Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

Gramophone's current Young Artist of the Year is Lise Davidsen, a singer with a huge future ahead of her. May 31 sees the release of her much-anticipated Decca debut album, opera arias and orchestral songs by Wagner and Richard Strauss, for which she's joined by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen. James Jolly went to see her at her home in Copenhagen for a 'Musician and the Score' article on Strauss's Four Last Songs (you can read it in Gramophone's June issue), but he also took the opportunity to talk to her more generally about this solo album.

Michael Fabiano, recently in London to sing the title-role in Gounod's Faust at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has recorded an album of arias by Donizetti and Verdi. He was joined for the Pentatone sessions by the London Philharmonic Orchestra - with whom he'd worked at Glyndebourne – and Enrique Mazzola. James Jolly caught up with Michal Fabiano during rehearsals at Covent Garden to talk about the programme of the recital, and his interest in the operatic music of this period.

The latest recording from the choir of St John's College, Cambridge celebrates the 150th anniversary of the consecration of its chapel, and its 100th recording. Director of Music Andrew Nethsingha talks to Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford about the album - titled Locus Iste - and about how the extraordinary building shapes the choir's sound.

Kaija Saariaho has written a song-cycle, True Fire, for the baritone Gerald Finley, and which he has now recorded with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu, for Ondine. James Jolly paid Gerald Finley a visit to talk about the score, its challenges and how he and Saariaho first encountered each other.

'Colin Currie and Steve Reich. Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton' is the third album to be released on Colin Currie's own label and captures five performances, taken live, at a Steve Reich presentation in Paris. The music ranges from Clapping Music of 1972 to Pulse of 2015. James Jolly met up with Colin to talk about his long association with Reich's music, the approach needed to perform music of mathematical precision yet at the same surprising emotional weight, and performing Clapping Music with Reich himself.

German-American violinist Augustin Hadelich talks to James Jolly about the challenge of Brahms's great Violin Concerto, which he has twinned with György Ligeti's Violin Concerto of some 110 years later for his new recording on Warner Classics.

Carolyn Sampson talks to Editor-in-Chief James Jolly about 'Reason in Madness', her new recording from BIS performed with pianist Joseph Middleton, which focuses on some of literature's heroines whose mental state has been unbalanced by sadness or tragedy, drawing on some glorious, and unsettling, music from composers including Brahms, Schumann, Richard Strauss, Chausson, Saint-Saëns and Poulenc.