all.
We hear about the little-known Welsh chanting tradition of Can’r Pwnc, and how the Cardiff theatre company August 012 is remoulding the style as a frame for ancient love poetry.
The American scholar Rachel May Golden has written a new book on southern French troubadours during the time of the Crusades, showing how many of their songs were effectively pro-Crusader proaganda - and she follows the stories of troubadours such as Jaufre Rudel, who died during the Second Crusade, according to legend in Tripoli the arms of his lover.
American jazz composer Wynton Marsalis joins Tom to trumpet his views contemporary America, as reflected in his new album The Democracy! Suite, released in the week leading up to the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States. Marsalis hopes that jazz. as America's own music, can inspire Americans to find ways to heal the divisions.
Half a millennium after the composer's death, Tom Service explores the enduring appeal of Josquin des Prez with the scholar Bonnie Blackburn and soprano Kate Ashby.
Tom also catches-up with the 21 year-old conductor Stephanie Childress, recently appointed Assistant Conductor of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, and hears her thoughts about why conducting matters in the world right now.
Professor of Musicology at Oxford University, Jonathan Cross; the Founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera, Wasfi Kani; and The Royal Opera’s Director of Opera, Oliver Mears join Tom to discuss whether opera is doing enough to reflect diversity of voice, repertoires, and composers.
And, Tom speaks to the Scottish-born composer Thea Musgrave at her home in Los Angeles about compositional decisions in a time of pandemic, and Light at the end of the tunnel.
With thanks to New York based Utopia Opera for their kind permission to feature music from their 2018 production of Thea Musgrave's 'The Story of Harriet Tubman', with MaKayla M. McDonald singing the title role. The production celebrated Thea’s 90th birthday with the orchestra of Utopia Opera conducted by William Remmers. Julian Grant was the orchestrator.
Tom Service talks to one of the most performed living composers by American orchestras - Jonathan Leshnoff. Based in Baltimore, much of his work is inspired by his Jewish faith, including Symphony no. 4 'Heichalos' – recently nominated for a Grammy award – which features a collection of string instruments recovered and rebuilt following the Holocaust - the Violins of Hope.
We hear from bassoonist Linton Stephens who shares his views about how classical music can be made more inclusive.
On the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, Tom hears what the work means to three violinists: the American violinist Tai Murray who has performed the work at the Proms; Thomas Gould who recorded the piece with the Sinfonietta Riga; and Jennifer Pike who recently released a recording of the original version with piano. And the author of a forthcoming biography about Vaughan Williams, Ceri Owen, also explains why she feels the shadow of the First World War hangs over the work.
And Tom talks to the Music Publishing Association’s General Manager, Lucie Caswell, and Managing Director at Boosey and Hawkes, Janis Susskind, about how the publishing industry is responding to challenges of COVID-19.
Tom Service talks to soprano, Claire Booth about a filmed production for Welsh National Opera of Poulenc’s La voix humaine. The monodrama was written in 1958 but the themes of isolation and lost connectivity are equally relevant today.
As Radio 3 marks a decade of New Generation Thinkers, Dr Daisy Fancourt describes how music and the arts are necessary for mental and physical health. Dr Joseph Sonnabend, one of the leading doctors during the early years of the AIDS pandemic, talks to Tom about those times in New York as well has his life as a composer and his love of music by Alban Berg.
Suzi Digby, Artistic Director & Founder of ORA Singers talks about what the future holds for our professional choirs and composers. And, Judith Webster, Chief Executive of Music for Youth, explains how young people are making innovative choices about how to celebrate music-making both live and online.
Producer: Marie-Claire Doris
Kate Molleson talks to folk singer songwriter Sam Amidon about his new album and breathing new life into his American folk heritage. We hear from the author Anne Searcy, too, about her new book on the role ballet played in US-Soviet Cold War relations. And Kate is joined by Allegra Kent, one of the prima ballerinas of New York City Ballet who toured to the USSR at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Aidan Moffat, vocalist and one half of the band Arab Strap, and songwriter Crispin Hunt, chair of the Ivors Academy, join Kate to discuss the economic impact of music streaming. . As this year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival adapts to lockdown, we’ve a series of postcards from new music programmers across the UK who describe how COVID-19 has affected the contemporary music scene. And we speak with the folk artist Martha Wainwright, who tells us about her new music venue in Montreal.
This week Tom Service focuses on freelance musicians. He hears from the violinist Daniel Hope about the collaborative Hope@Home concert series featuring performances with young freelance musicians from his own living room in Berlin, which have been broadcast by the German/French ARTE TV network since the start of the pandemic and have reached a staggering 8-million viewers. The composer and author Julian Anderson speaks to Tom about his life in music - from his very first symphony, to an opera specially commissioned for a socially distanced world, Eight songs from isolation, as well as his new book of conversations with the scholar and critic Christopher Dingle, Dialogues on Culture, Composing and Listening. The trumpeter Chris Cotter talks to Music Matters about the ongoing economic and artistic challenges facing freelance musicians as they supplement their income by taking on other jobs. Horace Trubridge of the Musicians' Union talks to Tom about access to income support schemes, and we hear too from folk musician Anna Massie who explains how she and her peers are trying to find new ways of connecting with their audiences, while the jazz guitarist Shirley Tetteh describes what has happened to her life as a session musician since the start of the first lockdown.
Tom Service asks what climate change means for classical music, and explores how cultural organisations, practitioners and institutions can respond to looming environmental challenges. We speak with the American composer, John Luther Adams, as he looks out over a freak wintry landscape of cactuses covered by snow in the Chihuahaun desert. He shares his thoughts about humanity’s relationship with the planet, his faith in future generations, and a lifetime’s work in the service of music. George Kamiya, Energy Analyst at the International Energy Agency, and the researcher and musicologist Kyle Devine, join Tom to discuss the environmental costs to how we consume music digitally. We hear, too, from the CEO and founder of Julie’s Bicycle, a charity which advises the creative industry about how to reduce its carbon footprint, and the leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Margaret Faultless, as they consider the environmental consequences of the classical music industry’s activity and what they’ve learned from different ways of working. And, the director Stephen Langridge shares how he’s put sustainability at the heart of the production effort behind Gothenburg Opera’s Ring cycle. Plus there’s another instalment of our ‘Musicians in our Time’ series with the members of the Castalian Quartet.
Kate Molleson looks at how music venues and institutions across the world are responding creatively to the programming and performance challenges of COVID-19. Kate talks to Deborah Borda, Chief Executive of the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra has cancelled all scheduled concerts until June 2021 but its musicians have been reaching every corner of the city by performing music on the back of a truck as part of their new live concert format, NY Phil Bandwagon. Composer and vocalist Jennifer Walshe has recently been elected into Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts. Jennifer talks to Kate about her recent project involving artificial intelligence and how she is gathering source material during these uncertain times. The prize winning novelist and music journalist, Sean Michaels shares his thoughts on how Montreal’s vibrant venues and music makers have become silent again. We hear from Chief Executive of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Marcelo Lopes and composer, João Ripper about how they have been welcoming back live audiences and continuing to premiere new works. Finally in Kenya, Elizabeth Njoroge, Founder and Director of the Art of Music Foundation, she talks about her music education and social project, Ghetto Classics.
Tom Service hears from Ray Chen about the online videos he’s created during lockdown, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, and Ray compares his ten million dollar Stradivarius with a $69 violin. We speak to the writer Stuart Clark about the ancient Greek theory that linked music with the stars, and his new book, Beneath the Night: How the Stars Have Shaped the History of Humankind. And, ahead of his performance as part of this autumn’s “Live from the Barbican” series, Orkney composer Erland Cooper reflects on the influence, in his music, of the islands' landscape and people. We also mark the centenary of the death of composer Max Bruch, with contributions from critic Wendy Thompson and violinists Tasmin Little, Elena Urioste and Jack Liebeck.
Kate Molleson speaks to the Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan about a new scheme to help support young artists share the stage with the world’s leading soloists, and grant young professional conductors opportunities to lead an orchestra during rehearsals. We also hear another instalment from our ‘Musicians in our time’ series, and are joined this week by guitarist Sean Shibe who shares his reflections about the impact of the pandemic on his life plans, the way he plays, and why he’s choosing alternative repertoire. The rock critic Paul Morley, who made his reputation in the 1970s and 1980s writing about Manchester punk, post-punk and New Pop, tells Kate what happened when he set out to rewrite the entire history of classical music. And Music Matters joins the sitar player Baluji Shrivastav and musicians from his Inner Vision Orchestra - the UK’s only professional ensemble of blind and visually impaired musicians – who describe how the mechanics of hearing and their experiences of making music have changed during lockdown.
Tom Service catches up with viola player Lawrence Power to talk about his filmed series of Lockdown Commissions from major composers, and his imaginatively re-worked West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival in Buckinghamshire. The newly installed Artistic Director of English National Opera, Annilese Miskimmon, revels in the return of live opera with ENO's new drive-in production of La boheme from the car park of Alexandra Palace in North London, and reveals her vision for the company's future. To mark National Alzheimer's Day on Monday, Tom talks to Dr Sylvain Moreno, one of the world’s leading researchers on how music can positively affect the brain, and to front line workers with people suffering from dementia - Camilla Vickers and soprano Francesca Lanza from Health:Pitch, and Rebecca Seymour from Celebrating Age Wiltshire. And Music Matters' Musicians in Our Time series, following leading musicians as they face the challenges of their lives and remake the musical world over the course of the next year, continues with flautist Jane Mitchell of the Aurora Orchestra, recent recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Salomon Prize.
Photo Credit: Jessie Rodger
Radio 3’s flagship magazine programme Music Matters returns this Saturday as Tom Service surveys the developments that have occurred in the musical world during an unprecedented summer period blighted by COVID-19. Discussing the significance of local performance, the role cities play in creating cultural energy, how music is serving audiences in both the community and online, and how freelance musicians might continue to support themselves as government support schemes are wound down, Tom is joined by the ISM’s Deborah Annett, Manchester Camerata’s Bob Riley, and the economist Gerard Lyons. We visit the organist and pianist James McVinnie and London gallerist and founder of Bold Tendencies, Hannah Barry, during rehearsals for their public concert series at Peckham’s Multi-Story Car Par, to see how living musical culture is returning in an of era social distancing. And the soprano Mary Bevan tells Tom how she created opportunities for performers to make live music outside a church tower in Hornsey. He also hears from the classical music critic Fiona Maddocks, and speaks to programmer, curator & producer, Toks Dada, about how the industry needs to adapt and innovate in order to survive.
Kate Molleson hosts an online panel discussion on issues relating to race and equality within the classical music industry with contributions from performers, composers, artistic leaders and programmers. The panel considers past histories and looks to the future through the lenses of education, economics and programming and deliberates on the current impact Covid-19 is having on diversity within the arts. Kate Molleson is joined by Founder, Artistic and Executive Director of the Chineke! Foundation, Chi-chi Nwanoku; experimental vocalist, movement artist and composer, Elaine Mitchener; composer and Professor of American Music at Columbia University, George E. Lewis; Chair of UK Music Diversity Taskforce, Ammo Talwar; and Head of Music at Manchester International Festival, Jane Beese; with contributions from writer, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason; Founder and Artistic Director of plainsightSOUND, Uchenna Ngwe and composer, Adolphus Hailstork.
Tom Service talks to Stephen Johnson about his new book, 'The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910', in which he explores the meaning and context of one of the most gigantic and profound symphonies ever written. Music Matters also hears from three UK music institutions, who reveal the financial and artistic challenges they face as they start to plan for life after lockdown. Tom speaks to internet guru Jaron Lenier, too, who explains why COVID-19 is likely to produce profound changes in the way we consume music online. We hear, as well, about recent research by British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow Bettina Varwig, as she describes how audiences’ auditory experience of music in 18th-Century concert halls became a more introspective, private and physical – and how the consequences of this shift during the Enlightenment are still felt to this very day. And we take a look at how new Geospatial information provided by the Ordnance Survey can be used to search the nation’s topography for spaces such as natural amphitheatres that may be suitable for performance in the era of coronavirus.
Major players in the classical music world congregate online and take part in a debate hosted by Tom Service. With practitioners from around the globe, this landmark programme examines how the classical music industry can rebuild and sustain itself following the Covid-19 lockdown.
With contributions from violinist Nicola Benedetti, founder of the Chineke! Foundation Chi-chi Nwanoku, the managing director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York Peter Gelb, the director of music at the Southbank Centre Gillian Moore, chief executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Stephen Maddock, general manager of the Berlin Philharmonic Andrea Zietzschmann, music programme manager at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall Neil Bennison, director of music at Arts Council England Claire Mera-Nelson, composer and clarinettist Mark Simpson, director of the London Contemporary Music Festival Igor Toronyi-Lalic and chief music critic of The Times, Richard Morrison.
As composer Mark-Anthony Turnage turns 60, Kate Molleson talks to him about the influences he received from Oliver Knussen, Gunther Schuller and Hans-Werner Henze. He speaks candidly about continuing to want to compose pieces that challenge, and shares his thoughts about how Covid-19 might change the music scene over the coming years. In light of the recent death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in the USA, Kate reflects on the discourses of solidarity we’ve heard from within the music world and the wider issue of racism in classical music with composer Eleanor Alberga. Kate also asks Heather Wiebe from King's College London to review a new book, 'Aaron Copland's Hollywood Film Scores', by the musicologist Paula Musegades who argues that the composer used movies to try out his new 'American sound'. And we talk to Maggie Rodford, managing director of one of UK's busiest recording studios, about the impact of Covid-19 on the film and TV music recording industry.
As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close, Kate Molleson surveys the musical world's responses to mental wellbeing. Opera star Renée Fleming talks about her 'Music and Mind Live' webinar series, which explores the impact of music on human health and the brain. Kate is joined, too, by the author, musician and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin who will also feature in the webinar series. The composer Nigel Osborne introduces his X-System, which examines how the brain and body respond to music, and the Irish accordionist and psychologist Cormac Begley shares his thoughts about music and mood. Reflecting on life during lockdown, Music Matters also hears from the performance poet Michael Pedersen, the cellist Zoe Martlew, and trumpeter Martin Hurrell.
Notes:
- Renée Fleming's 'Music and the Mind' webinars take place on Tuesdays at 10 pm UK time, via her Facebook page.
- Professor Daniel Levitin's latest publication is 'Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives' (Penguin Random House 2020)
- Zoë Martlew's audio diary included extracts from her own recordings and compositions, including her string trio Völuspá and Salat Babilya for solo cello. The recording of birds in a wood close to her home was made by Cato Langnes, Chief Sound Engineer from NOTAM studios in Oslo.
- West Kerry musicians Brendan and Cormac Begley feature in a new traditional music television series, Slí na mBeaglaoich on TG4, starting Sunday 26 April and running for six weeks. For more, visit https://www.tg4.ie/ga/
Tom Service talks to pianist Jonathan Biss about how Beethoven can help us all through lockdown isolation, and to lutenist Elizabeth Kenny about the far-sighted Italian Renaissance pioneer, composer, lutenist and theorist Vincenzo Galilei - father of astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, Tom talks to author Adrian Wright about his new book Cheer Up! - British Musical Films, 1929-1945. And, from the Music Matters archive, another chance to hear Tom's 2018 interview with dynamic Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki.
Tom Service talks to author Oliver Craske about his new biography, which marks the 100th anniversary of one of the 20th century's most influential musicians, Ravi Shankar. Composer, Erkki Sven Tuur turned 60 last year. He speaks to Tom, from his home on an island in the Baltic Sea, about his Ninth Symphony and how his orchestral piece Sow the Wind is especially relevant during these times. We continue to mine the Music Matters archive and there is another chance to hear Angela Hewitt talk about Beethoven and Bach. And as lockdown continues to impact artists the world over, Tom talks to violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, percussionist Claire Edwardes, and the composer Kamala Sankaram whose new opera “All decisions will be made by consensus,” was composed especially for live online performance premieres this week.
For many of us, Easter means organs and churches and the sombre tones of Good Friday moving to the joy of Easter Sunday. But this year, Easter is pretty much cancelled, and churches are shut. So organs around the world are silent - but not on Music Matters: Kate Molleson presents a mini organ fest, with contributions from Glasgow-based organist John Butt, who demonstrates his own home digital organ, and Canadian organist Rachel Mahon, who looks forward to when Coventry Cathedral is again unlocked, and she can take up her post as Music Director. And Nicholas Thistlethwaite talks about his new book about organ building in Georgian and Victorian England, a time which saw a transformation from small pipe organs to the mighty Town Hall organs of the mid nineteenth century.
Music Matters speaks to Mark Pemberton, Director of the Association of British Orchestras, about the impact of Covid-19 on the financial stability of British orchestras and the livelihoods of the musicians who work for them. And we hear from conductor Jessica Cottis who reflects on the digital responses to the pandemic from across the musical world. Tom Service speaks to the French pianist François-Frédéric Guy about life during lockdown, and his recording project with the Sinfonia Varsovia featuring all of Beethoven’s piano concerti. And on the sad news of the death of the Polish composer and conductor, Krzysztof Penderecki, we hear Petroc Trelawny’s interview for Music Matters in 2009, and Lady Camilla Panufnik shares some of her more recent memories about the composer. Finally, we dive into the Music Matters archives for another chance to hear Tom’s encounter with one of music’s most inspiring figures: the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
Kate Molleson hears from the author, musician, and researcher Matt Brennan about his new book, ‘Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit’. We speak to the Scottish singer, songwriter, and composer, Karine Polwart, as she shares her ideas about music’s power to communicate in today’s world. As she embarks upon a project to share all thirty-six movements of Bach’s six Cello Suites during the coronavirus outbreak, Music Matters revisits a discussion with the cellist Alisia Weilerstein. And as artists the world over find new ways to continue communicating with their audiences, Kate speaks to the soprano Soraya Mafi, producer of Café Oto, Fielding Hope, and conductor Ilan Volkov about their creative responses to our current reality.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson, whose new CD juxtaposes the music of French composers Rameau and Debussy, author Christina Guillaumier on her new book The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev, as well as Russian music expert Gerard McBurney, and visits English National Opera in London to chat to cast and director Joe Hill-Gibbins of a new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
Kate Molleson heads down to Covent Garden where rehearsals are under way for a new production of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Royal Opera House. She speaks to conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, director Tobias Kratzer and soprano Amanda Forsythe, who sings Marzelline. Fidelio is sometimes considered a problem opera, with its mix of comic and serious, but Kratzer emphasises the deep themes of political revolution and unjust imprisonment, while for Pappano, Beethoven's score opened a new world for German opera, not least for Wagner. Kate also talks to Marta Gardolinska, Young Conductor in Association at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, about the challenges of forging a career as a conductor, and about her love of Polish music. And Music Matters joins the composer Valgeir Sigurdsson and director Stewart Laing as they discuss We Are In Time, a new music-theatre piece for the Scottish Ensemble about a heart transplant. It's a profound exploration of the emotional and scientific aspects of this most risky operation, with the ensemble's string players also taking on dramatic roles and singing. Kate also investigates the effectiveness of mood-based music playlists, with James Foley from Spotify and Hugo Shirley from classical streaming site Idagio - and gets a concert programmer's point of view from Helen Wallace, programme director of King's Place in London. Are mood lists a gateway to the treasures of classical music, or just dumbing down the art form?
As he returns to his native Scotland to conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Bruckner’s mighty eighth symphony, Kate speaks to the conductor Donald Runnicles about his relationship with the composer’s music and a lifetime spent making music. Kate visits Xenia Pestova Bennett at Queen Mary University of London to hear about her second album which features a new instrument, the Magnetic Resonator Piano. She tells Kate about her creative responses to the effects that electromagnets can induce on a regular concert grand piano. And marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henri Veuxtemps, Music Matters hears from the violinist Anne Akiko Meyers – the current custodian of the composer’s famous Guarneri del Gesù violin. She describes the sound characteristics of what is reportedly the world’s most expensive instrument. Kate also catches-up with the author Sophy Roberts to learn about her travels across Siberia in search of the backstories of keyboards scattered across an eleventh of the world’s landmass. From clavichords transported by governors on sledge, through pianos which have weathered the region’s furtive cold, to a keyboard hacked out of a Gulag bunkbed frame, Kate hears how these instruments embody the soul of Siberia.
Music Matters speaks to the violinist Tasmin Little about her involvement in music education, life as a recording artist, and her plans as she prepares to step down from the concert platform after an illustrious career that has spanned more than three decades. Kate Molleson hears from music journalist Philip Clark as he reflects on the time he spent shadowing the Dave Brubeck Quartet during their British tour as well as the epic interview he recorded with the jazz legend – all the subject of his new book Dave Brubeck: A life in time. Philip speaks about Brubeck’s early career, the bandleader’s unique improvisation and compositional styles, and his creative relationships with fellow band members. Two current jazz composers – Liam Noble and Laura Jurd – also share their views about the man who is synonymous with Take Five. Kate also talks to David Dolan and Karen Chan Barrett about their respective research projects using the power of EEG and fMRI scanning techniques to uncover what happens in the brains of musicians and audience members during improvisatory performance. And the subject of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion Day at the Barbican later this month, Kate steps into the unique and emotive sound world of the maverick Swedish composer Anders Hillborg as he reflects on his musical style, his abandonment of electronica, and how the compositional process is rewarding but not always necessarily fun!
Image Credit: Chris Christodoulou
Another chance to hear a special interview with Sir Roger Norrington, as he speaks to presenter Tom Service about his distinguished career in music, and in particular his relationship with Beethoven in the composer's 250th anniversary year, including his groundbreaking and seminal recordings of the symphonies with the London Classical Players, and his distinctive and influential approach to historically informed performance practice in music from Monteverdi and Schutz to Mahler and Debussy.
Violinist Nicola Benedetti leads an international career as a violinist but she is also one of the world’s leading advocates for high quality music education and the transformational effect music can have on all young people. She talks to presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch about her Foundation and her passion to inspire and enrich the lives of children across the UK. And in Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year, the Belcea Quartet marks a quarter century of its own by performing all of the composer’s string quartets at Wigmore Hall. Corina, Krzysztof, Axel and Antoine take time out from their rehearsals at London’s iconic venue, and speak to Sara backstage about the intensity of ensemble life and their lived experience as four individual musicians. Belinda Sykes is the founder of London-based ensemble Joglaresa and is living with terminal cancer. She talks to Sara about her determination to continue performing onstage and her love for making music with her fellow band members. And as Opera North’s new production of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene opens this weekend in Leeds, Sara visits the final rehearsals at the city’s Grand Theatre and meets the cast and creative team including leading Weill exponent, conductor James Holmes. He explains why the composer remains relevant to modern audiences.
Producer Marie-Claire Doris
This week Kate talks a bracing walk along the sea shore in Blyth, Northumberland, and talks to wildlife sound recordist and composer Chris Watson about his life and work. Starting out as a musician at the centre of the Sheffield electronic revolution, making music with tape recorders with his band Cabaret Voltaire, influenced by the sounds of heavy industry, Chris eventually turned his back on the lure of pop-fame to pursue a career in TV and film, providing the sound tracks for nature programmes from around the world. Kate also discusses what makes a musical masterpiece with French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, and hears about his approach to reinterpreting the Beethoven piano concertos and French piano music. Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts reveals what influences him and why he feels his music is not quite in the mainstream. And, as the League of Nations celebrates its centenary, academic researchers Laura Tunbridge and Sarah Collins investigate a spin off international project using music and culture to bring peace and harmony to a post WW1 world.
As the second decade of this century draws to a close Tom Service talks to the composer Steve Reich at his upstate New York home about emotion in music, his love for J.S. Bach and the creative thought process as he writes a new work for the autumn of 2021. With 2020 and a big birthday for Ludwig van Beethoven around the corner, violinist James Ehnes speaks to Tom about how the music of Beethoven continues to surprise. And as we approach the third decade of the new millennium – our 21st century is fresh out of its painful adolescence – Tom hears from composer Gerald Barry, the Director of Music at London's Southbank Centre, Gillian Moore, the vocal and movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener, and the Creative Director of the Aurora Orchestra, Jane Mitchell, for their take on the creative classical music temperature of the third millennium – so far...
Tom Service talks to director Richard Eyre, whose celebrated production of Verdi's La Traviata for the Royal Opera House has clocked up 25 years. Soprano Angela Gheorghiu was its first Violetta, and Tom catches up with her, and with one of the production's more recent Violetta's, Ermonela Jaho. And starting at the site where La Traviata was first performed, just south of Piccadilly, Professor Susan Rutherford takes Tom on a tour of the streets of London to learn more about the city’s historical soundscapes as they’re reflected in a new book she co-edited with the scholar Roger Parker – London Voices, 1820–1840. Staying in the world of opera, Tom is joined by both Roger and the director Annabel Arden to review a new book on Rossini's operas in their time. Tom also hears from its author, Emanuele Senici. And we pay tribute to the conductor Mariss Jansons who died this week, with an interview he gave in 2017.
This week Tom talks to composer Jonathan Dove as he celebrates six decades of composing. He also speaks to Lilian Hochhauser about her career promoting great Russian artists in the UK, including the composer Shostakovich, pianist Sviatoslav Richter and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The percussionist Claire Edwardes and scholar Michael Hooper also join Tom from Sydney to review the Australian music scene and modernism in the 1960s and 1970s; and pianist Philip Thomas shows Tom an app for composing your own version of John Cage's Concert for piano and orchestra.
Tom Service visits conductor Jaap van Zweden in his office at the Lincoln Center in New York as he begins his second season as Music Director of New York Philharmonic. They talk about the orchestra's commitment to commissioning new music and the work he is doing on orchestral sound. Yuja Wang has been resident at the Barbican in London this week. Tom calls in on her there and learns about her love for Schubert and a new work written especially for her by John Adams. Meanwhile on the Southbank, Shakespeare's history plays are the focus for folk musician Ellie Wilson. She has composed music for Henry VI and Richard III. Tom finds Ellie at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse where she muses about writing music for Shakespeare and her new album featuring the music of Epping Forest. And, as we approach 12th December, Tom looks ahead to culture and music in the post-election landscape in the company of Ayesha Hazarika, Fraser Nelson and Fergus Linehan.
Tom Service talks to Steve Reich, for many one of the most important composers alive today. He visits Carnegie Hall and St George’s Episcopal Church Rutherford Place where Dvorak played a key role in the development of black American classical music. Then to The New School which opened in 1919 as a centre of intellectual and artistic freedom where John Cage studied and taught experimental composition as well as Judson Church where choreographers, artists, and composers met in a socially engaged space to redefine what it is to make art in a spiritual and secular community. Tom also talks to composers and performers Claire Chase and Kamala Sankaram who breathe life and sound into this city, creating a multi-dimensional song that’s as vibrant and visionary as New York has always been.
This week Kate Molleson talks to one of the great mezzo-sopranos, Alice Coote as she prepares for her role as Orpheus in Wayne McGregor’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Gluck at English National Opera this season. As the curtain rises on English National Opera's Orpheus season Kate explores how myth of Orpheus has resonated through time with conductor John Butt, classicist Charlotte Higgins, singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and Netia Jones, director of Philip Glass’s opera Orphée. Orlando Figes talks about his new book "The Europeans, Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture" which tells how Europe's cultural life transformed during the course of the 19th century through the lives of the great singer Pauline Viardot, her husband Louis, and the writer Ivan Turgenev.
Photography © Jiyang Chen
In the last programme of season, Tom Service is joined by composer Tansy Davies, theatre and opera director Adele Thomas, and the Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Stephen Maddock to revisit some of the big issues that faced music and culture in the last year. They look at the impact that music has had on the environment, education, healthcare and as a beacon for social inclusion.
Soprano, Renée Fleming is a champion for the work being done at the intersection of health and music. She has spearheaded the first ongoing collaboration between the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, where she is Artistic Director and America’s National Institutes of Health. Renée Fleming talks to Music Matters about how music can move and comfort the human spirit and about how scientists are now discovering that music can teach us a lot about the brain itself. And pianist, Stephen Hough talks to Tom about his new book Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More which he describes as his notebook and is a lifetime’s worth of his thoughts on life in music.
Tom meets the acclaimed Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto (pictured), ahead of performances in the UK with the Aurora Orchestra, to speak not about violins but conducting.
Music Matters marks the definitive folk label Topic Records' 80th birthday, the oldest independent record label in the world, with Eliza and Martin Carthy and Shirley Collins.
Breath is vital to music - but are we breathing correctly? Tom speaks to saxophonist Amy Dickson about her 'Take a Breath' project and to flautist Carla Rees, who is involved in artist Caroline Wright's 'The Breath Control Project' at The Coronet, London. This project is an exploration of the inhalations and exhalations that form the melody, rhythm and punctuation of our existence.
And a conversation with visionary director Peter Sellars.
Photo credit: Felix Broede
Tom meets American pianist Stephen Kovacevich, who candidly discusses stage fright as well as the dark side of Chopin; he appraises the music of composer Howard Skempton with Esther Cavett, co-author and editor of a new book about him; and talks to conductor and composer Thomas Ades (pictured) about his new piano concerto, and his first foray into film music (the score for Colette, starring Keira Knightley). Plus,Tom visits London's only remaining Elizabethan church to catch a rehearsal of the Grandmothers Project, a community choral work by Esmeralda Conde Ruiz. Photo credit: Brian Voce
We hear about The Monstrous Child and Hel, the heroine of Gavin Higgins and Francesca Simon’s new opera. Pianists Peter Donohoe and Noriko Ogawa discuss and play mountains of the piano duo repertoire: Stravinsky, Rachmaninov & Debussy. Tom speaks to musicians who spend their evenings performing in concert halls, and their days walking in the mountains (conductor Garry Walker) stretching in hot yoga studios (violinist Elena Urioste), or running ultra-marathons (Leon Bosch) to discover the connection between music and sporting disciplines. Tom visits English composer Anthony Payne at home in London hearing about the catalyst that sparked his life in music, Elgar, and why we need more new music in our lives.
Young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa talks to Tom Service about starting out, life at the helm of Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the special relationship he has with the music and musicians of the Czech Republic.
Fifty years after it was written, composer Matthew Shlomowitz gets inside Luciano Berio's Sinfonia - a patchwork of borrowed musical fragments written for orchestra and amplified voices - and asks what it all means.
For the latest in our Hidden Voices series, in which we shine a spotlight on musical figures from the past who we think should be better known, we explore the extraordinary life and work of Brazilian composer, conductor and pianist Chiquinha Gonzaga (pictured). She wrote over 2000 pieces including 77 operettas and a song that would become a classic in the carnivals of Brazil. Gabriella Di Laccio, soprano and founder of ‘Donne: Women in Music’, and pianist André Mehmari tell Gonzago's story.
Plus, we find out about the hardest decision that some of the world’s finest musicians will ever make: when’s it time to take your final bow? Tom explores how musicians decide when to give up their performing careers and what comes next, with contributions from soprano Dame Anne Evans, pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, horn player Sarah Willis and artist manager Thomas Hull.
Professional bassoonist and professional boxer Hannah Rankin explains the connections between the two disciplines. Tom Service is in Dundee, exploring the town's musical heritage which ranges from the Scottish Ensemble and Simple Minds to the latest innovations in virtual reality and gaming. Kate Molleson reports from this month's Nordic Music Days festival in Helsinki, which has included the work of Scottish composers for the first time.
Pictured is the new V&A Dundee (image © Hufton+Crow).
Marking the centenary of the Armistice, Tom Service talks to three composers writing music in response to war: Mira Calix on her sound installation at the Tower of London, 'Beyond the Deepening Shadows' featuring music for voices performed by Solomon's Knot; Dario Marianelli on 'The Unknown Soldier' at the Royal Ballet; and David Lang on ‘Memorial Ground’, originally written for the centenary of the Battle of the Somme in 2016.
Tom travels to Paris and joins Jean Rondeau at the harpsichord to delve into the music of French composer Francois Couperin, 350 years after his birth, and talks to musicologist Theodora Psychoyou about the vast range and colour of his keyboard works. Composer, writer and singer Kerry Andrew discusses a new piece she's written for the Ligeti Quartet inspired by her experience with tinnitus and talks to clinical audiologist Rekesh Patel about living with the condition. And Santanu Das sheds light on the role of music in the Indian war experience as highlighted in his new book, 'India, Empire, and First World War Culture', including a folk song reconstructed and performed by Jasdeep Singh and Amanroop Kaur.
Tom Service discusses Beethoven at the keyboard with pianist Angela Hewitt, who is currently touring Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. He also considers animal and human brain responses to music with Henkjan Honing (editor of a new book The Origins of Musicality) and with Felix Stroeckens (who has been putting crocodiles in an MRI scanner and playing Bach to them). He also investigates a new opera being toured round Scotland's whisky distilleries by NOISE, and meets Ewan Campbell to discuss musical maps in the context of radical scores from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Tom Service meets conductor Jonathan Nott to discuss his passion for music which began as a choral scholar in Worcester, the unanswerable questions that the masterpieces of Mahler and other composers pose as we move through life, and the new concert hall complex being built in Geneva for his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
Hubert Parry: a major figure in British musical history: Tom travels to Oxford and London to discover two formative musical experiences which changed Parry's life. With Kate Kennedy he discovers what impact studying at Exeter College, Oxford made on his future career as a composer and educationalist, and at 12 Orme Square London, David Owen Norris explains how Wagner was an important stepping-stone in his musical development.
Judith Chernaik's new book 'Schumann the Faces and the Masks' reveals new material on Robert and Clara's relationship. Who depended on who? And what couldn't Robert tell the love of his life?
The Orpheus and Eurydice myth is re-told in Passion, the first UK production of French composer Pascal Dusapin's dance-opera, currently touring the UK. Members of the production team, Caroline Finn, Michael McCarthy and Pascal discuss the genesis of this work on loss on love.
Tom Service travels to New York City to discover if Bernstein's musical and social legacy continues to echo through the streets of the Big Apple and the lives of New Yorkers. Visiting key places where Bernstein lived and worked, Tom meets the musicians, institutions and ensembles of today who are working towards goals Bernstein championed as a musician, communicator and humanitarian.
Tom visits Jamie Bernstein at the flat where the Bernstein family archives resides, while at the archives of the New York Philharmonic, Tom finds a musical score which reveals a fascinating self-insight by the maestro himself, and with the orchestra's archivist Barbara Haws remembers her time working with Bernstein, how he changed orchestral relations, and how his conducting traditions are still in place today. Historian Julia Foulkes explains how resonances of West Side Story are found in the hit Broadway musicals of the 21st century, and with Deborah Borda, CEO of the New York Philharmonic and conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Weilerstein, Tom discovers initiatives aimed at bringing the joy of classical music to new audiences today, as Bernstein did. Tom visits National Sawdust in Brooklyn, which carries on Bernstein's ideas on social and musical collaboration, and Humphrey Burton, Bernstein biographer, offers his views on where Bernstein's legacy can be found today.
Tom Service visits Chicago to talk to two major figures at the heart of the city's musical and cultural life: cellist Yo-Yo Ma and conductor Riccardo Muti.
Whether as concert soloist, as founder of Silkroad Ensemble which explores musical traditions across the world, or through his collaborations with communities in Chicago, Yo-Yo Ma has consistently pushed the boundaries of what it means to be a musician, driven by his desire to explore the relationship between culture and the human experience. Although not a Chicagoan, Ma has had a big impact on the city through his performances with Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Riccardo Muti, and his work with the orchestra's outreach department, the Negaunee Music Institute.
Riccardo Muti is famed as a conductor of Verdi and became Music Director at the orchestra in 2010 where he has continued his plight to engage people of all ages and from all backgrounds with classical music. Like Ma, Muti sees music as more than just entertainment - he is focused on making connections through music, both in his work in the schools, communities and prisons of Chicago and on his 'Roads of Friendship' project, collaborating with orchestras and musicians in conflict zones.
Tom talks to both about their musical lives, Chicago and the role music and culture can play in helping our understanding of the world and of each other. And 85 years after the premiere of her first symphony at Chicago Symphony Orchestra, we hear about the inspirational figure of Florence Price - Chicago-based composer and the first black American woman to have a symphony played by a major orchestra. Tom visits the Center for Black Music Research to meet Melanie Zeck and talks to composer and musician Renèe Baker about her work with the Chicago Sinfonietta and The Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, discovering how Florence is just one part of a history that needs to be told and a legacy that needs to be fulfilled.
Tom Service talks to Christopher Purves, one of the most theatrically and musically vivid bass-baritones on opera stages around the world. Christopher shares his love of Handel, his need to communicate to audiences, discusses how to connect with the darker characters of the repertoire, including The Protector, a role he created for George Benjamin's acclaimed opera, Written on Skin, and talks of his current project, Golaud in Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande.
Michael Volpe from Opera Holland Park and Polly Graham, Artistic Director of Longborough Festival Opera join Tom in the studio, to discover if Summer Festival opera companies can advance the art-form, as well as serve the audiences who come for the experience, and Antony Feeny, economist and researcher discusses the business model of these festivals.
Music and Maths - Tom explores the spaghetti-like interconnectedness of these two ancient disciplines with Eli Maor, whose new book 'Music By The Numbers' shows how musical ideas have inspired mathematicians over the ages, and Eugenia Cheng, mathematician and musician, who sees a musical-like creativity in maths, and a logic in all classical composition.
The Yorkshire Young Sinfonia became the first youth orchestra to play concerts reading their scores from tablets. Some professional orchestras use this technology too. Tom finds out what are the benefits and limitations surrounding digital technology on the concert platform.
Tom Service meets American composer, and multi-media artist Laurie Anderson to find how music and language interacts in her work to create stories and define who we are which are just two of the themes running through her new book 'All the Things I Lost in the Flood', and her new album, 'Landfall', with the Kronos Quartet: projects born from her experiences of Hurricane Sandy which hit New York city in October 2012. Music writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson discusses his new book 'How Shostakovich Changed my Mind' which explores his struggles with depression and how Shostakovich's tempestuous symphonies and soulful string quartets helped him and the composer's fellow Russians in the darkest of hours. There's a report from Moscow on the news that the British Council has to cease operations in Russia, and, Tom meets one of the most exciting young artists in New York today: Tyondai Braxton. In advance of the premiere of his new work 'Telekinesis', Tyondai shares his thoughts on electronic music, deep exposure to Morton Feldman, and how Stravinsky, Varese and other 20th century composers could be better taught in colleges and universities.
Produced by Richard Denison.
Tom Service meets Christophe Rousset, the inspirational harpsichordist and conductor, founder of the period instrument ensemble Les Talens Lyriques. We visit the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's 3rd Music Industry Careers Day to discover what young people want from a career in music today. We have an exclusive report on the state of music education in rural areas - the challenges and innovations, and we hear about the genre-breaking composer Julius Eastman, whose music is finally being published 28 years after his death.
Image (c) Eric Larrayadieu.
In this week's Music Matters Tom Service visits Reykjavik to ask whether Iceland is the most musical country in the world?
With a population of just 350,000 Iceland still boasts multi-million-selling pop acts like Sigur Ros and Bjork, a world class orchestra, Oscar-winning composers, countless music festivals as well as a vibrant and world renowned contemporary music scene.
And all these different genres seem to intertwine with each other effortlessly - so Tom is in Reykjavik to discover what the country's musical secret is.
He drops into the Dark Music Days festival, an annual festival of new music which takes place in the darkest period of winter, to ask composers and musicians why their new music scene is the envy of the world.
One of their most successful artists is the award winning multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Olafur Arnalds. Olafur blends classical, pop and electonica and the result is sell-out tours - Tom meets him at his Reykjavik studio to find out how he defines his music and why he sees the heart of Iceland's music not in its nature, but in its people.
Aside from the country's professional scene, amateur music making is also thriving - particularly in choirs. Tom meets the Karlakórinn Esja a young, local male-voice choir who meet every Wednesday night to sing together - they tell Tom why being in a choir is something Icelanders need to do. And he learns about the folk history behind Icelanders' love of singing from the ancient Rimur.
And composers and experts talk about the importance of landscape in Icelandic music - from the early 20th-century composer Jon Leifs to Anna Thorvaldsdottir, one of the country's acclaimed young composers. Is Icelandic music really all about nature or is it all just a marketing scam?
Presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch
In the wake of the political crisis that risks breaking up Spain and Catalonia, Sara asks Barcelona music journalist Andrea Romanos how important music is for the Catalans, and how have they've used it in the recent massive street demonstrations, whether in favour or against the region's independence.
Sara talks to neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt, authors of 'The Runaway Species', a book about creativity in art, music and the brain.
Also, what the internet tells us about our musical lives and how we 'consume' music today; Toner Quinn from 'The Journal of Music' reveals the latest findings.
And an interview at the piano, including a Mozart improvisation, with the American jazz and classical pianist and composer, Uri Caine.
Tom speaks to Sir Andras Schiff, one of the world's greatest living pianists and also one of the most thoughtful talkers about music. From Hungary but emigrating to Britain as a refugee, he and Tom discuss the changing world and the role of musicians within it, how a concert is more essential than ever and why a whole evening of Brahms is a bad idea.
The artist Tom Phillips is a true creative polymath - a painter, gallery curator, singer, quilter, opera composer, set designer and much more. His seminal 1969 opera Irma is all sourced from passages in 'A Humament' - his life's work - and is largely left to the performers to interpret it however they choose. He talks to Tom at his home in Peckham about how he wrote his 'chance opera' and how to decipher the clues found within the libretto. Plus Tom talks to the acclaimed opera director Netia Jones, who is about to stage it in Peckham, about how to start piecing together the puzzle of the opera.
The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are celebrating their 30th birthday and to do so are taking to the city's canals to create a 'Canal Serenade' performed on three narrowboats on the waterways. Tom takes a wander down the Birmingham towpath with BCMG's director Stephan Meier to discover more about the project and meets one of its founders, the cellist Ulrich Heinen, to talk about how the group started.
Plus in the week of conductor Simon Rattle taking over at the London Symphony Orchestra, Tom sits down with music journalists Charlotte Higgins and Richard Morrison to ask what he can do for British classical music.
Semyon Bychkov is sought after across the world as a conductor of all repertoire, but he has a particularly deep connection with the music of Tchaikovsky. He talks to Tom about the music of this oft-misunderstood composer as he continues his season-long Tchaikovsky project, and gives his opinions on the state of culture in Russia and the West today.
Composer Brian Irvine discusses his music and community projects in Hull as part of the PRS Foundation New Music Biennial, and following the publication of a new book exploring connections between music and landscape architecture, Tom meets the author David Nicholas Buck together with the writer and performer Kate Romano to explore the areas where these two disciplines share common ground.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch meets two American singers - the opera icon Grace Bumbry and the broadway star Audra McDonald. Plus a conversation with the sound artist Bill Fontana in Snape, Suffolk, where he's created an installation modifying sounds from the reedbeds, marshes and the Maltings' industrial past, for this year's Aldeburgh Festival.
Grace Bumbry's career was launched when she won a competition at the tender age of 17. She was sought after across Europe and the USA as a mezzo soprano and later a soprano. Now aged 80, still actively coaching young singers, she's one of the jurors for the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2017. She talks about her life on stage and in the concert hall, and passes on the wisdom of her career.
Tom Service talks to the composer and conductor Thomas Adès and composer Gerald Barry about the 'explosive' music of Beethoven. Adès is embarking on a three-year concert project combining Gerald Barry's music with Beethoven's great works - and the two musicians chat with Tom about how the two composer's 'volcanic' music can shed light on each other.
Tom celebrates the Beatles' seminal album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 50 years after its release. He looks at classical music's influence on the Beatles, and how, in turn, other music has been inspired. He talks to composer Nigel Osborne, who has orchestrated the album for a performance in Liverpool, and composer Kerry Andrew on its inspiration. Plus he hears from Erich Gruenberg - one of the original musicians on the album, and archive from Paul McCartney himself.
A new opera by composer Guto Puw - Y Twr (The Tower) - is a rare occurence, an opera sung solely in the Welsh language. Tom talks to Guto about writing the piece and discusses the wider use of Welsh in music with Deborah Keyser director of Tŷ Cerdd - Music Centre Wales.
And Tom talks to musician and writer Damon Krukowski and composer Sarah Angliss about Damon's new book, The New Analog, and how digital technology has affected what we hear.
Monteverdi the radical: Sara Mohr-Pietsch marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of composer Claudio Monteverdi with an investigation into his life and music, exploring what made him a modernist and a radical in his day. Sara visits the three important cities in which he lived: Venice, Mantua and Cremona, to discover what shaped him as man and musician. She interviews performers Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Ottavio Dantone about their personal perspectives on Monteverdi, and academic Ellen Rosand discusses the latest research into his music.
Venice: Justine Rapaccioli, Assistant Choral Director at San Marco talks about Monteverdi's prestigious role there, and Ellen Rosand discusses Monteverdi's style in his last operas and how that relates to his earlier music.
Mantua: Sara visits the church of Santa Barbara at the Palazzo Ducale, where Monteverdi was employed by Vincenzo Gonzaga, and sees a fascinating document relating to the first performance of L'Orfeo.
Cremona: Sara heads for the city of Monteverdi's birth to find the connection in his music with his early life. She visits the Museo del violino, and takes a look at Monteverdi's birth record.
Plus John Eliot Gardiner reflects on how Monteverdi's music has been a cornerstone of his career, and gives his thoughts on the freshness and originality of his operas today.
Tom Service meets the acclaimed violinist and conductor Nikolaj Znaider ahead of concerts involving both his violin and his baton with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and his Mozart project with the London Symphony Orchestra. Nikolaj talks to Tom about how to engage young audiences, how Colin Davis taught him everything he knew and, of course, why music matters.
Up till now Philip Glass's masterpiece Music in 12 Parts has only been performed by the composer's own Philip Glass Ensemble - but Glass has now given his blessing for a new generation of players to take on the three-and-a-half-hour epic.
Tom talks to organist James McVinnie and a specially formed ensemble including pianists Timo Andres, David Kaplan and Eliza McCarthy, gamba player Liam Byrne and soprano Josephine Stephenson about the piece. Plus he talks to original Glass Ensemble members Joan La Barbara and Michael Riesman about the original experience in the 1970s.
Plus Tom celebrates the 70th birthday of the English composer, arranger and producer Daryl Runswick. A remarkably prolific composer who worked with Berio and Stockhausen, was a successful jazz bassist with the Dankworths, has written over 100 arrangements for the King's Singers, been sampled by pop bands and was head of composition at Trinity College of Music. Tom talks to Daryl about being a musical chameleon.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch speaks to German-born Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger ahead of his upcoming performance at London's Wigmore Hall. Known for the brilliance of his Beethoven playing, he talks about why the composer's music embodies the very best human ideals, why pianists need to learn to breathe and why he's removing himself completely from the internet.
Benedictine monks in monasteries all over the UK and around the world structure their whole day around the singing of plainchant - five or six times a day they gather together and sing the psalms. Sara visits Downside Abbey in Somerset to experience first hand the musical life of monks.
People often have a very traditional view of brass band music, yet composers from Harrison Birtwistle to Hans Werner Henze not to mention young contemporary composers have all written for bands. The composers Edward Gregson and Lucy Pankhurst reveal the cutting edge of brass band composition.
And Viviana Durante - former Royal Ballet principal and mentor on BBC4's BBC Young Dancer programme - talks to Sara about the show and the prospects for young dancers today.
Tom Service talks to conductor Daniel Barenboim as the new Pierre Boulez Saal opens in Berlin, and the conductors Marin Alsop and Sylvia Caduff meet in Lucerne and compare notes on their lives on the podium.
Tom meets Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, as the city's newest concert hall, the Pierre Boulez Saal, opens its doors to the public. The hall will host up to 100 chamber music concerts a year, and is home to the Barenboim-Said Akademie, which Barenboim and the philosopher Edward Said created to train young musicians - mostly from the Middle East - and whose public face is the world famous West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He's a musician who is always interested in the wider world and Barenboim talks to Tom about the middle eastern conflict, world politics, music education and whether or not music can change the world.
And looking ahead to International Women's Day, the American conductor Marin Alsop meets Sylvia Caduff in Lucerne. Caduff, who is now in her 80s, was Leonard Bernstein's assistant at the New York Philharmonic and was mentored by Herbert von Karajan. She became one of the first women to conduct the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1960s when it was virtually unheard of for a woman to conduct a top orchestra.
Marin was also mentored by Leonard Bernstein and a generation later has similarly broken new ground for women in conducting - becoming the first female conductor of the last night of the Proms, and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra the first to hold a music director post of an American orchestra.
The two conductors compare notes on their lives in music, their roads to becoming conductors and breaking down barriers for female musicians.
Tom Service asks conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla about her plans for the City of Birmingham Orchestra, looks at the slave trade with composer Thierry Pécou, and explores the rarely-performed opera-oratorio, Le vin herbé.
Tom visits Symphony Hall to talk to the exciting young conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla about her ambitions for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and music education in Birmingham. He also discusses the challenges faced by the CBSO with Chief Executive Stephen Maddock following recent funding cuts from Birmingham City Council, plus an update from Julian Lloyd-Webber, Principal of the Birmingham Conservatoire, on the progress of their cutting-edge new building which is due to open its doors to students in September this year.
Tom also talks to the French composer, Thierry Pécou, about Outre-mémoire, written for his friend, the pianist Alexandre Tharaud, which delves into the heavy history of the Carribbean island of Martinique and its slave trade, from where Pécou's own family is descended.
Plus, as Welsh National Opera prepare to stage a performance of the rarely-performed opera-oratorio, Le vin herbé, Tom finds out why this work was pivotal in the compositional career of its creator, the Swiss composer Frank Martin, and puts forward a case for why we should hear more from this unique voice of 20th Century music. He talks to Nigel Simeone, who is an expert champion of Frank Martin's music, plus the director and conductor of Welsh National Opera's production of Le vin herbé, Polly Graham and James Southall.
Daniele Gatti on life as the new Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, plus Sara Mohr-Pietsch examines the life and work of avant-garde American composer Milton Babbitt and 19th-Century conductor Hans Richter.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the name of Ferruccio Busoni was on the lips of music-lovers across Europe. But 150 years after the composer’s birth, contemporary concert goers barely know who he is. With Tom Service.
American pianist Jonathan Biss on late works, Fiona Maddocks on music 'to carry you through', Edinburgh's new concert hall, plus the sound of the Jungle - music recorded in the Calais migrant camp. With Sara Mohr-Pietsch.
Presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Including interviews with conductor Kristjan Jarvi and composer Sally Beamish, plus a tribute to forgotten pianist Viola Tunnard.
Tom Service presents Radio 3's music magazine, exploring the music in Shakespeare's plays and Shakespearean music from the BBC archives, with composer Gary Carpenter and theatre historian Sarah Lenton. Live from the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Other Place theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.