Classical For Everyone

Music from and about Seville, the city of Carmen's tobacco factory and Figaro's barber shop; the city of flamenco and fiestas; the city where more operas are set than any other; and the city where almost eight centuries of Spanish dominance does not seem to have been able to erase the sense of the proximity of North Africa and the cultural heritage of the Moorish world. Music by Isaac Albeniz, Joaquin Rodrigo, Georges Bizet, Joaquin Turina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Francisco Guerrero and Giochhino Rossini. All of whom revel in the shifting mirage and extravagant reality that is Seville.
[The episode image is of La Giralda… the belltower of Seville Cathedral… once the minaret of the Grand Mosque of Islamic Seville.]

Much music has been inspired by love, passion or obsession…  but only in a handful of cases has the person who was the inspiration… the muse… become publicly linked to a work. Here are the stories of six of them… Alma Schindler, Josephine Brunsvik, Kamila Stösslová, Peter Pears, Clara Wieck and Mathilde Wesendonck. And the music they inspired… by Gustav Mahler, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leos Janacek, Benjamin Britten, Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner.
[The episode image is a photographic portrait of Alma Schindler taken about eighteen months before she met Mahler. It is likely the image was made by Moriz Nähr but the attribution is difficult to confirm.]
*This episode is from back in April 2025. Whilst I am away from the microphone and the CD library for another week, I'm repeating one of my very favourite episodes. Enjoy.

Composers have drawn inspiration from the sea for centuries but only with the rise of the larger orchestras of the 1800s did they get the palate needed to create fully persuasive depictions of it. So, apart from one piece for solo piano, major orchestral works are what you will hear in this episode... 'The Sea and Sinbad's Ship' from Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Sheherazade', an unfairly short interlude from Benjamin Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes', the overture to Richard Wagner's 'The Flying Dutchman', Claude Debussy's 'The Sunken Cathedral', New Zealander Gareth Farr's massive 'From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs' and more Debussy… 'Games of the Waves' from 'La Mer' or 'The Sea'.
*This episode is from the group that launched the podcast back in February 2025. Whilst I am away from the microphone and the CD library for a couple of weeks, I'm repeating some of my favourite  episodes. Enjoy.

Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)  is arguably the most beloved composer France has given the world… able to take classical and pre-classical forms, absorb the harmonic colours of Impressionism, draw on the dance traditions of his Basque mother's heritage, and infuse his later work with the energy of early jazz. All of it synthesised into a language that is quite distinctly his own. In this episode… a section of his first Piano Concerto, the Pavane for a Dead Princess, a little taste of his String Quartet, the amazing orchestral work La Valse, or The Waltz, the 'Blues' section of his second Violin Sonata… and the irresistible 'Bolero'. Plus a little biography thrown in.
*This episode is from the group that launched the podcast back in February 2025. Whilst I am away from the microphone and the CD library for a couple of weeks, I'm repeating some of my favourite  episodes. Enjoy.

Recent Discoveries Two
This episode is the second one called 'recent discoveries'. And that should only be taken in the very personal sense of 'recent discoveries' for me. Some of it is indeed recent but in addition to music written in the last few years, there are a couple of pieces that date back to the early and mid-20th century so they were well and truly discovered before I encountered them. I want to apply a little bit of gentle pressure on behalf of the unfamiliar. I am going to hope that you will be pleasantly surprised by how good music by people whose names might not know can be… Music from Maria Grenfell, Gabriela Ortiz, Daniel Asia, Ethel Smyth, Herbert Howells, and the perhaps more recognisably… Dmitri Shostakovich.