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 p...
Nov 06, 2021•44 min
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...
Oct 23, 2021•44 min
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 affirm...
Oct 16, 2021•44 min
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.
Sep 27, 2021•51 min
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 ...
Sep 18, 2021•44 min
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 issue...
Sep 11, 2021•44 min
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 Grah...
Jul 24, 2021•44 min
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 fr...
Jul 18, 2021•44 min
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 de...
Jul 03, 2021•44 min
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 Peck...
Jun 19, 2021•44 min
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 mu...
Jun 12, 2021•44 min
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 h...
May 29, 2021•44 min
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 ...
May 15, 2021•44 min
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-dir...
May 08, 2021•44 min
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'Acc...
May 01, 2021•44 min
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 ...
Apr 17, 2021•44 min
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 th...
Mar 27, 2021•44 min
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 arti...
Mar 20, 2021•44 min
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 Pragu...
Mar 06, 2021•43 min
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 festiv...
Feb 20, 2021•44 min
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...
Jan 30, 2021•44 min
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 ...
Jan 16, 2021•44 min
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 Ka...
Jan 09, 2021•44 min
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 10...
Dec 12, 2020•44 min
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 t...
Nov 28, 2020•44 min
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, chai...
Nov 21, 2020•44 min
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 s...
Nov 14, 2020•44 min
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 Ka...
Oct 31, 2020•44 min
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 Wa...
Oct 24, 2020•44 min
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 ...
Oct 03, 2020•44 min
