Music Matters

Marking the centenary of Hungarian composer György Ligeti, Tom Service talks to musicians who knew him and who love his music. Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and composer and conductor Thomas Adès explore the musical universe of the Violin Concerto; pianist Tamara Stefanovich describes meeting the composer and the intensity and fragility required to perform his music; Tom joins composer Anna Meredith in her studio to listen to one of his last works, the Hamburg Concerto; and György Ligeti’s son, the composer and instrumentalist Lukas Ligeti reveals the passion he shared with his father for creating imaginary worlds, both musical and non-musical.Tom also talks to conductor Iván Fischer - the founder of the acclaimed Budapest Festival Orchestra - ahead of his appearances at the BBC Proms and at Edinburgh International Festival this summer. They discuss the difficulties of changing how symphony orchestras work, how his orchestra’s mission to bring music to the communities of Budapest translates when they’re

On the verge of receiving the coveted George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music and Dance in America, the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard joins Sara Mohr-Pietsch. He discusses his ventures into the operatic world, the success of The Met’s recent production of his opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and returning to the New York opera company’s hallowed stage for their current run of his first opera, Champion, which is based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith.Sara travels to the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, in Chelsea, to hear from a modern von Trapp family lineage of singers – the Bevan Family Consort. We hear from sisters Sophie and Mary Bevan about their new album, following in the musical footsteps of their parents’ generation, and singing together as a family. David Price, Director of Analysis at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, gives Music Matters the latest news about how listeners access and engage with classical music recordings.And, as his new c

Tom Services talks to German baritone Christian Gerhaher during rehearsals for Alban Berg's Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House. Having recently recorded all the songs of Robert Schumann as well as Mahler, Brahms and Schubert, Christian reveals how he sees the differing role of the singer when performing lieder and opera, and why he believes celebrating the complexity of classical music will secure its future. Tom also meets singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Rhiannon Giddens whose opera 'Omar' has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. The opera tells the story of Omar Ibn Said, a scholar who was one of tens of thousands of enslaved Muslims who were taken to the United States in the 19th century. Rhiannon discusses the power of collaboration, the future of opera and her ongoing mission to reclaim the history of the banjo as an instrument created by black communities.For Mental Health Awareness Week, we explore the world of gong baths to find out how sound therapy can be used to help reduce leve

Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to violinist Nicola Benedetti as she prepares for her inaugural programme as Edinburgh International Festival director, becoming the first Scot to hold the position in the festival's 75-year history. Nicola discusses the challenges of balancing the festival job with life as a performer and sets out her vision for opening up music to a wider audience and deepening the culture of listening. We visit English National Opera to find out about a new staging of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, 30 years after the first commercial recording of the piece shot to fame reaching number six in the UK pop album charts. Sara talks to Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and director/designer Isabella Bywater about their new production of the piece and how the operatic setting changes our experience of the music.Baritone Lucia Lucas and composer Tom W Green discuss The World’s Wife - a chamber opera from 2017 for string quartet and singer which uses text from the poetry collection

Tom Service talks to conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner at his home in Dorset as he celebrates his 80th birthday later this week. His work as Artistic Director of his Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique has made him a central figure in the early music revival and a pioneer of historically informed performance. Together with the musicians from his performance groups, John Eliot Gardiner has performed and recorded repertoire which spans five centuries, from Monteverdi to Berlioz, Schutz to Schumann as well as the two composers he’s especially associated with – J.S. Bach and Beethoven.

Tom Service explores classical music's place in British society, in light of the current national debates around funding from Arts Council England and the proposed cuts to the BBC's performing groups. The programme asks questions about how classical music and opera is valued, and how it resonates with today's diverse communities, through perspectives from within the UK and from abroad, from former culture minister Ed Vaizey to multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie.Richard McKerrow, the producer behind Channel 4's The Piano, on classical music on TV and the impact he hopes the series will have on our musical life.Sarah Price from Liverpool University, on her research into audiences: why do we return to the familiar when choosing which concerts to attend?Kully Thiarai, creative director and CEO of Leeds 2023, on the importance of the arts and culture for community and belonging.Andrew Mellor, a British journalist in Denmark, on the relationship the Nordic countries have with classical music, and why it's diffe

Kate Molleson marks the 150 anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninov's birth. She visits his home in Switzerland - after years of renovation, the beautiful Villa Senar, on the banks of Lake Lucerne, is reopening to the public. This is the peaceful summer residence where Rachmaninov lived in in the 1930s and where he composed the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini and the Third symphony. Kate is shown around the Villa by its director Andrea Loetscher. They are joined by pianist Boris Giltburg, who is about to release his new Rachmaninov piano concertos disc, and who performs specially for Music Matters on Rachmaninov's original Steinway grand piano in the Villa's studio. Also joining Kate at the Villa is Fiona Maddocks: music critic and author of the upcoming book 'Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile'. Together they discuss Rachmaninov's life, work and his time spent at Villa Senar.

Kate Molleson talks to composer Anna Clyne, clarinettist Martin Frost and violinist Pekka Kuusisto together about the concertos Anna has written for the acclaimed soloists. The UK premiere of her clarinet concerto for Martin - Weathered - took place at the Royal Festival Hall this week, with Pekka conducting. Her violin concerto for Pekka - Time and Tides - will have its UK premiere in March 2024, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.Also, Marques L.A. Garrett tell us about The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers, which he has edited. It features 35 pieces from countries including Brazil, Canada, Portugal, the USA and Britain, which span from the 16th century to the current day.Kate visits a new musical opening in London this month about Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian former Prime Minister and tycoon. At rehearsals, Kate met composer Ricky Simmonds, director James Grieve, and actor Emma Hatton who plays Veronica, Silvio Berlusconi’s second wife.Plus, we look into the business of music streaming ahea

Tom Service visits Evelyn Glennie to discuss her life and career. As a soloist and improviser, the profoundly deaf musician created a role that had never existed in the classical world before, that of a solo percussionist. Growing up on a farm in Aberdeenshire, Evelyn Glennie’s journey to musical stardom took her through the Royal Academy of Music to playing at the Proms in 1992; she was a household name on TV throughout the late 80s and 90s, and led hundreds of musicians at the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. She's commissioned an entire repertoire of concertos, has a vast archive of percussion instruments and has a determination to make the most of every moment. With Tom, as she shows him around her many instruments, she explores the essential principle that's been the cornerstone of her life - listening.

As her career takes flight, the French-Italian mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre talks to presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch about her love of baroque music, how her ballet training has influenced both her voice and stage presence, and the special musical alchemy that she experiences while collaborating with Thomas Dunford and the Jupiter Ensemble. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the late American composer Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations – a series of text-based scores that instruct groups of people to practice ‘sounding’ and listening together – Music Matters speaks to the improviser and saxophonist, Artur Vidal, and sound artist and researcher, Ximena Alarcón ahead of a weekend of performances at Café Oto in London. They describe how Oliveros’ works broke with the conventions that separate composer, performer, and audience, and discuss how her Sonic Meditations became the blueprint for the composer’s hugely influential Deep Listening school. As China eases its Covid restrictions, Sara speaks to the Shanghai-based

Composer Dobrinka Tabakova talks to Tom Service about her artist residency at The Hallé in Manchester. She discusses her love of melody, the thrill of writing for youth orchestra, the importance of understanding the character of the musicians she writes for, and how meeting composer Iannis Xenakis when she was 14 shaped her musical path.Tom visits the site of the new Shireland City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Academy in West Bromwich, which opens in September 2023. As the first state school in the country to be established in collaboration with an orchestra, the academy is built around a central performance space which will also be open as a venue in evenings and throughout the year for the wider Sandwell community and beyond. Tom takes a tour of the site with CBSO Chief Executive Stephen Maddock, Principal Designate David Green and architect Claire Mantle to find out more.Emily MacGregor joins Tom to talk about her new book ‘Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity and the Sound of 19

Ahead of her performance in the Royal Opera House’s production of Tannhäuser, Tom Service joins the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen backstage at Covent Garden during rehearsals for Wagner’s story of love, redemption, and mythical depiction of the Wartburg Song Contest. She tells Tom about inhabiting the role of her character, Elisabeth, and how opera is a space in which we can connect with world events.As Celtic Connections celebrates its 30th anniversary in Glasgow, Tom is joined by musician, producer, and festival director Donald Shaw; Chief Executive of Fèis Rois, Fiona Dalgety; singer-songwriter, Karine Polwart; and the piper, fiddler, composer and instrument-maker, Malin Lewis, to discuss the festival’s impact in the Celtic musical world and beyond.Music Matters talks to the American harpsichordist and author Leslie Kwan about her new book for toddlers, A is for Aretha, which features 26 portraits of inspirational black women in music.And, Tom visits violinist Daniel Pioro and organist James McVinnie as

Beloved by choirs and audiences all over the world, John Rutter is one of the most popular and successful choral composers of the last half-century. In particular, for many people, Rutter’s carols and carol arrangements are the sound of Christmas. The festive season would be unthinkable today without the joyful tunes of Shepherd’s Pipe Carol or Star Carol resounding in school halls, churches and concert halls.Tom Service visits the composer at his home in rural Cambridgeshire to try to learn the secret of writing a great carol, and to chat about an illustrious career that has also included major choral works such as his Requiem and Gloria, and the large-scale Mass of the Children, written in 2003 following the sudden death of Rutter’s son Christopher at the age of 19. We also drop in on a rehearsal with the Bach Choir in London, as John prepares them for last year's gala Christmas Celebration concert at the Royal Albert Hall.First broadcast in December 2022

As part of Radio 3's New Year New Music, Kate Molleson talks at length to one of the 21st-century's leading creative artists – the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Celebrating her 70th birthday this year, Kaija describes music as a study of self and the human spirit. Kate meets her at home in Paris where she reflects on her life in music, describing the the conviction with which she pursued compositional classes with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy, and the distinctive musical style she developed as a result. Kate hears how Saariaho found herself in the musical milieu of Paris and the draw of the city’s research institute for music and sound, IRCAM, where she cemented her place on the world stage with a dazzling work for small chamber orchestra and electronics inspired by the aurora borealis, Lichtbogen (1986). She tells Kate too about the challenges of writing her opera Innocence, whose subject matter deals with the legacy of trauma surrounding a shooting in a Finnish International School, and the ine

Kate Molleson speaks to Irish soprano Ailish Tynan at home with her dog. She reminisces about growing up in Ireland, learning her craft as a young artist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and working with students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance in Greenwich where she has been recently announced as International Artist in Voice.Kate travels to rehearsals to meet members of the Glasgow Senior Citizens Orchestra where she finds them preparing for their next concert; and she talks to music therapist, Grace Meadows from the Utley Foundation and David Cutler Director of the Baring Foundation about the benefits music brings to older people. Author Frederick W. Skinner introduces his new book 'Beethoven in Russia: Music and Politics' which explores how the composer's music interfaced with politics in Russia and the revolutionary struggle that culminated in the Revolution of 1917. Marina Frolova-Walker, Professor of Music History and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge sets the context a

Ahead of her concert next week with the LSO, Tom Service speaks to the pianist Alice Sara Ott who is also preparing to embark on a tour which features lighting and images alongside performances of Chopin’s Op 28 preludes, and other contemporary works from her recent Echoes of Life album, to create a multi-media experience that extends the boundaries of what’s possible in concert halls. As the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference concludes, Music Matters hears from Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Kathryn McDowell, Chief Executive of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Eakin, Executive Chairman of Harrison Parrott, Jasper Parrott, and Professor of Geosystem Science and leader of the group responsible for climate modelling at the University of Oxford, Myles Allen, about the degree to which the classical music industry is delivering its own promises to reduce its impact on the environment.With all eyes on Qatar for the opening of the FIFA World Cup, Tom hears from the

On the eve of the launch of her new album, ‘Seraph’, featuring works for trumpet and string orchestra by James Macmillan, Grieg, and Satie, Tom Service speaks to Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth about her diagnosis with cancer last year, her relationship with music during gruelling treatment, and the conscious decision she made after her recovery to commit again to a career in music. As Arts Council England reveals its 2023-26 national portfolio of funded organisations, Music Matters speaks to ACE’s Director of Music, Claire Mera Nelson, about the body’s investment decisions. We hear from a cross section of organisations who’ve seen changes to their public funding, as well as first-time recipients, with contributions from Chief Executive of the Paraorchestra, Jonathan Harper; Artistic and Executive Director of MishMash productions, Liz Muge; and Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Britten Sinfonia, Meurig Bowen. And as the EFG London Jazz Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary, Tom’s joined b

The Labeque Sisters, Katia and Marielle Labeque, shot to fame in 1980 with their arrangements of Gershwin, including the Rhapsody in Blue, and for more than half a century have made a unique musical life together. Tom Service talks to Katia and Marielle about the broad range of music that they are creating, the boundaries that they are constantly pushing, and their sound-world within two pianos.Before the release of their award-winning Gershwin disc in 1980, Katia and Marielle Labeque predominantly performed contemporary music, and encountered the composer Olivier Messiaen, who overheard them practising his Vision de l’Amen while they were still students at the Paris Conservatoire. They’ve since worked with Boulez and Berio, and it was on tour in Los Angeles, performing Berio’s Concerto for Two Pianos, that they happened across Gershwin for the first time. As students at the Paris Conservatoire, they had to fight to be accepted into the chamber music class, and they tell Tom about perceptions of piano duos an

Presenter Tom Service visits the Pit Theatre at the Barbican to learn more about a new theatrical meditation on the bittersweet consolations of sorrow. He speaks to countertenor Iestyn Davies about the melancholy of John Dowland’s music and its power to process grief, while the director Netia Jones tells Tom how she’s weaved together creative visuals with philosophical musings of Robert Burton’s 17th-century treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy as well as those of Freud and other contemporary experts of the human condition. As the BBC celebrates its centenary, Music Matters is joined by composers Matthew Herbert and Anna Meredith, and Artistic Associate of the Southbank Gillian Moore, to discuss the corporation’s role as a commissioner of contemporary repertoire during the past 100 years. Tom catches-up with composer Tom Floyd, singer Sophie Goldrick, and Professor Marion Thain during rehearsals of a new opera, Veritable Michael, which charts the creative life and love affair of two women who operated together

Tom Service joins Rachel Podger and her violin for a walk in the Brecon Beacons to talk about her new album ‘Tutta Sola’ which features lesser-known solo violin music of the 18th century. Rachel discusses the new musical discoveries she’s made through making the album and what it means to play solo, and she treats us to some solo Bach live on a hillside.Tom talks to Ukrainian musicians and musical leaders about their musical life in Ukraine right now and how music and music-making is both an escape from the trauma of everyday life during the war, and a strong representation of Ukrainian national identity. We hear from conductor Ivan Cherednichenko at Lviv National Opera, Tetyana Kostorna at Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Sergey Didok at the National Operetta of Ukraine in Kyiv and pianist Antonii Baryshevskyi.Edward Dusinberre, violinist and leader of the Takacs Quartet, discusses his new book ‘Distant Melodies - Music in Search of Home’ which explores ideas of home and exile through the lives and music of Elg