As the Barbican Centre in London celebrates its 40th anniversary, Tom Service asks if the future of music venues and cultural hotspots is going big or small, and how should they engage with the communities around them. We talk to the Barbican’s Artistic Director Will Gompertz about the challenges they face with diversity and inclusion, and put those same questions to two other different sized arts centres – the CCA in Glasgow and the ARC in Stockport – in order to find out how arts centres can best serve the communities they are rooted in.Tom takes a trip to The Holbeck in Leeds where, during the pandemic, Alan Lane’s ground breaking Slung Low Theatre company operated the venue as a food bank, serving the local community with a mission to ‘provide the best cultural life for the people of Holbeck’. Slung Low’s work has been an inspiration for Kate Whitley, the composer and founder of the Multi-Story Orchestra; she tells us how in making the connections between an arts organisation and the communities where they work, there are resonances for the whole of classical music culture.Food and Music are undoubtedly two things that bring people together. We talk to author Pierpaolo Polzonetti about the importance of food in opera with reference to his new book, ‘Feasting and Fasting in Opera - From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet’, and to mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston about her online resource and cookbook, ‘Notes from Musician’s Kitchens’. Plus, we find out what she really eats on stage…And we talk to conductor Giovanni Antonini about his 'Haydn 2032' project, in which he aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by 2032, and immerse ourselves in the world of Haydn’s life-affirming music.Producer: Martin Webb
Kultur & Gesellschaft
Music Matters Folgen
The stories that matter, the people that matter, the music that matters
Folgen von Music Matters
148 Folgen
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Folge vom 26.02.2022Art centres, Giovanni Antonini, Opera and food
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Folge vom 19.02.2022Beatrice Rana, The Ordering of Moses, Claude Debussy and Emma BardacImage: © Simon FowlerThe Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins Tom Service to discuss her immersion in Beethoven’s late piano sonatas during Italy’s lockdown, and her relationship with one of the most famous works in the canon – the composer’s ‘Emperor’ concerto. She reflects on how the circumstances of Chopin’s life are articulated in his Scherzi, and on thanking audiences for being part of performances. With Robert Nathaniel Dett’s Oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, receiving its first outing in the UK with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on Wednesday, some 85 years after the live broadcast of its premiere at Carnegie Hall, Music Matters is joined by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, soprano Nadine Benjamin and researcher, horn player, and conductor Dwight Pile-Gray to explore what Dett’s music can tell us today.As Lindisfarne Castle welcomes back visitors after its winter recess, we speak to the sound artist Paul Rooney and cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir about their collaboration on a new project, Song (After Nature) – a contemporary soundscape installation which will be heard throughout parts of the 16th-century stronghold. They reveal how the calls of Lindisfarne’s resident grey seals provide the creative impetus for their work. We hear, too, from the scholar Hannah E. Collins about a frequent guest at the castle, Guilhermina Suggia, and the role the cellist played as a trailblazer for female performers in the early 20th century as well as the legacy she left. And, we speak to the pianist Lucy Parham and author Gillian Opstad, ahead of the launch of her new book Emma and Claude Debussy – The Biography of a Relationship, and learn more about the composer’s marriage to one of the titans of early 20th-century Parisian life, Emma Bardac, and the role she played in supporting his creative output.
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Folge vom 05.02.2022Holding onto Musical TraditionsSara Mohr-Pietsch talks to Ruth Slenczynska, the last living pupil of Rachmaninoff, from her home in Pennsylvania ahead of releasing a brand new solo piano album entitled My Life in Music. She reminisces about her childhood as a prodigy, connecting with her audiences, and performing still in her ninth decade.The writer, musician and composer Richard Thomas, and contemporary BAFTA and multi award-winning artist, photographer and filmmaker Alison Jackson, join Sara to discuss their new collaboration at the Birmingham Rep – The Covid Variations: A Piano Drama – which takes the form of a unique film-and-concert-in-one depicting everyone from Donald Trump to the Royal Family, and provides an imaginary glimpse into the lived experience of celebrities during the pandemic.As Mali's military leaders expel the French ambassador for comments made by the French foreign minister about the transitional government, ethnomusicologist Lucy Duran and the BBC’s reporter Lalla Sy explain more about the fragile situation inside the former French colony following the imposition of sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States. We hear, too, from Malian musicians including the singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, the balafon virtuoso Fodé Lassana Diabaté, and kora player Ballaké Sissoko, as they describe how years of civil war, military coups, and insurgencies by Islamist militants are collectively impacting music making in the country. And, as we celebrate the centenary of the publishing of James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, scholar Katherine O’Callaghan explains the musical references which litter the work and how music informs Joyce’s language, while the composer Betsy Jolas remembers accompanying James Joyce at the piano as he sang.
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Folge vom 22.01.2022Tabea Zimmermann, Femi Elufowoju jr, Maria YudinaPhoto credit: Marco BorggreveSara Mohr-Pietsch talks to viola virtuoso Tabea Zimmermann about her dazzling career on the concert platform. She first picked up a viola at the age of three, and in the decades since she’s performed with the world’s greatest orchestras and has become a hugely respected chamber musician and teacher. She discusses the music that means the most to her, the curiosity that comes from working with young performers, and the future of classical music.Theatre artist Femi Elufowoju jr is making his debut as an opera director with a new production of Verdi’s gruesome tragic opera, Rigoletto at Opera North. He’s drawn on his own life as a British Nigerian to update the drama and the staging, dealing with issues of identity and discrimination, as a way to open up and illuminate the story. He joins Sara along with baritone Eric Greene (Rigoletto) and soprano Jasmine Habersham (Gilda) as they discuss the new staging and their relationship to Verdi’s music.We explore the extraordinary story of the 20th century Russian pianist Maria Yudina, brought to life in a new biography ‘Playing with Fire’ by Elizabeth Wilson. Maria Yudina became one of the most respected and famous, but also controversial Soviet pianists and was a friend and champion to the great composers of her day such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Boulez. She was also an active revolutionary, an advocate for the oppressed, and a carer for the sick. Sara talks to Elizabeth Wilson and composer Gerard McBurney about the musician, her recordings, and the urban myths which surround her life.Plus, Sara is joined by composer Nitin Sawhney and Coventry's Poet Laureate Emilie Lauren Jones to discuss 'Ghosts in the Ruins' - a new site-specific work to mark the 60th anniversary of Coventry Cathedral. The project was commissioned as part of Coventry UK City of Culture and takes Britten’s War Requiem, written for the consecration of the new cathedral, as the starting point. We find out about how the new piece brings together local musicians, choirs, poets and projections.