The Lebrecht Interview

Please note: This programme includes very strong, racist language describing the racial challenges Wasfi Kani faced when growing up in London.

In this insightful interview, Norman Lebrecht sits down with Wasfi Kani, the visionary opera director and founder of Grange Park Opera.

Kani, known for her innovative approach to opera and her commitment to making the art form accessible, shares her journey from tech entrepreneur to leading figure in the world of classical music. The conversation delves into her unique initiatives, including her work with the Pimlico Opera, which takes opera into prisons, and her mission to democratize opera for wider audiences.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, about her meteoric rise to fame as one of the greatest operatic voices alive today.

In this episode, Norman Lebrecht interviews Lise Davidsen, the rising star of the opera world renowned for her powerful voice and commanding stage presence. Davidsen discusses her meteoric rise to fame, her experiences performing on some of the world’s greatest stages, and the challenges and joys of interpreting some of the most demanding roles in the operatic repertoire. This conversation offers a glimpse into the life of a modern opera singer at the top of her game.

Norman Lebrecht interviews the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas about life, death, music and his memories of Gershwin, Bernstein and Stravinsky.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the American composer and conductor John Adams in the week that he conducts his opera Nixon in China at the BBC Proms.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the great Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Muti's career has spanned key orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the orchestra of La Scala in Milan and the Vienna Philharmonic. Elegant and erudite, this is the first extended interview Riccardo Muti has given the BBC. He reveals his thoughts and feelings about Verdi and Rossini, about his professional relationship with his mentor, Herbert von Karajan, and about his sense of being an 'outsider' in the world of music, a normal man with an extraordinary job.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the young Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons currently music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the British opera director Graham Vick whilst in rehearsals in Birmingham for Stockhausen's massive opera Mittwoch. Vick is one of the leading British directors. He works in all of the worlds' major opera houses directing the standard operatic repertoire and was for a number of years Director of Prodductions at Glyndebourne. But he is also director of the Birmingham Opera Company which he founded in 1987. It specialises in innovative and unusual productions of operas often in unusual venues such as factories or disused warehouses and this interview was recorded in Birmingham where Vick is currently in rehearsal for the British premiere of the complete version of Mittwoch part of Stockhausen's massive cycle, Licht.

Norman Lebrecht meets celebrated impresario Lilian Hochhauser, who along with her husband Victor, introduced British audiences to some of the greatest Russian musicians of all time, during the fraught period of soviet rule.

Now in her eighties, Lilian - from a Jewish Ukrainian background - recalls the Cold War period which saw her and Victor pushing cultural and political boundaries to bring some of the most feted names in Russian music to Britain for the first time. Everyone from Rostropovich, Richter and Oistrakh through to The Borodin Quartet and the Kirov Ballet recieved their London debuts thanks to the Hochhausers.

Norman Lebrecht meets Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer, who looks back on a career characterised by ground breaking musical achievements and occasional political controversy.

Fischer recalls his elite musical education under communism, singing as a boy in the opera house where Gustav Mahler was once director. Being taught by both Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Hans Swarowsky during his studies in Vienna, where he initially set out to become a cellist, gave Fischer a unique musical perspective. He remembers what made both teachers great and how they impacted in his later decision to found The Budapest Festival Orchestra, alongside gifted pianist and countryman Zoltán Kocsis. Fischer describes the jealousy and bad feeling which initially greeted the new orchestra, and why his relationship with Kocsis deteriorated. He talks frankly about his discomfort with Kocsis's perceived closeness to Hungary's rightist political regime, and why he will continue to speak out against it.

Iván Fischer has always been musically motivated by change: the desire to alter the status quo and unlock the potential of the musicians he conducts - he speaks passionately about what he sees as the crisis being faced by the modern symphony orchestra, and how they need to be reinvented or face extinction.

Norman Lebrecht meets pianist Menahem Pressler, founder of one of the most prolific and influential piano trios of all time: The Beaux Arts.

Pressler looks back on a career which began in Nazi Germany, before he emigrated to Israel in 1939 and went on to win The Debussy Piano Competition in 1946. He recalls the teachers who helped him as a young pianist, including a German who defied the Nazi regime in continuing to teach him after it became illegal to do so, and his lessons with celebrated pianists Egon Petri and Leo Kestenberg.

Pressler remembers how he formed The Beaux Arts Trio with violinist Daniel Guilet and cellist Bernard Greenhouse almost by accident while living in New York, before making their debut at Boston's Tanglewood concert hall in 1955. He reflects on the trio's changing personnel, which has seen Pressler as the one constant member while five violinists and two cellists have come and gone. Still performing now at the age of eighty eight and a renowned teacher and mentor to top chamber musicians like the Emerson and Ebène String Quartets - Menhem Pressler reflects on what makes a great chamber group and how music has sustained him throughout a long and distinguished career.