All The Right Notes

The uplifting sound of the horn, particularly in an orchestral setting, is familiar to audiences worldwide – but how do you play this wonderful instrument? Charlotte Smith interviews former London Symphony, London Philharmonic and current Royal Opera House principal horn David Pyatt, who takes her through her first horn lesson. This episode is sponsored by Bang & Olufsen. Musical excerpts: Brahms Symphony No. 1 London Symphony Orchestra/Jonathan Pasternack Naxos 8.572448 (2011) https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.572448 Franz Strauss Nocturno for Horn and Piano, Op 7 from David Pyatt Recital David Pyatt (horn); Martin Jones (piano) Erato 9029534229 (1998) https://www.warnerclassics.com/release/recital-horn-works Interview recorded at the Royal Academy of Music, London: https://www.ram.ac.uk Student horn loaned with kind permission by Paxman Musical Instruments, London: https://www.paxman.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smoking and alcohol are definite no-nos, but what else can you do to ensure your singing voice is in top condition? Jeremy Pound speaks to Olivia Sparkhall, author of A Young Person’s Guide to Vocal Health, to find out. This episode is sponsored by Bang & Olufsen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The life of a performing musician isn’t easy. There are multiple mental health challenges, including performance nerves, and a sometimes-overwhelming sense of competition and judgement. Charlotte Smith interviews cellist and former BBC Young Musician winner Laura van der Heijden about how she copes with these pressures. This episode is sponsored by Bang & Olufsen. Musical excerpt: Lili Boulanger Reflets from album Path to the Moon Laura van der Heijden (cello); Jâms Coleman (piano) Chandos CHAN20274 (2024) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Path-Moon-Laura-Heijden-Coleman/dp/B0CQ6YZXRM/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To the uninitiated, the conductor can seem superfluous – simply waving their arms in the air while the orchestra does the hard work. But the art of conducting is fundamental to a great orchestra’s sound and identity. Jeremy Pound speaks to BBC Symphony Orchestra principal conductor Sakari Oramo about this mysterious vocation. This episode is sponsored by Bang & Olufsen. Musical Excerpt Dora Pejacevic Symphony, Op. 41 – IV. Allegro Appassionato (opening) BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo Chandos CHAN 5299 https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205299 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we chat to the multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake from his home in Dorset. True to form, he recorded his side of the conversation outdoors in the countryside, so there are quite a few birds and woodland creatures keeping us company throughout this episode. He explains how he records the most intimate, low-level sounds of animals, fungi, rain and even tree sap, and how he goes about recontextualising them in his music. He also tells us all about his musical childhood with his mother, who was trained in Mongolian overtone chanting and who had previously lived and travelled with the pioneering electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Links: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/B084T51RCY/ The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul by Jill Purce https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystic-Spiral-Journey-Soul-Imagination/dp/0500810052 Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music by Dust to Digital https://dust-digital.com/pages/excavated-shellac-an-alternate-history-of-the-world-s-music-1907-1967-tracklist Smithsonian Folkways (ethnographic recordings and folk from around the world) https://folkways.si.edu/ Listen to all the music featured in this episode on our Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ZoAZxQIlWVfH1dsiP5GAV?si=a1187808f9334992 Music featured: Cuckoo Song (Cosmo Sheldrake, Wake Up Calls) Teo (Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain) Wriggle (Cosmo Sheldrake, The Much Much How How and I) Rich (Cosmo Sheldrake, Pelicans We) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski discusses his recent recording of music by Stanchinsky (out now on Ondine), discovering the music of Bacewicz and his downtime during the pandemic has seen him fall in love with the piano all over again. Recordings featured: Stanchinsky: Piano Sonata in E flat minor (Peter Jablonski) Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Yuri Boukoff, Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire/Ljubomir Romansky) Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Martha Argerich , LSO/Claudio Abbado) Chopin: Mazurka, Op. 6 No. 4 (Peter Jablonski) Bacewicz: Children’s Suite – VII: Gavotte (Morta Grigaliūnaitė) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

British clarinettist Julian Bliss has an extremely wide breadth of listening tastes, from heavy metal to core classical via jazz and funk. In this episode, he tells us about his passion for Rachmaninov and Oscar Petersen and why he thinks wind band music should be taken more seriously in the UK. He also reflects on the last year of lockdown and what it meant for his practice and approach to performance. Recordings featured: Stranger on the Shore (Acker Bilk) Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Martha Argerich, Berlin Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado) Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Alexandre Tharaud, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Alexander Vedernikov) The Masquerade is Over (Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley) Eric Whitacre: Equus Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano/Herbert von Karajan) Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink) Glass: Etude No. 2 (Vikingur Olafsson) Invaders Must Die (The Prodigy) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Montenegrin guitarist talks about falling in love with the guitar in Montenegro, ‘growing up’ in London, his favourite guitar to play, the healing power of Mozart and his latest album The Moon & The Forest. Recordings featured: Joby Talbot: Ink Dark Moon – Luminoso (Miloš Karadaglić) Howard Shore: The Forest (Miloš Karadaglić) Albéniz: Suite Española – Asturias (Andres Segovia) JS Bach: Suite No. 4 in E major BWV 1006a - Prelude (John Williams) Mahler: Symphony No. 5 - Finale (Vienna Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein) Mozart: String Quartet No. 2 in D major, K 155 (Armida Quartett) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author and Indian classical singer Amit Chaudhuri talks to BBC Music Magazine about his relationship with western and Indian classical music, the allegories and narratives that can be created within music and his experience of working as the librettist on Ravi Shankar’s opera Sukanya. His latest book, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music, was published recently by Faber, and is part memoir/part essay, focused on his enduring love for Indian classical music and the power of the voice. Music featured: Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Chile Blues Ustad Dilshad Khan: Raga Todi Kishori Amonkar: Raga Shuddh Kalyan – Khyal In Drut Teental Pandit Bhimsen Joshi: Sun Surat Rangili Vishmadev Chatterjee: Bamana De Bata Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 (Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von Karajan) Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 7 (Jonathan Biss) Ravi Shankar: Sukanya (London Philharmonic Orchestra/David Murphy) Listen to all the music featured in this episode on our Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3j2hzTzleS7cTs6GdIyDwa?si=dfca6ff7b9354707 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We speak to DJ, broadcaster and presenter Edith Bowman about her fanatical love of film music and the scores that have shaped who she is today. A former Radio 1 DJ, Bowman has spent the last few years presenting the Soundtracking podcast, in which she talks to directors, actors and composers about the use of music in their films. She tells us about the origins of this podcast and the musical discoveries she’s made through it, the scores she returns to time and time again, and the opportunities lockdown has afforded to independent cinema. Recordings featured: ‘Hand Covers Bruise’ from The Social Network (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) ‘Just Us’ from Soul (Trent Reznor and Atticus) ‘Welcome to Lunar Industries’ from Moon (Clint Mansell) ‘Bathroom Dance’ from Joker (Hildur Guðnadóttir) ‘Cavatina’ from The Deer Hunter (John Williams) ‘The Way of the Ghost’ from Ghost of Tsushima (Ilan Eshkeri) Listen to all the music featured in this episode in our Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4UztfCiREQVMqDOV1oi4mA?si=i73QlVMETeG3tXDT8n6gUQ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's episode of the Music to my Ears podcast, we speak to Paul Morley, the pop journalist and musician and, more recently, classical music devotee . Brought up in Stockport, Paul cut his teeth in music journalism in Manchester. He then went on to write for the New Musical Express, where he rapidly became one of the paper’s most respected critics, leading to regular appearances on radio and TV. In 1983, Morley and producer Trevor Horn founded ZTT Records, which soon hit both the top of the charts and the headlines with the release of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome album. In the same year, they also formed the group The Art of Noise, which had a string of hits including a cover of Prince’s Kiss, featuring Tom Jones. In more recent years, however, Paul has turned his attention towards classical music, and in 2010 took part in a BBC Four documentary called The Art of Composing, which saw him study at the Royal Academy of Music for a year. In 2020, he charted his developing interest in a new book called A Sound Mind: How I Fell In Love with Classical Music, which has now been published by Bloomsbury. Paul talked to BBC Music Magazine’s deputy editor Jeremy Pound over Zoom during the second period of lockdown in England, and told him how, from his pop and rock background, he gradually fell under classical music’s spell. Recordings featured: Brian Eno: Fullness of Wind (Variation on Pachelbel's Canon in D) Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande: 'Je les tiens dans le mains' London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle LSO Live LSO0790 Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 2: I. Overture Borodin Quartet Decca 4834159 Janáček: Words Fail Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, reviews editor Michael Beek sits down with the Russian-British conductor Vasily Petrenko. Vasily recently said farewell as chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and is about to embark on final season as chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Speaking from his father’s home in St. Petersburg, Vasily talks about returning to the condtuctor’s podium after months in lockdown, saying goodbye to the RLPO and his new appointment with the Royal Philharmonic in 2021. Recordings featured: Bernstein: West Side Story – Mambo (New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein) JS Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I – Prelude No. 1 in C major (Sviatoslav Richter, piano) Sounds of Nature Beethoven: Grosse Fuge in B flat major, Op. 133 (arr. string orchestra) (Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Peter Oundjian) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices