This week I am doing something I have only ever done once before, devoting a whole episode to one piece of music - Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No.3. I’ll be playing the 1992 Nonesuch recording, which Robin Hilton, host of NPR’s All Songs Considered, described as revealing the "soul of the universe" in a "wondrous way”.
Nonesuch Selects: Flea talking about Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No.3.
Robert Greenberg - Music as a Mirror of History - Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3
Nonesuch Selects: Sarah Kirkland Snider talks about Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No.3
The London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman with soprano Dawn Upshaw perform Henryk Górecki - Symphony No. 3.
Ep 152 - New Adventures in Music 4
27/04/2026 | 53 mins.
New Adventures in Music is a series within a series devoted to the thrill of musical discovery and the joy of listening. This week we have three new and recent releases as well as a tribute to French electronic music pioneer, the composer Éliane Radigue, who died on the 23rd of February this year. The episodes featured work episodes is her 1983 magnetic tape composition Elimination of Desires but keep an ear out for Vietnamese-American composer Viet Cuong’s joyful 3 movement concerto - Re(new)al.
Gilda Lyons and Robert Frankenberry perform gather-summon offering from Magic and Desire: Songs of Intimate Connections
Yang Bao - Human and I
Éliane Radigue - Elimination of Desires
Ep 151 - Cloud Illusions - Part 3
20/04/2026 | 58 mins.
This week, it’s cloud music from The Land of the Long White White Cloud.
Jian Liu performs David Hamilton - Clouds Over Aoraki.
The NZ Trio perform Jenny McLeod - Clouds
Nick Nock - Land Of The Long White Cloud
Gillian Whitehead: Clouds Over Mata-au
Ross Harris - Dark Clouds
Gillian Rivers, Ciaran Wright, Hunter Craig, and Josh Meads perform John Rimmer - Clouds over Pirongia
The Florida State Percussion Ensemble perform John Psathas - Cloud Folk
Ep 150 - Cloud Illusions - Part 2
13/04/2026 | 1h 32 mins.
This weeks exploration of Clouds is all about the ephemeral, allegorical and esoteric.
Chanticleer perform Majel Connery - I am a Cloud
Jennifer Koh, Jaime Laredo and the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble perform Anna Clyne - Prince of Clouds
Hua Wang, Ge Zhao, Yang Di, Xuemeng Wu and Chen Yao perform Chen Yao - Cloud Herding
Apollo Chamber Orchestra perform John Luther Adams - Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing.
Ep 149 - Cloud Illusions - One
06/04/2026 | 1h 12 mins.
I was recently watching Jaques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime, which features some artful shots of modernist buildings silhouetted against azure blue skies dotted with white cumulus clouds.
It’s an evocative sight and I got to thinking about clouds and the way they interact with our psyche. The result is 3 episodes of music that examine clouds from a variety of perspectives and contexts. Based on Kālidāsa’s 4th-5th century lyric poem Meghadūta, this weeks featured work is Gustav Holst’s The Cloud Messenger.
Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now
Anja Arko performs Florence Price - Clouds
The Malmö Opera Chorus perform Florence Price - Summer Clouds
The Berlin Philharmonic performs Debussy: Nocturnes, CD 98: I. Nuages
Sviatoslav Richter performs Liszt - Nuages gris, S.199
The London Symphony Chorus, The London Symphony Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Della Jones perform Gustav Holst - The Cloud Messenger
Exploring classical music in all its glories and complexities. From the sweetest melodic to the cutting edge of the avant-garde... from the deep past to the freshest contemporary. All of it. The joy of classical music.
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