Pianist and conductor Howard Shelley is conducting a series of lunchtime concerts featuring Mozart's early piano concertos at St Johns Smith Square in London. In this interview Shelley talks about his career, the challenges of playing Mozart and his experiences singing in the Proms performance of Britten's War Requiem in the early 60s.

Audience behaviours in the concert hall and online can make the concert hall a hostile place. Three accounts help explain why Jon Jacob sometimes feels rather lonely in the classical music world.

Christian Thompson is Director of the Verbier Festival Academy - a residential training programme for exceptional young musicians. In this podcast, recorded in Verbier in August 2016, Christian explains his vision for the Academy and its participants, and how the Academy is developing the next generation of soloists. The music featured in this podcast is the opening movement from Brahms' first piano quartet. #VF2016

What happens when you take a rock music fan to his first classical music concert? Listen to @Ewan Spence's first experience of the BBC Proms.

Why would anyone fear Elgar's Cello Concerto? It's lovely, after all. Well, maybe because of Jacqueline du Pre. Maybe she's the one to blame.

During a recent trip to Budapest, Jon Jacob gets to see two operas from Wagner's Ring as part of the annual MUPA Wagner in Budapest Opera Festival. This podcast features material recorded during his visit including an interview with Director Hartmut Schorghofer, plus excerpts from soprano Anna Russell's synopsis of Wagner's Ring recorded in 1953.

How Malcom Arnold’s Peterloo Overture helped one person deal with the shock of the UK’s EU Referendum result.

This week sees the launch of the 2016/17 season of concerts at St John's Smith Square. To coincide with the launch, Jon Jacob speaks to SJSS Director Richard Heason, and pianist Christina McMaster and conductor Stephen Layton about their musical inspirations and work.

Composer Anna Meredith talks about mixing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with new electronic music in a new work, 'Anno', created by her and her sister Eleanor Meredith, and premiered at Spitalfields Music with the Scottish Ensemble earlier in June 2016.

Association of British Orchestras Director Mark Pemberton discusses the challenges faces British orchestras, some of the misconceptions about them, and the way he'd encourage newcomers to the concert hall. This podcast includes excerpts from Percy Grainger's Green Bushes.