Music Matters Folgen

Tom Service visits Evelyn Glennie to discuss her life and career. As a soloist and improviser, the profoundly deaf musician created a role that had never existed in the classical world before, that of a solo percussionist. Growing up on a farm in Aberdeenshire, Evelyn Glennie’s journey to musical stardom took her through the Royal Academy of Music to playing at the Proms in 1992; she was a household name on TV throughout the late 80s and 90s, and led hundreds of musicians at the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. She's commissioned an entire repertoire of concertos, has a vast archive of percussion instruments and has a determination to make the most of every moment. With Tom, as she shows him around her many instruments, she explores the essential principle that's been the cornerstone of her life - listening.

As her career takes flight, the French-Italian mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre talks to presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch about her love of baroque music, how her ballet training has influenced both her voice and stage presence, and the special musical alchemy that she experiences while collaborating with Thomas Dunford and the Jupiter Ensemble. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the late American composer Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations – a series of text-based scores that instruct groups of people to practice ‘sounding’ and listening together – Music Matters speaks to the improviser and saxophonist, Artur Vidal, and sound artist and researcher, Ximena Alarcón ahead of a weekend of performances at Café Oto in London. They describe how Oliveros’ works broke with the conventions that separate composer, performer, and audience, and discuss how her Sonic Meditations became the blueprint for the composer’s hugely influential Deep Listening school. As China eases its Covid restrictions, Sara speaks to the Shanghai-based journalist Rudolph Tang to learn how the country’s classical music sector is returning to business after the pandemic.And, during rehearsals for Richard Jones’ new production of Rheingold at English National Opera, Sara joins the musicologist John Deathridge backstage to hear more about his new translation of the first instalment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. She asks the musicologist Barbara Eichner about the nuances of creating a convincing, contemporary translation of High German epic poetry, and is joined by ENO’s Head of Music, Martin Fitzpatrick, and music critic at the New York Times, Zachary Woolf, to discuss whether the enterprise of translating foreign language operas into an audience’s vernacular remains relevant.

Composer Dobrinka Tabakova talks to Tom Service about her artist residency at The Hallé in Manchester. She discusses her love of melody, the thrill of writing for youth orchestra, the importance of understanding the character of the musicians she writes for, and how meeting composer Iannis Xenakis when she was 14 shaped her musical path.Tom visits the site of the new Shireland City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Academy in West Bromwich, which opens in September 2023. As the first state school in the country to be established in collaboration with an orchestra, the academy is built around a central performance space which will also be open as a venue in evenings and throughout the year for the wider Sandwell community and beyond. Tom takes a tour of the site with CBSO Chief Executive Stephen Maddock, Principal Designate David Green and architect Claire Mantle to find out more.Emily MacGregor joins Tom to talk about her new book ‘Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity and the Sound of 1933’ which explores how symphonies in Europe and America reflect and shape the politics of their time, and how they resonate with us today. The book looks at symphonies by composers such as Kurt Weill, Hans Pfitzner, Roy Harris and Florence Price which were written or premiered in 1933 – a year in which Hitler came to power in Germany and the Great Depression reached its peak in the United States.We explore the past, present and future of immersive performances with David Owen Norris who takes us on a whistle-stop tour of how composers and musicians have played with sound and space throughout the centuries. Tom also visits the d&b Audiotechnik demo facility in Stroud to find out about the latest technology being used to create immersive audio performances in halls, theatres and opera houses across the world.