Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

For this week’s Gramophone Podcast we dip into the archives and offer you another opportunity to hear a fascinating conversation about Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, the Anglo-Irish composer, teacher and conductor, the centenary of whose death fell in 2024.

The leading expert on the composer, Jeremy Dibble, 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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Pianist Bruce Liu’s new album ‘Lunaris’ is just out from Deutsche Grammophon – it explores the cosmos, the moon and the stars through music, taking in music by Chopin, Beethoven, Scriabin, Mompou, Agnes Obel and others.

Gramophone’s James Jolly caught up with Bruce Liu in Canada earlier this year and, as well as talking about ‘Lunaris’, they discussed the aftermath of Bruce’s Chopin Competition win, and which of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos is his favourite.

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Hattie Butterworth is joined by composers Gavin Higgins and Grace-Evangeline Mason to discuss the Three Choirs Associate Composer programme, the realities to life as a composer and writing choral music. 

Explore the Three Choirs Festival here. 

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In this week's episode of The Gramophone Listening Room, presented in partnership with dCS Audio, host Charlotte Gardner welcomes lutenist Thomas Dunford and viola da gamba player, singer and composer Lucine Musaelian to the studio to share two of their personal favourite recordings.

Thomas Dunford can only be described as prolific in the recording studio, whether it's with Les Arts Florissants or his own Jupiter ensemble, and Lucine Musaelian is a member of the Bellot Ensemble and Intesa duo, her debut album with the Bellot Ensemble, 'Cupid's Ground Bass', was described by William Yeoman in Gramophone as: 'an intimate theatre where all the colour and splendour of the Venetian opera is played out in microcosm.'

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This week’s guest is the Finnish-Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska. Her new ‘Ukrainian Mixtape’, just out from Platoon, showcases four Ukrainian composers – Levko Kolodub, Borys Liatoshynsky, Fedir Yakymenko and Mykola Lysenko –  for which she’s joined by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of which she’s Principal Guest Conductor.

James Jolly spoke to her last week by Zoom from her home in Finland about the new album, but also about the First Night of the BBC Proms which finds her and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall.

You can catch Dalia Stasevska, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, at the First Night of the Proms in all the usual places – live at the Royal Albert Hall, and also on BBC Radio 3, BBC 2 TV and on the BBC iPlayer at 7pm on July 17.

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Pianist George Fu joins Hattie Butterworth to speak about his new album of Schubert and how the composer helped him through the loss of his father. They speak about the late sonatas and their complexities, as well as the emotions around recording well-known works. Elsewhere, Fu speaks about his collaboration with the soprano Lotte Betts Dean and the rewarding experience of coming together to record Einsamkeit.

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The music of the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz is undergoing a long-overdue renaissance. Her output was extensive and extraordinarily rich, as both the pianist Peter Jablonski and the violinist Bomsori Kim have proved in their explorations of her work. To celebrate not only Bacewicz’s music but Polish music in general, Gramophone’s James Jolly spoke to Jablonski and Kim about their individual journeys through Poland's music.
 
The podcast episode it presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute and PWM Edition, since 1945 Poland’s leading music publisher whose catalogue includes the complete works of Fryderyk Chopin, Mieczysław Karłowicz, Stanisław Moniuszko and Karol Szymanowski. It’s the house that published the first works of prominent Polish composers, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski and Henryk Górecki, and it’s home to many scores by Grażyna Bacewicz, Tadeusz Baird, Wojciech Kilar, and many composers of a younger generation.
 
Peter Jablonski, who records for Ondine, and Bomsori Kim, a DG artist, are PWM ambassadors. 

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Back in 2012 Gramophone gave an award to a wonderful documentary called Music makes a City which tells the story of the Louisville Orchestra, its creation, and its early philosophy. This week’s guest, the conductor Teddy Abrams has been Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra since 2014 and has continued this fabled ensemble’s commitment to championing new music. To coincide with the release of new Pentatone album of music by Andrew Norman and Christopher Cerrone, Gramophone’s James Jolly spoke to Teddy Abrams about the orchestra and its unique history.

The new album contains Split, a piano concerto by Andrew Norman, for which the soloist is Jeffrey Kahane for whom the work was written and which he premiered with the New York Philharmonic back in 2015. Its partner, which also gives its name to the album is The Year of Silence by Christopher Cerrone, recorded here with Dashon Burton as narrator.

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In this week's episode of The Gramophone Listening Room, presented in partnership with dCS, host Charlotte Gardner welcomes trumpeter Matilda Lloyd and viola player Timothy Ridout to the studio to share two of their personal favourite recordings.

Timothy Ridout is a multiple Gramophone Award-winner whose recent album 'Alto Appassionato' (with pianist Jonathan Ware) was an Editor's Choice in the June issue of Gramophone. Matilda Lloyd is the Royal Philharmonic Society's Young Artist of the Year for 2026. 

This podcast was made in partnership with dCS Audio 

Explore the featured recordings on our website

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In this week's edition of the Gramophone Podcast, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani talks about his new recording of Bach's Complete Keyboard Concertos, newly released on the Hyperion label. Why were these pivotal works in the instrument's development written, and how might they have been performed? Esfahani explores these questions, along with many other fascinating topics surrounding the instrument, its repertoire and his own career, in the company of Editor Martin Cullingford.

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