Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast

Cellist Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings, his new Dorset festival — the Harrison Birtwistle story behind its name, genre-mixing, and watching his father Alfred's final tour from the audience, occasionally incognito.

Bergen International Festival Artistic Director and Chief Executive Lars Petter Hagen talks programming, audiences, leadership and listening in this special Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast episode - something of a pilgrimage for Jon Jacob.

Time with the most playful of interviewees, Franco Fagioli, recorded in Versailles in March 2026. Fagioli appears with Orchestra de l'Opera de Versailles at St Martin in the Fields on 13th June 2026.

Christophe Rousset is a harpsichordist, conductor, and founder of Les Talens Lyriques. In this conversation, recorded in Paris, he talks about completing his twenty-year project to record all thirteen of Lully's operas — a composer long dismissed as boring, and why that dismissal gets the history wrong.

We also discuss the young Mozart as musical sponge, absorbing Jommelli and Gassmann before finding his own voice; the Amadeus problem and what it gets wrong about Salieri; the relationship between scholarly knowledge and artistic intuition; and the kind of authority a conductor holds — total in theory, useless if exercised clumsily.

The closing distinction Rousset draws — between playing with rules and breaking them — turns out to be the most revealing thing he says.

In this episode

• Why comparing Lully to Rameau is a category error
• How a twenty-year recording project accumulates rather than gets planned
• The young Mozart's debts to Jommelli and Gassmann
• Scholarliness versus intuition in the rehearsal room
• Power, charm, and persuasion as a conductor
• "Playing with the rules" as a governing philosophy

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Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape still carry his fingerprints — and still provoke the same question: what is this place actually for? In this special episode, contributors who've performed there, programmed it, and thought hard about its future speak in their own voices about why they came to East Suffolk, and why they couldn't leave.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026 curator Claire Booth was asked a blunt question when she was invited her to put together this year's programme: why is selling a song recital so difficult? This year's Sheffield is the answer — or rather, her answer, or the argument. Or maybe its her case for it.

Across a week of concerts, she pulls in Ravel's Scheherazade into the orbit of folk tales, positions Judith Weir's King Harald's Saga alongside a repeat performance of Gavin Higgins's Speak of the North, and premieres Julian Philipps's multilingual children's opera Henny Penny. Song sells itself because song tells a story.

Recorded in the Royal Opera House café after a day of rehearsals, Claire talks about the Festival, a planned collaboration with Rufus Norris on Beckett, her 2025 RPS Singer Award, and — briefly, and with more disappointment than heat — Timothy Chalamet.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival's outgoing artistic director Edwin Paul asked Claire Booth a blunt question when he invited her to curate this year's programme: why can't you sell a song recital? Across a week of concerts that pull Scheherazade into the orbit of folk tales, set Judith Weir's King Harald's Saga against Gavin Higgins's Speak of the North, and premiere Julian Philipps's multilingual children's opera Henny Penny, her festival is the answer — or rather, the argument.

Recorded in the Royal Opera House café after a day of rehearsals, we talk about the Festival, a planned collaboration with Rufus Norris on Beckett, her 2025 RPS Singer Award, and — briefly, and with more disappointment than heat — Timothy Chalamet.

More information on Sheffield Chamber Festival: https://musicintheround.co.uk/explore-at-home/in-the-round/sheffield-chamber-music-festival-2026/

Composer and pianist Huw Watkins explores his work, his musical language, his collaborations with musicians including Tamsin Waley-Cohen with whom he has released a new album on Signum, Reflection.

When branding gets louder than the art.

A conversation with violinist and singer Lizzie Ball that begins with “big announcement week” energy and opens into a thoughtful exploration of intimacy, collaboration, and how classical music can be presented with integrity, warmth, and curiosity — from Ronnie Scott’s new series to life on and off the stage..