Music to my Ears Immediate Media

This week, we chat to the multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake from his home in Dorset. True to form, he recorded his side of the conversation outdoors in the countryside, so there are quite a few birds and woodland creatures keeping us company throughout this episode. He explains how he records the most intimate, low-level sounds of animals, fungi, rain and even tree sap, and how he goes about recontextualising them in his music. He also tells us all about his musical childhood with his mother, who was trained in Mongolian overtone chanting and who had previously lived and travelled with the pioneering electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Links:
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/B084T51RCY/
The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul by Jill Purce https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystic-Spiral-Journey-Soul-Imagination/dp/0500810052
Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music by Dust to Digital https://dust-digital.com/pages/excavated-shellac-an-alternate-history-of-the-world-s-music-1907-1967-tracklist
Smithsonian Folkways (ethnographic recordings and folk from around the world) https://folkways.si.edu/
Listen to all the music featured in this episode on our Spotify playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ZoAZxQIlWVfH1dsiP5GAV?si=a1187808f9334992
Music featured:
Cuckoo Song (Cosmo Sheldrake, Wake Up Calls)
Teo (Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain)
Wriggle (Cosmo Sheldrake, The Much Much How How and I)
Rich (Cosmo Sheldrake, Pelicans We)
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This week, we meet the star Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński to discuss the laborious process of recording previously undiscovered works, his passion for breakdancing and the music he listens to while he’s on the move. He also tells us about why he believes the post-pandemic concert format works surprisingly well, and why he prefers listening to ambient music when he travels as opposed to music by the likes of Palestrina and Tallis.   
Listen to all the music featured in this episode on our Spotify playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7BIiAN1ge4UruD9bKO0VFb?si=1e27450900554e0f
Music featured:
Victoria: O Magnum Mysterium (Choir of Westminster Cathedral/David Hill)
Mozart: The Magic Flute (Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Charles Mackerras)
Hasse: Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena (Jakub Józef Orliński, Il Pomo d’Oro/Maxim Emelyanychev)
Handel: Rinaldo: Aria. Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto (Argante) (Christopher Purves, Arcangelo/Jonathan Cohen)
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Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski discusses his recent recording of music by Stanchinsky (out now on Ondine), discovering the music of Bacewicz and his downtime during the pandemic has seen him fall in love with the piano all over again.
Recordings featured:
Stanchinsky: Piano Sonata in E flat minor (Peter Jablonski)
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Yuri Boukoff, Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire/Ljubomir Romansky)
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Martha Argerich , LSO/Claudio Abbado)
Chopin: Mazurka, Op. 6 No. 4 (Peter Jablonski)
Bacewicz: Children’s Suite – VII: Gavotte (Morta Grigaliūnaitė)
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Reviews editor Michael Beek sits down for a chat with Hannah Rankin. The professional boxer and classically trained bassoonist discusses dividing her time between the worlds of sport and music, choosing the perfect ‘walk-out’ music for when she enters the ring and some of her most cherished works to play and listen to.
Recordings featured:
Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Philadelphia Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski)
Bill Conti: Rocky – Gonna Fly Now (DeEtta Little, Nelson Pigford (vocals); Studio Orchestra/Bill Conti)
Pierné: Solo de Concert, Op. 35 (Karen Geoghegan (bassoon), Philip Fisher (piano))
Mozart: Bassoon Concerto in B flat major, K 191 – Rondo (Stepan Turnovsky (bassoon); Vienna Mozart Academy/Johannes Wildner)
Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel – Overture (Philharmonia Orchestra/Charles Mackerras)
Brahms: Hungarian Dances (Maxim Vengerov (violin), Vag Papian (piano); Virtuosi/Mikhail Parhamovsky)
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British clarinettist Julian Bliss has an extremely wide breadth of listening tastes, from heavy metal to core classical via jazz and funk. In this episode, he tells us about his passion for Rachmaninov and Oscar Petersen and why he thinks wind band music should be taken more seriously in the UK. He also reflects on the last year of lockdown and what it meant for his practice and approach to performance.
Recordings featured:
Stranger on the Shore (Acker Bilk)
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Martha Argerich, Berlin Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado)
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Alexandre Tharaud, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Alexander Vedernikov)
The Masquerade is Over (Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley)
Eric Whitacre: Equus
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano/Herbert von Karajan)
Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink)
Glass: Etude No. 2 (Vikingur Olafsson)
Invaders Must Die (The Prodigy)
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We speak to Radio 3 broadcaster and producer Georgia Mann, who recently took over the reins on the station’s morning programme, Essential Classics. She tells us all about the new musical discoveries she’s made so far in the job, her experiences of live music during lockdown, starting out as a singer in Gilbert & Sullivan musicals and how to be articulate live on radio when a performance blows you away.
Recordings featured:
Miles Davis: Lift to the Scaffold
Trad: Blow the wind southerly (Sheku Kanneh-Mason)
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 8 ‘Pathétique’ (Igor Levit)
Peggy Granville-Hicks: Sinfonia Pacifica (Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Richard Mills)
Ruth Gipps: Symphony No. 2 (BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Rumon Gamba)
Hannah Peel: Sunrise Through the Dusty Nebula
Bach: Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude (Yo-Yo Ma)
Rossini: The Barber of Seville – Largo et Factotum (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Vittorio Gui & Sesto Bruscantini)
Verdi: Requiem: Dies Irae (London Symphony Orchestra/Colin Davis
Ella Fitzgerald: Cheek to Cheek
Serge Gainsbourg: Les goemons
Mozart: Laudate Dominum (Felicity Palmer, Choir of St John’s College Cambridge, The Wren Orchestra/George Guest)
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