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 G...
May 18, 2019•44 min
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 con...
Feb 23, 2019•43 min
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 ...
Dec 01, 2018•44 min
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)....
Nov 24, 2018•42 min
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 de...
Nov 10, 2018•44 min
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 ...
Oct 27, 2018•44 min
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 K...
Oct 06, 2018•43 min
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 ...
Aug 25, 2018•42 min
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....
Jun 16, 2018•44 min
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 ...
Jun 02, 2018•43 min
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 Shostak...
Apr 14, 2018•43 min
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 2...
Feb 24, 2018•43 min
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 th...
Feb 03, 2018•44 min
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, ...
Nov 04, 2017•44 min
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 ...
Sep 16, 2017•44 min
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 publica...
Jul 01, 2017•44 min
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 ...
Jun 17, 2017•44 min
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 o...
May 27, 2017•43 min
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 Rosa...
May 13, 2017•44 min
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 - bu...
Apr 29, 2017•44 min
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...
Apr 15, 2017•44 min
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 t...
Mar 13, 2017•44 min
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 follo...
Feb 11, 2017•44 min
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.
Dec 19, 2016•44 min
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.
Dec 03, 2016•44 min
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.
Nov 23, 2016•44 min
Presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Including interviews with conductor Kristjan Jarvi and composer Sally Beamish, plus a tribute to forgotten pianist Viola Tunnard.
Oct 15, 2016•44 min
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.
Apr 25, 2016•45 min
