Rowan Pierce on recording Bach, Handel and Vivaldi | Gramophone Podcast
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
Release Date: 09/02/2025
Soprano Adriana González on her album ‘Rondos for Adriana'
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
The soprano Adriana González has just released a new Audax album, ‘Rondos for Adriana’, inspired by her namesake, the Italian 18th-century diva Adriana Ferrarese del Bene. Ferrarese was Mozart’s first Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) and she sang Susanna in the Viennese revival of Le nozze di Figaro in 1789. Joined by Ensemble Diderot (led by Johannes Pramsohler, who also plays a couple of rondos for violin and orchestra), conducted by Iñaki Encina Oyon, Adriana González performs arias and rondos by Vicente Martín y Soler, Angelo Tarchi, Ferdinando Gaspari Bertoni, Giuseppe Giordani,...
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ARC Ensemble's Simon Wynberg on their Music in Exile series for Chandos
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
Toronto’s ARC Ensemble have been exploring the music of composers forced to flee their homeland by the Nazis. The most recent release in Chandos’s Music in Exile series – of music by Ernest Kanitz (1894-1978) – drew an by Gramophone’s critic Richard Bratby, a review that closed with the hope that ‘there’s more Kanitz to come’. James Jolly spoke by Zoom to the ARC Ensemble’s Artistic Director Simon Wynberg about the musicians of the Ensemble and the music that animates this important recording project, bringing this often totally forgotten music back to life – and also...
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William Vann on Elgar's choral music
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
This month's Gramophone Podcast sees Editor Martin Cullingford joined by William Vann, Director of the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, to talk about his new album of choral music by Elgar: Light out of Darkness, released on Somm Recordings. The wonderfully-chosen selection of music spans the composer's career, and even includes five premiere recordings.
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Marina Rebeka and Edgardo Vertanessian on their record label, Prima Classic
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
The soprano Marina Rebeka and her husband, the sound engineer Edgardo Vertanessian, founded their record label, in 2018, and in the years since have built up an impressive catalogue. To coincide with the release of their latest project, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, recorded live in Naples, they talk to Gramophone's James Jolly about what inspired them to create the label and how they approach developing their catalogue. This podcast was made in association with Prima Classic, and all the music included in the podcast comes fom the Prima Classic catalogue. The new recording of Simon...
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Exploring Beethoven
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
In this week's Gramophone Podcast, the last of 2025, we explore the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Editor Emeritus James Jolly talks to Richard Wigmore – a long-standing contributor to our pages, and an expert on the music of the classical and early romantic periods – about this musical Titan. They discuss Beethoven’s transformative role, through the three periods that have been applied to his creative life, in expanding the range, scale and ambition of pretty well every genre he tackled, from the symphonies and concertos, via his piano sonatas and...
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Critics Choice 2025
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
As another year of preparing and publishing many hundreds of reviews draws to a close, the three team members most involved - Reviews Editor Gavin Dixon, Deputy Editor Tim Parry, and Editor and Publisher Martin Cullingford - take time out to discuss what lies behind the process, and how we decide which albums are named Gramophone Editor's Choices. And, after that, they celebrate their own personal pick of the year, explaining which recording they chose for our annual Critics' Choice feature, and why it so impressed and inspired them.
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Remembering Alfred Brendel, with his son Adrian Brendel
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
In this week's Gramophone Podcast we remember Alfred Brendel, one of the most significant and much-loved musical figures of age, in the company of his son, the cellist Adrian Brendel, who takes Editor Martin Cullingford around the pianist's library and studio and reflects on what his books, art and belongings tell us about him. He also talks about a very special event on January 5, at the Barbican in London, at which fellow artists and friends of Alfred Brendel will gather for a remarkable evening of music, to celebrate his life and also raise money for a cause very close to his heart.
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Christophe Rousset on Charpentier's Christmas music
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
In this week's edition of of the Gramophone Podcast, Editor Martin Cullingford is joined by the conductor and harpsichordist Christophe Rousset to talk about his new album of Christmas music by the 17th century composer Charpentier - called a Baroque Christmas - recorded with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, and released on the ensemble's own label, Soli Deo Gloria.
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Thomas Adès and the Ruisi Quartet on their new recording, Növények
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
We're joined for this week's Gramophone Podcast by composer Thomas Adès and two members of the Ruisi Quartet, violinist Alessandro Ruisi and viola player Luba Tunnicliffe, to talk about their recording of Növények, Adès's setting of seven Hungarian poems for mezzo-soprano and piano sextet. They explore this fascinating work with Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford, which is newly released on the Platoon label along with Haydn's String Quartet in G Minor Op 20, No 3, and an arrangement of A legszebb Virág by Ligeti.
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Samantha Ege and Leah Broad on Avril Coleridge-Taylor
Gramophone Classical Music Podcast
Hattie Butterworth is joined by pianist and historian Samantha Ege and author Leah Broad to discuss the life and music of composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor as the first recording of her orchestral music and piano concerto is released on Resonus
info_outlineSoprano Rowan Pierce joins Jonathan Whiting to reflect on the intimacy of making chamber-scale Baroque music without a conductor, the challenges of Bach’s expansive recitatives, and the almost operatic drama of Handel’s 'Tra le fiamme'. She also speaks about her long collaboration with Ashley Solomon, the ensemble’s director, and about finding new colours and meaning in these works – music that, though written three centuries ago, resonates with striking relevance today.
We were also incredibly honoured to recently learn that the Gramophone Magazine Podcast will now be included in The British Library Sound Archive, catalogued and preserved for future generations as part of the nation’s audio and cultural heritage.
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