Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

While we take a pause for Christmas and the New Year, we're bringing you four podcasts which we've particularly enjoyed making. This week's is by James Jolly, and comes from August 2018 when he went to Rome to report on a celebration of the music of a composer currently very much in the news with the release of the Steven Spielberg's film of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein, and whose centenary was being marked that year.

While we take a pause for Christmas, we're bringing you four podcasts which Gramophone's Martin Cullingford and James Jolly have chosen as particularly enjoyable conversations. This podcast dates from February 2019, the month the much-loved singer Dame Emma Kirkby turned 70 – and also the year in which Gramophone celebrated her enormous contribution to musical life with a Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. James Jolly went to talk to the soprano for a special birthday podcast.

While we take a pause for Christmas, we offer four podcasts which Gramophone's Martin Cullingford and James Jolly have chosen as particularly enjoyable and memorable conversations. We start with one of Martin's ... In this archive Gramophone Podcast from October 2018, the baritone Sir Thomas Allen talks about his Champs Hill album, September Songs. Drawing on personal favourites from the 'Great American Songbook', it sees the acclaimed singer step from the opera stage and lieder recital hall for which he is best known, to the music of Broadway. In this fascinating conversation he discusses his love of this repertoire, with its melodic beauty, lyrical inventiveness and emotional directness - and his choice of songs.

This week's episode is a little different. Instead of interviewing an artist about their new album, Gramophone's Editor Martin Cullingford, Editor-in-Chief James Jolly, and Reviews Editor Tim Parry, each choose their favourite three recordings of 2021, and explain why they were so impressed by them. Listen to the discussion - and excerpts from each album - in this week's special edition of the Gramophone Podcast.

Aleksandra Kurzak joined Vienna's Morphing Chamber Orchestra for a new album for Aparté - 'Mozart - Concertante'. The programme culminates in a performance of the great Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, K364, but before that she sings a selection of arias that present many of the orchestra's players in solo roles. James Jolly caught up with the soprano by Zoom in Wrocław.

After leading orchestras in Bournemouth, Baltimore and São Paulo, Marin Alsop became Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2019. Her inaugural concert in Vienna's Konzerthaus featured music by Paul Hindemith, Christopher Rouse and Lera Auerbach, making a strong statement about where her musical sympathies lay. From that opening concert, recorded live, comes a new album from Naxos of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony and one-act opera Sancta Susanna, supplemented by a studio recording of three dances from another of the one-act operas, Nusch-Nuschi. James Jolly caught up with the American conductor to talk Hindemith, her vision for her new tenure in Austria and how the pandemic has reset many perceptions about the 'core' repertoire and how things might change in the future.

For this week's Gramophone podcast, Editor Martin Cullingford is joined by Andrew Nethsingha, Director of the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge to discuss their new album on Signum, 'The Tree' - as well as the recent announcement that the choir will soon welcome female voices for the first time in its history. This week's Gramophone Podcast is produced in Association with Leipzig, the City of Music.

The soprano Jeanine De Bique has released her first solo album, 'Mirrors', with Concerto Köln, for Berlin Classics. Gramophone's James Jolly caught up with her to talk about the recording, as well as Rameau's Platée, also just out from Harmonia Mundi, as she start rehearsals in Paris for Handel's Alcina at the Salle Garner. This Gramophone Podcast is given in association with Leipzig – the City of Music.

In this week's podcast we welcome countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, to talk about his new album À sa guitare, recorded with Thibaut Garcia. A beautiful album that takes us on a journey from the Renaissance to the modern age, it's available on the Erato label. The Gramophone Podcast is produced in association with Leipzig - the city of music.

The great Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink died on October 21 at the age of 92. During his 65 years career he conducted many of the world's great orchestras, holding posts with Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra for 27 years, as well as the London Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera, and regularly guest conducting the Boston Symphony, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Bavarian RSO, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and numerous others. He left over 450 recordings, and they provide the focus for this conversation between Gramophone's Editor in Chief, James Jolly, and the critic and broadcaster, and Gramophone reviewer, Rob Cowan. This Gramophone Podcast is given in association with Leipzig – the City of Music.