Music Matters

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 bei...

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 Oxf...

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 Ja...

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...

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 h...

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 ci...

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, an...

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...

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 B...

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 poly...

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 co...

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 a...

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 Pe...

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 G...

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 ma...

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...

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...

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 Birmi...

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...