Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

Gramophone
  • 3.5 (4)
  • MUSIC INTERVIEWS
  • EVERY TWO WEEKS

Weekly conversations about classical music with leading musicians and writers

  1. Conductor Klaus Mäkelä on performing Mahler's Eighth at the 2025 Mahler Festival

    22 HR AGO

    Conductor Klaus Mäkelä on performing Mahler's Eighth at the 2025 Mahler Festival

    In May this year, the Concertgebouw – Amsterdam's legendary concert hall – played host to the 2025 Mahler Festival. Originally scheduled for 2000, the centenary of the first such event, but moved back by five years due to the pandemic, the Mahler Festival saw all of Mahler's symphonies performed chronologically over two weeks, and performed by a handful of the world's great orchestras. The Eighth Symphony fell to the local band, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Designate, Klaus Mäkelä, who gave two performances, both of which were recorded. And that recording has just been released by Decca – digitally worldwide, with a CD version available in Japan and Korea to coincide with the orchestra's first tour of Asia with Mäkelä before Christmas. James Jolly caught up with Klaus Mäkelä to talk about the conductor's continuing fascination with Mahler's music, and particularly with the Eighth Symphony, the performances of which were clearly a highpoint in the conductor's career so far.

    20 min
  2. Composer and author Robin Holloway on celebrating 900 years of classical music

    28 OCT

    Composer and author Robin Holloway on celebrating 900 years of classical music

    The composer, academic and writer Robin Holloway has just published a new book, Music's Odyssey, An Invitation to Western Classical Music (Allen Lane). He's Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where James Jolly went to visit him a couple of weeks ago to talk about the book's genesis and aims. The podcast features an excerpt from Holloway's Second Concerto for Orchestra played by the BBC SO conducted by Oliver Knussen on NMC which won Gramophone's Contemporary Music Award in 1994, and also one from Hans Werner Henze's Undine, played by the London Sinfonietta, also conducted by Oliver Knussen on DG.

    37 min
  3. Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky on his new album 'Gelosia!'

    24 OCT

    Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky on his new album 'Gelosia!'

    The French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has just released a new Erato album of cantatas da camera by Alessandro Scarlatti, Porpora, Galuppi, Handel and Vivaldi, 'Gelosia!'. On it he also conducts his ensemble Artaserse, which he founded in 2002, and with which he increasingly appears solely as conductor rather than as singer. Gramophone's James Jolly went to talk to him in Paris about the new album, but also about a major milestone in his musical career, 25 years of making recordings for Erato.

    34 min
  4. The Hermes Experiment on their new album, Tree

    20 OCT

    The Hermes Experiment on their new album, Tree

    The Hermes Experiment - an ever-innovative, exploratory and imaginative ensemble - have released their new album, Tree, a meditation on nature, memory and change embracing contemporary composers and reimagined music from the past. Two members of the group, soprano Héloïse Werner and clarinetist Oliver Pashley - who also both have compositions on the album - joined Editor Martin Cullingford in the Gramophone Podcast studio to discuss this beautiful release.

    35 min
  5. Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2025: The Winners

    17 OCT

    Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2025: The Winners

    In this special edition of the Gramophone Podcast, we explore the full list of winners from this year's Gramophone Classical Music Awards. Editor Emeritus James Jolly, Editor Martin Cullingford, Deputy Editor Tim Parry and Editor of Opera Now and Choir & Organ Hattie Butterworth talk through the Category Winners, the Special Awards, and of course the new Recording of the Year – complete with excerpts of every album.

    57 min
  6. Maxim Emelyanychev on Mozart's symphonies

    10 OCT

    Maxim Emelyanychev on Mozart's symphonies

    For this week's Gramophone Podcast, Editor Martin Cullingford travelled to Padua to talk to Maxim Emelyanychev, Chief Conductor of Il Pomo d'Oro, about recording Mozart symphonies - and specially their latest release of Symphonies Nos 35 and 36, and Violin Concerto No 3 - on period instruments for the Aparté label.

    26 min
  7. Tine Thing Helseth on Echoes, her new album of trumpet concertos

    2 OCT

    Tine Thing Helseth on Echoes, her new album of trumpet concertos

    This week's guest on the Gramophone Podcast is trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, who talks to Editor Martin Cullingford about her new recording on the Lawo label. Called 'Echoes', it features works by Arutiunian, Penderecki and Weinberg - she talks about the album, as well as her wider work championing her instrument and its repertoire.

    31 min
  8. Ian Page on the music of Gluck

    26 SEPT

    Ian Page on the music of Gluck

    In this week's Gramophone Podcast, the conductor Ian Page joins Editor Martin Cullingford to talk about the music of the 18th-century composer Gluck, setting him in the context of musical developments of his time. The conversation marks the release of the new album from his ensemble The Mozartists - a recording of arias from Gluck operas, sung by Ann Hallenberg, and newly released on Signum Classics.

    42 min
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Weekly conversations about classical music with leading musicians and writers

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