Music Matters

Tom Service talks to Sir Mark Elder about the legacy that he is leaving behind him after 24 years as Music Director at the Hallé Orchestra. He talks to Tom about Charles Hallé and his mission to set up an orchestra for all the people of Manchester, and how his ethos is still central to the orchestra today. Not only has mark Elder evolved the sound of the orchestra and transformed music-making in Manchester, putting generations of choral singers associated with the Hallé centre stage, but he has forged an identity for Hallé as the orchestra to play British music, and particularly the works of Elgar. Mark Elder also talks to Tom about his tenure at English National Opera, and the current funding crises that face music in the UK. As he prepares to step down from the Hallé, he also reflects on how coincidental it is that he should have been destined for Manchester, once the home of his great Uncle. Norman Cocker, who was a well-known organist at the Cathedral there.

Tom Service talks to pianist and writer, Susan Tomes, about her new book Women and the Piano - a History in 50 Lives. Those lives include well-known names today, from Clara Schumann to Nina Simone, but also many women like Marianne Martinez who have been eclipsed from previous histories of pianists. Tom and Susan discuss how women went from being the Queens of the piano in domestic settings to being excluded from public performances and conservatoires during the development of the concert piano. Pianist, Lucy Parham, talks to Tom too about the impact that Susan's book has had on her, and she talks about life today for female pianists.The Afghan Youth Orchestra is embarking on its first UK tour - Breaking the Silence. Currently exiled in Portugal, the young musicians live and study, having escaped the Taliban’s censorship of music. The orchestra's founder, Dr Ahmad Sarmast and two of his violinists, Sevinch Majidi and Ali Sina Hotak, talk to Tom about their hopes of keeping Afghanistan's situation on the inter

Presented by Tom Service. This week, Tom talks to the American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato about her life in music, and her creative mission to challenge the status quo. From her work in refugee camps, to her long relationship with the maximum security prison SingSing in New York State, as well as in concert halls and opera stages, DiDonato confounds expectations of an international classical artist. She talks about the joy of engaging differently with young audiences, and of recording and touring projects like Eden, which makes real connections with the natural world and includes the publishing of new music for anyone to sing.Conductor Edward Gardner and artist Ben Cullen Wiliams talk about their reimagining of Szymanowski's ballet Harnasie: a story of love, bandits, and how the robbers of the Tatra mountains in Poland win out over the civilisation below. Also featuring filmed choreography by Wayne MacGregor, the production has received its premiere in Katowice and comes to London this month, and uses human

Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to renowned American pianist, Jeremy Denk, ahead of his Wigmore Hall recital of Bach Partitas. He discusses his passion for Bach and the profound impact and connection he has when he plays his music.Sara talks to Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli ahead of the day-long immersion into her work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Together they explore what it means for Missy Mazzoli to be a composer today and the stories that she likes to tell through her work. Writer Gillian Dooley discusses her new discoveries when researching her new book, “She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and music”. She tells Sara more about the role music held in Jane Austen’s life and highlights the importance of it on the characters in her novels. With the help of film critic, Lillian Crawford, we are also taken on a journey through the pastiche film scores that have accompanied adaptations of Austen’s novels over the last 30 years.Plus Donne foundation founder Gabriella di Laccio talks to Sara ahead of her rec

Tom Service talks to composer Anna Meredith as her soundtrack to the poetic British film The End We Start From, and starring Jodie Comer, is featuring in cinemas across the UK. She talks in detail about the compositional process; from the very beginning as she hums a tune and records it onto her phone, to the workings required to produce music that is full of irresistible energy. Pianist Igor Levit talks to Tom about his new album featuring Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. He talks about his admiration for Busoni and the deep emotion and connection he feels when he plays music by Mahler.

Kate Molleson talks to pianist Tamara Stefanovich. A champion of 20th and 21st century music, Tamara explains her deep connection with the music of now, how global politics have shaped her life in music, and her insatiable appetite for learning which meant she skipped seven years of school.Kate meets Irish fiddler Martin Hayes who shares his thoughts on the meaning of tradition, putting traditional music on the concert platform, and how the musicians who played and ate around the kitchen table of his childhood home in County Clare continue to inspire his musical life. Chief Executive of the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) Deborah Annetts reflects on the new House of Commons committee report on misogyny in music and whether it can bring about lasting change in the music industry. Plus we hear from choir members in Hackney as they take part in Sing East - a showcase for talented choirs from across East London in which the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus joined over 200 local performers for a celebrat

Tom Service meets French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet during his recital tour where he performs both books of Debussy’s Préludes. His 1996 recording of the pieces has just been re-released on vinyl with artwork created by his friend Vivienne Westwood, shortly before she died. Jean-Yves talks to Tom about the need to collaborate, his love of Debussy, Gershwin and Bill Evans, and why challenging conventions and being yourself as an artist are the keys to success and happiness. He also shares his excitement about an upcoming multisensory performance of Alexander Scriabin’s 1910 tone poem 'Prometheus, The Poem of Fire' - a collaboration with Cartier in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and San Francisco Symphony which involves not only light and colour in addition to the music, but scent too.Tom talks to pianist Alice Sara Ott and composer Bryce Dessner about a new piano concerto he's written for her, which receives its UK premiere in February. Inspired by Alice’s playing, the piece is

Tom Service meets Finnish soprano, Karita Mattila as she prepares for her role as Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal Opera House in London. She talks to him about the roles her voice now allows her to sing 40 years after winning the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. Tom drops in on rehearsals at Song in Sign, the latest project from FormidAbility, the opera company founded to put accessibility at the centre of creativity. Tom talks to director, Caroline Parker and to founder and soprano, Joanne Roughton-Arnold ahead of the company’s forthcoming tour.Musicians, Mary Dullea and Darragh Morgan and composer, Matthew Shlomowitz join Tom in studio to pay tribute to composer, John White who died earlier this month. And finally, Tom talks to double-bassist, Edgar Meyer as he prepares for his visit to Glasgow to perform his Concertino with the Scottish Ensemble at this year’s Celtic Connections. He talks to Tom about his collaborations, his sound and how he is influencing the next generation.

Tom Service speaks to the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director of the Montreal Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He is one of the starriest and most sought-after conductors in the world. also one of the most loved by the musicians who work with him. Nézet-Séguin is guest conductor to some of the world's top orchestras, like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Berlin Philharmonic, and he has recorded cycles of symphonies by Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner, plus operas by Mozart, Gounod and Wagner. Alongside the core repertoire, he's on a mission to perform new works that represent all of society and thereby draw new audiences to the orchestras that he leads and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He tells Tom about the richly fulfilling experiences of putting on Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut up in My bones and Kevin Puts' The Hours, and how these two new operas are both bringing in audiences who have never been to the MET

Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to one of the 21st-century's leading creative artists – the American composer and interdisciplinary artist, Meredith Monk.Celebrating her 80th birthday the year before last, Meredith’s creativity spans decades and traverses site-specific works and happenings in the 60s, through films during the 70s and 80s, to an impressive catalogue of recordings - many of which involved the acclaimed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. She tells Sara about her journey towards Buddhism, about approaching music as a ritual, and how her meditation practice has had a profound impact on her creative life. She shares, too, the process by which she found her own voice and describes how she traces her bloodline back from the cantors, through the popular ballads of her mother, to the folk music she sang.

Kate Molleson travels to Budapest to meet Hungary’s greatest living composer, György Kurtág, now 97 years old. Kurtag talks to Kate about the musical homages that he has made to friends, his early focus on the clarity of single notes at the time he wrote his Op.1 String Quartet, the influence of languages on his compositional style, and his new opera, a work based on the life of the German mathematician, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Above all, he talks about his Marta, his wife of over 70 years, with whom he performed piano duets, and he reveals to Kate why he stayed in Hungary in 1956.Kurtag once said that his mother tongue is Bartok, and Kate visits the Bela Bartok Memorial House where she talks to the curator, Zoltán Farkas, about the composer’s relationship with Hungary and the folk traditions that he collected both at home and in neighbouring countries. During a break in a busy rehearsal schedule, the conductor Ivan Fischer also shares his views on Bartok and the distinctive sound of the Budapest Festiv

Tom Service talks to Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinettist with the New York Philharmonic, as he commences his tenure as Artist-in-Residence at Milton Court in London. They discuss his recent performances of Anthony Davis powerful and operatic work for clarinet and orchestra, You Have the Right to Remain Silent, and his Grammy nominated album, American Stories, on which he collaborated with the Pacific Quartet. On the 400th anniversary of the death of the composer Thomas Weelkes, Music Matters visits Chichester Cathedral - the scene of some of his greatest music and noted misdemeanours. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, Dr. Ellie Chan, and Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chichester Cathedral, Charles Harrison, discuss how he advanced the English choral tradition. Following the recent news that the Music Department at Oxford Brookes University it set to close, Professor of music at Oxford University, Jonathan Cross, shares his thoughts about the place of music education in our society. And, Sara M

Ahead of the release of Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s long-awaited film about Leonard Bernstein, Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to the conductor and composer’s daughters - Jamie and Nina - about their parents' relationship, listening to music with their father as children, and how it feels to see their lives recreated on screen. Sara is joined by critics Jessica Duchen and Lillian Crawford who share their thoughts, among other things, about Bradley Cooper’s conducting of Mahler’s Second Symphony in Ely Cathedral - a central scene in the film.Sara talks to American/Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith about a new recording of her chamber works by long-time collaborators Thin Edge New Music Collective. Linda has become a leading voice in Canadian musical culture and she tells Sara about her love of spacious and sparse music, and how stepping away from her composition to weed or wash-up can inspire new ideas.Tomorrow's Warriors is an organisation which has supported and nurtured young musicians in jazz for over 30 years, i

As his new recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra of the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner - all eleven of them - hit the record stores, Tom Service speaks to the German conductor Christian Thielemann. He tells Tom about what had, for him, been a burning desire to embark on the journey to record all of the composer’s symphonies, as well as the consolations of working with one of the world’s greatest orchestras. Thielemann shares his vision, too, for audiences in the German capital following the recent news he’ll succeed Daniel Barenboim as the General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera. With preparations well underway for this year’s London Jazz Festival, Tom catches-up with the ‘Queen of African Music’ - Angélique Kidjo. She describes her first encounter with Beethoven among the vinyl records of classical music her father had collected before the disruption of Benin’s dictatorships, and speaks about her escape to Paris in the 1980s, as well as the joyous spirit of defiance and power of m

Presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch speaks to one of the most treasured and celebrated British mezzo-sopranos, Dame Janet Baker. Following the recent celebrations of her 90th birthday, she reflects on her life in music, the physical and mental toll of performance, and a singer’s responsibility to always serve both the composer and the musical score.Serving the score of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, the much-lauded conductor John Wilson joins Sara to discuss his sumptuous new album - the first ever complete recording of the musical’s original Broadway manuscript. He explains the painstaking research behind the restoration of Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations, how he approaches the task of preparing repertoire for the stage, and how to create the magical sound of musical theatre during its ‘golden age’ in the 1940s. Recently returned from filming concerts performed for soldiers fighting on the frontline, the BBC correspondent Mark Urban tells Music Matters about the current situation inside Ukra

Kate Molleson is joined by South African cellist, singer and composer Abel Selaocoe with his cello in tow, as he prepares to tour this autumn with The Bantu Ensemble. Abel talks about the "swirling cultures" from which he takes his inspiration, whether it's the different church traditions in South Africa or the music of JS Bach, and he treats us to a live improvisation.Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes joins Kate for a walk on the windy slopes of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. With a new boxset featuring Leif Ove's recordings from 1990-2010 due out in October, he reflects on how his approach to music has changed over the years, why there are certain composers whose music he preserves for listening not performing, and how the natural world is at the heart of how he plays.And as the new school year gets underway, we visit Acland Burghley School in Camden, North London, where three years ago the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment moved in. The orchestra's Chief Executive Crispin Woodhead gives us a tour of the

As Radio 3 marks the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death, Tom Service visits Lincoln Cathedral, the centre of musical activity where the composer held positions as organist and master of the basilica’s choristers early in his career. He talks to the scholar Magnus Williamson about how the building’s acoustics shaped Byrd’s compositional voice, and speaks to both the cathedral’s current Director of Music, Aric Prentice, and Lay Vicar, Thomas Wilson. He’s also joined by four leading British composers and musicians who have worked with Byrd's music: Cheryl Frances-Hoad, James Weeks, Gabriel Jackson and Laura Cannell. They each discuss how they have worked Byrd into their own compositional voices.Ahead of her Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra later this month, Tom also hears from the conductor Elim Chan. Winner of the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition in 2014, she tells Tom about her journey at the helm of several of the world’s leading orchestras and why being on stage feels like being a rockst

Presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores the musical legacy of the Windrush generation, as part of the BBC's coverage of the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush's arrival at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June 1948.The composer Shirley J. Thompson joins Sara to discuss a new piano version of her one-singer opera with film, Women of the Windrush, and we hear specially recorded excerpts from the work by soprano Nadine Benjamin and pianist Caroline Jaya-Ratnam. The composers Errollyn Wallen and Des Oliver talk, too, about their own family connections and musical influences, and we hear the story of Belizean folk singer Nadia Cattouse as told by her son, Level 42 keyboardist Mike Lindup.The French-Canadian conductor Nicole Paiement, Founder and Artistic Director of Opera Parallèle in San Francisco, speaks to Sara from her home over-looking the bay while preparing to give the UK premiere of Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer's opera Everest - a work which tells the harrowing story of climbers caught in a blizzard in 1996 - in wha

As the CBSO prepares for a summer of tours to Aldeburgh, Japan, and the BBC Proms, the orchestra’s new Chief Conductor Kazuki Yamada speaks to presenter Tom Service about the joy of music and the goosebumps he experiences while conducting.Tom travels to the South Downs to speak to Australian director Barrie Kosky about a new production, opening this weekend at Glyndebourne, of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. He’s joined by sopranos Golda Schultz and Sally Matthews, as well as conductor Robin Ticciati, to talk about the story of sixteen nuns who meet their death at the hands of the French Revolution.Amid rehearsals at the Royal Opera House, Music Matters hears about the World Premiere of a new ballet, Untitled 2023 – a collaboration between the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. They discuss the somatic relationship between body, dance and music, and why listening to Thorvaldsdottir’s compositions is not a passive experience. And one hundred years after

With his new memoir ‘Formation - Building a Personal Canon, Part I’ hitting bookshops, and a new collaborative album with the tenor Ian Bostridge released this week, the American Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau joins Kate Molleson to discuss his childhood in small town New England, his forays into the New York Jazz scene of the 1990s, his encounters with kind musical heroes and future collaborators, and what it means to be a musician.Telling the story the 18th-century “Irish giant” Charles Byrne, whose corpse was stolen to order and put on public display, Kate speaks to composer Sarah Angliss about the World Premiere of her new opera Giant at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival. She explains how she’s treating this surprisingly tender tale of grave robbing and dissection.As Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month gets under way, Music Matters learns about a new project to highlight the invaluable recorded collection of gypsy and traveller voices archived within the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. We speak to the Univ