Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

As we step into the summer holiday period, this week we thought we’d revisit one of our special longer-length episodes from last year featuring one of our writers, our historical recording expert Rob Cowan on what we can gain from listening to recordings from the past. Why should we listen to historic recordings? What can we learn from them, and which artists, many decades on, still offer listeners such extraordinary joy and insight? Across more than 45 fascinating minutes Rob addresses these questions, and we play excerpts from some absolute highlights from the archives. 

Hattie Butterworth meets soprano Sophie Bevan ahead of her appearance at the First Night of the Proms. Moving through Sophie's early life and career, they speak about her experience navigating a diagnosis of bowel cancer, the importance of her faith and family, and what she wishes audiences knew about the life of a singer.  Music included in the epsiode: 'Take the Heart' from Jephtha Act I, Scene 3: George Friderich Handel · The Sixteen · Harry Christophers on CORO (2014) 'Perché, se tanti siete' from Scena di Berenic on Perfido!  · Sophie Bevan · Franz Joseph Haydn · Ian Page · Classical Opera / The Mozartists on Signum Classics (2017) 'Ferma l'ali' from Pt. 1 Scene 2 from Handel's La Resurrezione · The English Concert · Harry Bicket · Sophie Bevan on Linn Records (2023) 'Beati Quorum Via' by Charles Villiers Stanford from Vidi Speciosam: Sacred Choral Music · Graham Ross · The Bevan Family Consort  on Signum Records (2023)    

In April, Dalia Stasevska, Chief Conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, launched a new project, ‘Dalia’s Mixtape’, for Platoon. Leading her BBC orchestra, she has recorded ten works by ten modern composers, each shedding a new and different light on the symphony orchestra and what it can do. And, breaking with tradition, the project will unfold piece by piece over the next half year. And each work will be accompanied by a podcast focusing on the music. In this latest episode, hosted by Gramophone’s Andrew Mellor, Dalia’s guest is the Master of the King's Music, Dame Judith Weir whose orchestral work Still, Glowing features on the 'Mixtape'. Composer and conductor discuss this haunting piece.

Conductor and founder of The Sixteen Harry Christophers speaks to Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford about his new album, ‘70: A Life in Music’, which features 39 carefully selected recordings from the conductor's career so far, spanning periods from the renaissance to contemporary music. Reflecting on his 45-year career, Christophers' talks about his introduction to music, the formation of The Sixteen and the future of young composers today.  ‘70: A Life in Music’ is out now on CORO.  

Soprano and composer Héloïse Werner speaks to Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford about her new album, ‘Close-ups’, which features composers Barbara Strozzi, Julie Pinel and Hildegard of Bingen as well as compositions by Werner herself. Her second album sees her collaborating with fellow musicians Colin Alexander, Julian Azkoul, Max Baillie, Kit Downes, Ruth Gibson and Marianne Schofield.  ‘Close-ups’ is out now on Delphian.  

For their debut Harmonia Mundi release as a duo, pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy have recorded two works by Schubert, the great Fantasy in F minor and the Divertissement à la Hongroise, and, in between, a work they commissioned, Trompe-l’oeil by the Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov (b1955), who has said of his piece, ‘You can envisage it as the follow-up, or the rough draft of Schubert’s Fantasy. Something incomplete. Like a study for a composition that’s been abandoned en route.’ James Jolly went to visit Pavel and Samson, partners both off stage and on, at their home in North London recently to talk about the art of piano four-hands …

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená speaks to Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford about her new album, ‘Czech Songs’, which features composers Bohuslav Martinů, Antonín Dvořák, Hans Krása and Gideon Klein, and for which she's joined by the Czech Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle. ‘Czech Songs’ is out now on Pentatone.

The American tenor Nicholas Phan has just released an album of protest songs, many from the 1960s by legendary singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger and Malvina Reynolds. It also contains a new work by Errollyn Wallen. ‘A Change in Gonna Come’, featuring Palaver Strings, and a couple of guest appearances by Farayi Malek, is just out from Azica. James Jolly talked recently to Nicholas Phan about the album, and also about another song project that he’s currently in the studio working on …

Since winning BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2012, aged 15, Laura van der Heijden has enjoyed a career as a cellist to watch. She’s a Chandos artist, recording both as a soloist and also as part of Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. This month she makes her concerto debut with an album of three British cello concertos, Frank Bridge’s Oration, Sir William Walton’s Cello Concerto (the work she played for the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition) and Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s new cello concerto, Earth-Sea-Air. She is joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. James Jolly recently went to speak to Laura about the new release. You can also hear Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s cello concerto, Earth-Sea-Air, at the BBC Proms on Friday, July 26 joined by the same performers as on the new recording.

This week's Gramophone Podcast sees pianist Can Çakmur join Editor Martin Cullingford to talk about the latest album in his series for the BIS label in which he pairs works by Schubert with music by composers inspired by him - in this instance Ernst Krenek. As well as introducing Krenek's Second Sonata, he also talks about the composer's completion of Schubert's Piano Sonata in C Major, D 840.