Music Matters

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 singer Martin Carthy and former High Court judge and part-time song collector Stephen Sedley join Tom to talk about their new book, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment’, which explores the legal and moral basis of some of the most moving songs in the folk traditions of the country. We hear recordings by Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Rachel Newton and a 1953 archive recording of Ewan MacColl singing ‘McCaffery’, provided by the School of Scottish Studies Archives.As Russians go to the pol