Music Matters

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...

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 Mara...

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. An...

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 Pr...

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 epide...

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 dictatorshi...

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...

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...

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...

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 Son...

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 C...

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...

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 t...

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...

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 Humank...

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 shar...

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 c...

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 mus...

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 t...

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...

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 d...

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 th...

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 c...

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...

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 cont...