Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

Gramophone's Editor Martin Cullingford speaks to James Jolly about the 2025 Orchestra of the Year nominated orchestras, discussing the impact each of them has made to recordings and the wider musical landscape To vote for Gramophone's Orchestra of the Year 2025, head to gramophone.co.uk/vote25

Conductor John Andrews joins Hattie Butterworth to speak about the debut recording of Sir Granville Bantock and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s folk opera, The Seal Woman. They explore the folk song collecting of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, as well as Andrews’s commitment to uncovering lesser-known repertoire

Kitty Whately joins Hattie Butterworth to discuss her new album on Chandos with pianist Edwige Herchenroder​ titled Horizons: French Melodies. They also explore the historic erasure of women composers, as well as Kitty's ongoing advocacy and research

The vocal ensemble VOCES8 are marking their 20th anniversay with a new release – out today – celebrating the full breadth of their creativity, and an exciting season of concerts. Editor Martin Cullingford sat down with three of the key figures behind this most innovative of ensembles – the co-founders Barnaby Smith, Artistic Director, and Paul Smith, CEO, and soprano and long-standing member of the group Andrea Haines – to look back over 20 years of creativity and achievement, and forward to the future. 

This week’s Gramophone podcast is a special focus on one of the most significant of 20th century composers, Dimitri Shostakovich, the 50th anniversary of whose death we mark this year. As our guide to his music we’re privileged to have conductor Andris Nelsons, who, together with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has just reached the end of a journey through all his symphonies, plus the concertos for cello, piano and violin, all recently released by Deutsch Grammophon. Across half an hour of fascinating insight, he tells Editor Martin Cullingford about how he responds to Shostakovich’s music and life, and about what makes the composer’s music so distinct, and so remarkable.

The German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's 100th birthday falls on May 28. One of the most versatile singers of the last century – his operatic repertoire alone ranged from Gluck, Handel and Mozart via Verdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss to Berg, Busoni and Reimann – it's his devotion to song that remains his lasting legacy. To mark the anniversary of Fischer-Dieskau's birth, Gramophone's James Jolly spoke to song specialist and author of Schubert: The Complete Song Texts (Schirmer: 1988), Richard Wigmore. They focused on Fischer-Dieskau's audio recordings of Schubert's greatest song-cycle Winterreise (1828) which include three with Gerald Moore, as well as versions with Klaus Billing, Hermann Reuter, Daniel Barenboim, Jörg Demus, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia and Maurizio Pollini.

In this week's episode, Editor Martin Cullingford met with the founder and Music Director of Bach Collegium Japan Masaaki Suzuki, along with the group's Principal Conductor Masato Suzuki, to talk about their new recording of Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem, available now on BIS – as well as discussing Bach's St John Passion, which they had performed the day prior to the interview. The interview took place last year in, appropriately enough, London's Japan House.

In 2007, Yevgeny Sudbin released an album of music by Alexander Scriabin. Reviewing it in Gramophone, Bryce Morrison described it as a 'disc in a million'. Now, Sudbin has returned to the composer for his 25th recording for BIS, and offers a wide-ranging survey of music that includes two more of the piano sonatas. James Jolly caught up with Yevgeny Sudbin recently to talk about his relationship with the composer and his unique musical world.

Kahchun Wong, the Principal Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, shares fascinating insights into his journey with the orchestra and their recent recording of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. He discusses the unique chemistry cultivated during rehearsals and the orchestra's deep roots in Manchester. Wong also explores the emotional depth of Bruckner's music, contrasting cultural interpretations from Japan and Italy. Additionally, he highlights the varied interpretations of the symphony, making for an enriching discussion on orchestral collaboration and musical expression.

Zlatomir Fung won the Cello category of the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, and also has an enviable collection of other cello awards and prizes to his name. He was a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Winner in 2022 and was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2020. His debut recording, ‘Fantasies’, is just out from Signum and on it he explores, with his pianist Richard Fu, a very specific genre, the virtuoso fantasy based on popular operas of the day. And Zlatomir has contributed his own fantasy based on Janáček's Jenůfa. James Jolly went to talk to him at Henry Wood Hall in London earlier this year just before a rehearsal with the London Philharmonic with whom he was performing a couple of concerts.