Classical For Everyone

Peter Cudlipp
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  • MUSIC HISTORY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Five hundred years of incredible music. No expertise is necessary. All you need are ears. If you've ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.

  1. 1D AGO

    Music For Young People (and their grown-ups)

    Sorcerers, Toys, Wolves, Volcanoes and Fossils. Music for young people… but why them… and why now? In some parts of the world people are having a bit of a holiday as this episode goes out… and you may have your children… or nephews, nieces or grandchildren lying around your home or stuck with you in your car. This is music for them. It can be enjoyed by anyone… but this is a collection of music that can be great early experiences of classical music for young people. Music from Michael Haydn, Paul Dukas, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gareth Farr, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

    1h 25m

  2. DEC 19

    Holiday Music (You Can Actually Listen To)

    In this episode there will be an amount of Christmas music from the western tradition… which I think you might have to expect from a podcast with the word 'classical' in the title but this is not really a celebration of mangers, shepherds, wise men or difficult to explain conceptions… though I have to confess, some shepherds snuck their way in.  A certain amount of the music is just there for the sheer joy of it. Music that has a festive feel and in some instances has a certain holiday exuberance. Works by Corelli, Bach, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Mozart, Lilburn and Kats-Chernin.

    1h 23m

  3. DEC 12

    Lullabies and Reveries

    Music from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Morten Lauridsen, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Philip Glass and Benjamin Britten… chosen pretty deliberately for its calming qualities. I'm guessing that quite a few of you are balancing the joys and challenges of the holiday season. So if you just want to put your feet up… or you've come to the end of a day with too much red and green in your world and are unwinding… or perhaps heading toward sleep, then I hope you'll enjoy this episode  called 'Lullabies and Reveries'. And I'm perhaps using the word 'lullaby' in a broad sense… who says toddlers are the only ones who deserve evocative music to carry them to a dreamy state.

    59 min

  4. DEC 6

    Forgotten Vivaldi… and the Rescue of his Music

    The title of this episode is perhaps a little misleading and it certainly contains a contradiction… namely, if I have a recording, and I can play it to you, then really, is 'forgotten' the right adjective? But it is, I hope you'll agree, a little catchier than… 'music from Antonio Vivaldi that might get a bit more prominence if his set of solo violin concertos called 'The Four Seasons' wasn't so extremely popular'. And as we go along, I'll tell you a little about the remarkable journey of Vivaldi's original handwritten scores and how surprising it is we have any of this music at all.

    1h 26m

  5. NOV 30

    Sunday Night Special 5… 'Low' Symphony by Philip Glass

    The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This week… Philip Glass' 'Low' Symphony from 1992. Performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

    48 min

  6. NOV 28

    Young Brahms… before the Symphonies.

    From playing piano in the waterfront bars of Hamburg in his teens, through the failed premiere of his first Piano Concerto, his fortuitous friendship with Clara & Robert Schumann, reviving the String Sextet… to writing a Requiem more about the living than the dead; Johannes Brahms created incredible music well before he became a grand old man of the nineteenth century symphony. Performances by Serkin, Szell, Cleveland, Amadeus Quartet, Ugorsky, Ashkenazy, Perlman, Tuckwell, Eschenbach, Klemperer and the Philharmonia.

    1h 25m

  7. NOV 21

    Brilliant Women… No. 1

    In recent years music written by women has at long last begun to be commissioned, programmed, performed, recorded, discussed, reviewed, studied, and celebrated. And of course, most importantly, composed… in greater and greater quantities. Last time I checked women account for half the planet's human population and if this podcast is called 'Classical For Everyone' then perhaps the music should be from 'everyone'. And even though I've scattered some wonderful music written by women through earlier episodes of the podcast, there is now so much great music available in great recorded performances, it feels like it could be time for the men to make just a little more room on the turntables. Music from 1690 to 2015 by Jennifer Higdon, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Sirmen, Fanny Mendelssohn, Mel Bonis, Ida Presti, Anna Clyne and Elena Kats-Chernin.

    1h 23m

  8. NOV 15

    The Clarinet... Masters and Masterworks.

    An episode back in late May 2025 featured music written for the clarinet from the 20th century. This is a companion show goes back to close to the invention of the clarinet with a work from 1755 and then finishes up with a gem from 1894. Music from Johann Stamitz, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber and Johannes Brahms. My AI friend Claude came up with the title of the episode and I hope you find 'The Clarinet... Masters and Masterworks' a pretty accurate description.

    1h 5m
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Five hundred years of incredible music. No expertise is necessary. All you need are ears. If you've ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.

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