Presto Music Classical Podcast

One of the most keenly anticipated music biographies in 2023 has been 'Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World' a wonderfully vivid account of the lives, times and music of 4 extraordinarily talented composers from the late 19th and 20th Centuries. Guiding me through the fascinating world of Dame Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen, I was delighted to be joined by the books author, Dr Leah Broad.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Nobody has done more in recent years to promote the music of Ralph Vaughan-Williams in recent years than Albion Records, the record label of the Ralph Vaughan-Williams Society. So to celebrate the English composer's 150th birthday this year I asked John Francis, Vice-Chairman of the Ralph Vaughan-Williams Society to guide me through his life and music through recordings of lesser-known Vaughan-Willams works on the Albion Records label.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Celebrating his 150th anniversary this year is the Russian composer, poet and visionary Alexander Scriabin who, in his short life undertook a compositional journey that took him from a frustrated piano virtuoso who idolized Chopin to a radical modernist who prophesized that a concert of his mystical music in Tibet would bring about the end of the world. Helping me explore the life and work of this unique figure I'm delighted to be rejoined on the show by Cambridge Russian music Professor Marina Frolova-Walker.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Undoubtedly one of the great orchestral success stories in recent years has been that of Sinfonia of London, formed by conductor John Wilson in 2019. Their albums have consistently received a whole host of awards, demonstrating the orchestra’s great virtuosity and versatility.Their latest recording sees them delving into one of my favourite genres, with a selection of music from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to chat to John not only about the album itself, but also about the history of Sinfonia of London, his thoughts on some favourite recordings with the orchestra so far, plus a look ahead to future releases, including an exclusive preview of their forthcoming album of music by Rachmaninoff.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

As both a world-class performer and an advocate for her instrument, Sarah Willis is an inspiration to a generation of horn players, so I was somewhat star-struck to talk to her for this week's episode. Despite the unceasing travel difficulties and upheaval of the past two years, Sarah has been continuing to spend time in Cuba working with Cuban instrumentalists and composers. The fruits of this can be heard on her two *Mozart y Mambo* albums from July 2020 and September 2022, where she sets Mozart's magnificent horn concertos alongside traditional and contemporary Cuban dances. We dig into what makes this music tick, and how a cross-cultural collaboration can combine faithfulness to its ingredients with a knowing and sometimes irreverent angle on the canon.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

The relationship between musicians' lives and the music they create is one the most discussed and debated aspects of music, and examinations of the lives of great musicians is almost as old as their music itself.  Three authors who produced highly praised music biographies in 2020 were Philip Clark, on the Jazz great Dave Brubeck, Oliver Craske on the Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar and Oliver Soden on the British composer Michael Tippett, and on this week's show I was delighted to welcome all three for a round table discussion on the art of music biography.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

A discussion of the OUP's recently-published collection of sacred and secular choral works by Black composers, with its editor Dr Marques Garrett - taking in Vicente Lusitano, Undine Smith Moore, R Nathaniel Dett (Dr Garrett's own particular labour of love) and more. Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Arthur Bliss was one of the most important British musicians of his age. Having served with distinction in the Great War, in which he was both injured and gassed, he subsequently became the most performed British composer abroad. He served as Director of Music at the BBC from 1942-44, and was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music in 1953.Bliss was a private figure who stated that the only way to get to know him was through his music. Author Paul Spicer took this as his starting point for a pioneering biography which underlines the importance of a reappraisal of the composer’s music.We had the pleasure of hosting Paul at our store in Leamington Spa, where, in conversation with Andrew Burn, chairman of The Bliss Trust, he not only explained the circumstances behind his writing of the book and how it affected his appreciation of Bliss’s music, but also provided many fascinating insights into the composer’s life, illustrated with excerpts from several of his pieces along the way.We made an audio recording of their engrossing discussion, which with their permission we are delighted to present here.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

The great Russian Romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff declared that his music was "the product of his temperament, therefore Russian", but he spent the final 26 years of life in exile after fleeing Russia in 1917. While in exile he composed his late masterpieces including the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Symphonic Dances, while also preserving his legendary piano playing for posterity through a series of recordings.To discuss this fascinating period of Rachmaninoff's life it was a great pleasure to be joined by critic and author Fiona Maddocks, who has explored this period of the composer's life in her highly enjoyable new book 'Goodbye Russia'.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Earlier this year we saw the release of not one, but two box sets dedicated to recordings by the Minnesota Orchestra under their Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti, recordings made by the Mercury Record Company in the 1950's. To discuss the artistic and sonic legacy of these Mono and Stereo box sets I was privileged to be joined not only by record critic Rob Cowan but also by Thomas Fine, the son of the husband and wife team of Robert and Wilma Cozart Fine who produced these recordings and exective producer of these new editions. It's a fascinating chat about not only about the oustanding music-making contained within the sets and Doráti himself, but also about the recording process, and the great leap forwards in recording technology that took place in this period.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Some "concept" albums can seem a little contrived – with themes not so much neatly interwoven as crudely welded onto one another. Not so Emmanuel Despax's new album Après un rêve, which draws together its three main ideas so naturally that it seems as if the album must have sprung from Despax's mind fully formed.A poetic legacy from his music-loving grandfather meets Emmanuel's own interest in the refined music of the French belle époque (from about the mid-1870s until 1914, when Europe changed forever), all seen through the lens of evening and night-time – or perhaps, as Emmanuel suggests, seen through the bottom of a glass of fine wine.We talk about the music, the poetry, the chicken-and-egg question of which came first, and how Emmanuel prepares these pieces for performance – but we start with a little leçon in pronunciation...Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Over the nearly twenty years since its formation, Vox Luminis has appeared in our metaphorical pages plenty of times – the Belgian early music ensemble consistently combines original and exploratory programming with impeccable musicianship. Every album Lionel Meunier and his musicians release can be relied on to be not just a feast for the ears but also an interesting and well-thought-out dive into musical history, drawing connections and parallels and linking everything together seamlessly.The title of their latest album, Ein Deutsches Barockrequiem, provides a heavy hint as to the theme of the repertoire being performed – comprising earlier settings of the same Biblical texts that Brahms would later select for the movements of his German Requiem. I caught up with Lionel to talk about the process of tracking down these motets, and what threads might link together Brahms himself with the composers featured here – as well as a surprising connection with one of today's finest bel canto tenors.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Robert Levin set out to record a complete set of Mozart's works for keyboard and orchestra. After several highly successful and critically-acclaimed volumes over the following decade,  fate eventually intervened to force the project into the deep freeze, and on that unsatisfying note the story might have ended.Happily, though, circumstances have now opened up the opportunity to pick things up again. The concluding five volumes are now very much in motion, with the first released recently in March,  and it's full steam ahead for the remainder of this much-loved and much-needed cycle. I caught up with Robert to talk about this project, and his work as a reconstructor and completer of the surprisingly large number of Mozart works that have only come down to us as fragments.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

2023 sees the quadricentennials of the deaths of both William Byrd - sacred polyphonist, virginalist and recusant Catholic - and Thomas Weelkes, remembered especially for his madrigals, his verse services and his repeated tellings-off by his bosses at Chichester Cathedral for what might delicately be termed rowdiness. Among various groups with albums in honour of these two composers are The King's Singers and Fretwork, who come together on the recently-released *Tom & Will* to perform some of the lighter and more secular works from these two composers, along with two new commissions. I had a very enjoyable chat with representatives of both groups - Patrick Dunachie batting for The King's Singers, and Richard Boothby for Fretwork.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

Founded by four ambitious teenagers in Middlesbrough in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet’s extraordinary fifty-year career has encompassed collaborations with musicians including Sting, Björk and Sir Paul McCartney as well as a whole host of superb recordings of core repertoire from Mozart to Bartók.It was a great pleasure to be joined by cellist and founder-member Jacqueline Thomas and her husband Paul Cassidy (who became the quartet’s viola-player in the early 1980s) for a whistle-stop tour through the group’s first five decades, not least because the pair had such a profound direct influence on my own development as a young musician growing up in Middlesbrough during the 1990s – in between touring with Elvis Costello and recording a landmark cycle of the Shostakovich quartets, they regularly carved out time to return to the area to coach aspiring chamber-groups and perform concertos with local amateur orchestras, experiences which will stay with me for life.  Join us for a trip down memory-lane, taking in their early days feverishly transcribing Janáček and Shostakovich direct from radio-broadcasts, game-changing encounters with Japanese designer Issey Miyake, Costello and *Line of Duty* star Adrian Dunbar, and the process of documenting the quartet's history in their recently-published twin autobiographies...Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

One of the most outstanding releases so far this year has been a remarkable collection of live recordings by the great Czech conductor Karel Ančerl, and I was delighted to be joined not only by regular guest Rob Cowan to discuss the set, but also by Matouš Vlčinský, who produced the set for Supraphon Records. The recordings, made between 1950 and 1968 show Ančerl's mastery in a wide variety of repertoire, and the numerous recordings of Czech music also gave us the opportunity to explore Bohemian musical culture.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

For this episode, we turn our attention to the violin, and the changing styles of playing that have been documented over the past hundred years since the advent of sound recording. I was delighted to be joined by Charlotte Gardner, a freelance writer, journalist, and critic who specialises in string playing for The Gramophone and The Strad magazines, as well as contributing programme notes for the BBC orchestras and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. By focussing on a handful of hardy perennials like Bach's Sonatas and Partitas, and violin concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, we take a deep dive into some of the most characterful players down the years.Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

As you may well have seen on our site and social media channels lately, Presto Music is currently celebrating a double anniversary, as 2021 marks not only the  20th anniversary of the website launching, but also 35 years since the first Presto shop opened in Leamington Spa. So it seemed fitting that we invite the boss, Chris O'Reilly,  onto the show to tell us how he came to find himself working for Presto Music in 2001, how he helped it  develop into one of the leading indepenent music specialists, and explain the ethos of the business.  Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

My guests this week are the members of The Hermes Experiment, a contemporary music quartet made up of Heloise Werner (soprano and co-director), Oliver Pashley (clarinet), Anne Denholm (harp),  Marianne Schofield (doube bass), and the group's co-director Hanna Grzeskiewicz. Having just releases their second album,*Song*, for Delphian Records, the group tell me about the rewards and challenges of running an ensemble with such an idiosyncratic combination of instruments, and have already notched up over 60 commissions from a wide variety of composers. Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google

German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) was one of the towering musical giants of the 20th century, a man whose near mythical reputation is arguably better known than his actual recordings. This year has seen a number of reissues of his recordings, the most signifcant of which is Warner Classics's 55 disc boxset featuring many previously unpublished recordings. For this special episode of the podcast we invited critics Rob Cowan and David Hurwitz to discuss the relative merits of Furtwängler's art, and how these legendary recording hold up in the cold light of 2021.Rob Cowan is one of the UKs best loved authorities on classical music, having written for Gramophone managazine for many years, and also hosted long-running radio shows on Classic FM and BBC radio 3. Based in New York, David Hurwitz is the co-founder and executive editor of ClassicsToday.com, and in 2020 launched his very popular YouTube channel on which he regularly posts video reviews and discographical surveys. Presto MusicAll things musical... on your doorstep!Visit our website: www.prestomusic.comFollow us on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramLove us? Review us on Trustpilot, Facebook or Google