Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

For this week's Gramophone Podcast, Editor Martin Cullingford talked to violinist María Dueñas to talk about her wonderful new album of Paganini's 24 Caprices - as well as works by successors who were influenced by the style - which is available now on Deutsche Grammophon.

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The pianist Samson Tsoy makes his solo debut on record with an album for Linn, 'Inmost Heart'. Built around Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, the programme explores Brahms's fascination with the Baroque, but also how his music was later transcribed by Reger and Busoni.

This Gramophone Podcast is given in association with Wigmore Hall

James Jolly visited Samson at his North London home to talk about the new album, his journey from Kazakhstan to London via Moscow, and how he plans to incorporate music from the album into his concert programmes.

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Soprano Fatma Said shares the closeness she feels to the world of lieder and how this has lead to her latest album on Warner Classics. She speaks to Hattie Butterworth about the element of friendship within a musicians' professional and personal life, as well as her creative decisions throughout the album to include a number of pianists and instrumentalists, and even a male voice choir

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Dmitry Masleev took first prize in the Piano category of the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Competition and since then has released a number of recordings. The latest, from Aparté, is a concertante collection of Liszt's Totentanz, his Rhapsodie espagnole (in a version for piano and orchestra made by Masleev's professor at the Moscow Conservatoire, Mikhail Petukhov) and Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. He was joined by the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra.

James Jolly, who first met Masleev during the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, caught up with him again to talk about how the competition changed the course of his career, the new album and how the Dies irae theme infuses so many great classical works.

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Seong-Jin Cho, the 30-year-old pianist and winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, has been entrusted by Deutsche Grammophon to spearhead the company's celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great French composer, Maurice Ravel.

The first release, out on January 17, contains the complete solo piano works, and the second, due on February 21, is of the two piano concertos (a live recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons).

Gramophone's James Jolly caught up with Seong-Jin Cho just after the pianist had performed the complete solo works in a single evening in Liechtenstein to talk about Ravel's important contribution to the piano repertoire.

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Organist and pianist James McVinnie's new album 'Dreamcatcher' is a beautiful series of works by contemporary composers including Nico Muhly, John Adams, Giles Swayne, Gabriella Smith, Meredith Monk and others, all based around ideas of imagining – be that to do with memory, architecture, musical form or social justice. He joins Editor Martin Cullingford in this week's Podcast to talk through the programme, and about the sound world he's created for this captivating recording. 'Dreamcatcher' is available on the Pentatone label from next Friday, January 17.

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Last August Gramophone's James Jolly travelled to Montana in the USA, to sample the musical, artistic and architectural wonders of Tippet Rise, an arts centre created by Peter and Cathy Halstead on a 12,000 acre working ranch. As well as possesssing a wonderful concert hall, Tippet Rise also plays host to numerous large sculptures, some of which can also be used as performance spaces. And for a number of weekends each year musicians from all over the world come to perform at Tippet Rise.

In 2024, pianists Yevgeny Sudbin and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet were among the performers and James took the opportunity, made considerably easier by Tippet Rise's state-of-the-art recording facilities, to sit down with them to talk about pianos, recording, repertoire and the place in which they all found ourselves …

The photograph was taken in The Olivier Music Barn, Tippet Rise's concert hall, in front of Mark di Suvero's painting Seminal (1978-82, acrylic on linen).

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In a special edition of the Gramophone Podcast, we explore the music of Charles Villiers Stanford with the leading expert on the composer, Jeremy Dibble, who joins Editor Martin Cullingford to mark the centenary year of Stanford's death. Though arguably still best known today for his church music, we discuss the full breadth of Stanford's works, including his symphonies, songs, chamber music, and his operas - the latter a genre he was devoted to throughout his life.

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William Christie, the founder - and guiding spirit for the past 45 years – of Les Arts Florissants, celebrates his 80th birthday on December 19.

Gramophone's James Jolly went to visit him at home in Paris to talk about his long career and its colossal impact of the rediscovery of the music of his adopted homeland. Since leaving the USA in the early 1970s and settling in France, Christie has been a major figure both in concert and on record (with a clutch of Gramophone Awards to his name), focusing on music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Their conversation ranged widely taking in memories of the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, the countertenor Alfred Deller, the founder of Harmonia Mundi Bernard Coutaz, and many others.

Musical excerpts are from from his Harmonia Mundi catalogue, including his latest release 'Bill and Friends' which finds him performing with a host of young musicians.

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George Szell took over the Cleveland Orchestra in 1946, and, once he had created the instrument he needed, he started an extensive series of recordings for CBS (American Columbia, now Sony Classical). The focus was on the great works of the Austro-German repertoire and, needless to say, the nine Beethoven symphonies and a selection of overtures were among them (recorded between 1957 and 1967). Sony Classical have just gathered together the symphonies and overtures from the large 'George Szell Complete Columbia Collection' set from 2018, and are releasing them on seven CDs on December 13 and also digitally (already available).

James Jolly went to talk to Gramophone's long-serving contributor Rob Cowan about the recordings, and also about George Szell as a conductor in general.

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