Musician and director Thomas Guthrie explains the history of the use of puppets in Baroque and Classical opera, arguing that puppets are still powerful tools with which to tell operatic stories today. That moment when the audience suspends disbelief and believes that what they know to be inanimate is a living and breathing character – that magical moment – is also when their ears open, and the music can make its full impact. Image of Thomas Guthrie courtesy of Theresa Pewal.
Jun 30, 2019•34 min
Hannah French explores Heinrich Schutz's 26 psalm settings, published 400 years ago this year, which were one of the first major collections of choral music in the German language.
Jun 23, 2019•24 min
A profile of 18th-century French violinist and composer Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, who served King Louis XV, becoming one of the most highly-paid musicians at court. His private life was a troubled one, though - a heavy drinker and often in debt, it's thought that he took his own life at the age of 65.
May 19, 2019•15 min
Hannah French delves into the life and legacy of an extraordinary 16th-century polymath - Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. She meets Dr John Chu, Assistant Curator of Pictures and Sculpture at the National Trust who shows her the portrait of Lord Herbert currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery. John takes Hannah on a tour of Lord Herbert's haunts in central London. Herbert is one of those vital people in the history of music – an artist and an informed observer. He was an ...
May 12, 2019•30 min
Orlando Gibbons came from a very musical family – his father was a member of the Oxford Waits, two of his brothers were also composers, and his son entered into the profession too. Lucie Skeaping explores the lives and music of this 17th-century musical dynasty.
Apr 28, 2019•21 min
Marking the 400th anniversary of her birth, Hannah French presents a profile of the extraordinary 17th-century singer and composer, Barbara Strozzi. Part of Radio 3's programming for International Women's Day 2019.
Mar 10, 2019•24 min
Florlegium's artistic director Ashley Solomon joins Hannah French to profile the life and music of their fellow Baroque flautist and great 18th Century patron of the arts, Frederick the Great of Prussia. Ahead of Florilegium's forthcoming concert at Wigmore Hall, which uses James R. Gaines' novel "A night in the palace of reason" as its inspiration, Ashley will be choosing some of his favourite pieces connected with Emperor Frederick, by composers like CPE Bach and JJ Quantz.
Mar 03, 2019•22 min
German-born Johann Christoph Pepusch spent much of his career working in London, where he founded the Academy of Ancient Music and found fame with his music for John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera”. Lucie Skeaping talks to Robert Rawson of Canterbury Christ Church University about the extraordinary life and music of this now-neglected 18th-century composer.
Feb 03, 2019•31 min
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is home to a priceless collection of manuscripts bequeathed to the university by the extraordinary 18th-century polymath, the 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam. Harpsichordist Sophie Yates visits the museum to explore the life and legacy of Fitzwilliam, whose now-famous Virginal Book is considered to be the primary source for late Elizabethan and early Jacobean keyboard music.
Jan 27, 2019•29 min
Sicilian-born composer Alessandro Scarlatti had a love/hate relationship with the city of Rome. In the early part of his career, he was employed there by the self-exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, and he returned to the city for the last six years of his life, composing some of his finest work there. Lucie Skeaping explores Scarlatti's Roman years and some of the music he produced during his time in the Italian capital.
Jan 13, 2019•10 min
Harry Christophers, Founder & Conductor of the Sixteen, celebrates 40 years of the ensemble in conversation with Lucie Skeaping, and chooses some of his favourite recordings from the choir's extensive discography. With music by Mundy, Victoria, Monteverdi, Purcell and Handel.
Jan 06, 2019•20 min
A fascinating exploration of three extraordinary Catalonian brothers: Joan, Manuel and Josep Pla, who performed and composed in Barcelona, Lisbon and Madrid during the mid-18th century, including at the Spanish and Portuguese Royal courts. Presented by Hannah French.
Dec 30, 2018•27 min
The Elizabethan Dance Band: Lucie Skeaping is joined by William Lyons to explore music for the Broken Consort, an ensemble heard at dances and theatre productions, and for which Thomas Morley compiled a rarely-heard repertory.
Dec 02, 2018•32 min
Lucie Skeaping talks to Dr Sam Barrett and Benjamin Bagby about Sequentia’s project to reconstruct songs from Boethius’ seminal work, “The Consolation of Philosophy” - one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. It’s a fascinating piece of research, musical detective work, detailed reconstruction... and some imagination too!
Nov 25, 2018•41 min
On the day before Bonfire Night, Hannah French explores music for fireworks, with music by Corelli, Bach, Rameau and Gluck, and Handel's celebrated Music for the Royal Fireworks.
Nov 04, 2018•28 min
Hannah French explores Francois Couperin's extraordinarily dark and powerful vocal music for Holy Week - his settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah - the Lecons de Tenebres.
Oct 28, 2018•20 min
Countertenor Iestyn Davies marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of composer Philip Rosseter, and his role in a thriving scene that included Thomas Campion, John Dowland and Robert Johnson.
Oct 21, 2018•25 min
Lucie Skeaping takes her second musical journey through the mysterious world of possession, featuring witchcraft, demons, sorcery and madness, and including pieces by Handel, Tartini, Purcell and Charpentier.
Oct 07, 2018•21 min
Lucie Skeaping takes the first of two musical journeys through the mysterious world of possession, featuring music associated with the ecstatic trances of Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila and Joan of Arc, Sufi dervishes, musical exorcisms performed to the wild rhythms of the tarantella and initiation rites of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé.
Sep 30, 2018•22 min
Hannah French explores the simple melody "The Western Wind" that inspired the early 16th Century masses by John Taverner, John Sheppard and Christopher Tye.
Sep 09, 2018•21 min
Hannah French marks the 300th anniversary of the premiere of Handel's Acis & Galatea on the terraces overlooking the gardens at Cannons - the seat of the Duke of Chandos.
Aug 12, 2018•17 min
A tale of two printers: Estienne Roger in Amsterdam and John Walsh in London. Hannah French discovers how and why they changed the publishing scene and how musical taste spread across Europe as a result.
Jul 01, 2018•33 min
Robert Hollingworth looks at Orazio Vecchi's madrigal comedy L'Amfiparnaso, which was premiered in Modena in in 1594. It's a particular form of musical theatre that flourished briefly in Italy, just before the dawn of opera, combining music and commedia dell'arte, the down-to-earth improvised street comedy of the time.
Jun 24, 2018•32 min
Lucie Skeaping talks to cornett player Gawain Glenton about the history of the Hanseatic League - a trade route that developed across the Baltic Sea and beyond from our own shores right up to Estonia - which engendered its own musical tradition too. They are joined in the studio by Dr Bettina Varwig, lecturer in early modern music at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. Gawain has just released a disc of music from the Hanseatic cities with his ECHO Ensemble.
Jun 03, 2018•30 min
Hannah French looks at music celebrating the Feast of the Ascension through the eyes of father and son JS and CPE Bach.
May 13, 2018•17 min
Lucie Skeaping presents a musical exploration of the Greek myth of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and granddaughter of Zeus, as told in works by Handel, Porpora, Monteverdi, Benda and Marcello.
May 06, 2018•23 min
Lucie Skeaping talks to harpsichordist Carole Cerasi about the keyboard music of Francois Couperin, in the light of her recent release of the complete works for harpsichord.
Apr 29, 2018•33 min
Lucie Skeaping profiles the life, times and music of the 18th-century Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, who won the admiration of many distinguished contemporaries, among them Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the most neglected figures of the late baroque, Zelenka composed some of the most sumptuous and glorious church music ever written.
Apr 22, 2018•19 min
As part of the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Debussy's death, Hannah French asks what it was about Rameau that inspired the composer's "Hommage a Rameau".
Mar 18, 2018•22 min
Looking ahead to International Women's Day, Lucie Skeaping talks to Rebecca Cypess of Rutgers University in New Jersey about music played, collected and commissioned by the Jewish salon hostess Sara Levy (1761-1854), student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. Levy was a remarkable woman and was hugely important in the preservation and perpetuation of the Bach family tradition in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before Mendelssohn ignited the widespread craze f...
Mar 04, 2018•24 min
