Music Matters

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 orga...

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 Françoi...

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 corona...

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 o...

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 r...

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 Re...

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...

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...

Tom Service speaks to Carlo Rizzi, Sir Mark Elder, and four leading conductors

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...

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...

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 c...

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 Susa...

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 musi...

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...

Odaline de la Martinez, Alfred Brendel, and a lost work by Vaughan Williams

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 composit...

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 Charlot...

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...

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 corre...

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...

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...

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 - an...

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...

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 t...