Let’s be fair, this is a deeply flawed title. Why? Well the idea is to play music written by German composers when they were living in or visiting Italy. But in the 18th century… which is when most of the music comes from… Germany and Italy as we know them today did not exist. And to make things worse… the whole episode is really an excuse to play some music by a man now well and truly owned by modern Austria… which also didn’t exist. What became Italy, Germany and Austria were a wonderfully con

In two earlier episodes I have referred to Chamber Music as ‘Music For Small Spaces’. But if you search more broadly for that term you will come up with very little. If you want music for small groups of instruments often performed in intimate spaces then, in English at least, you are going to be looking for ‘chamber music’. And in this episode there will be chamber music from Maurice Ravel, Douglas Lilburn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Karol Szymanowski, Laurie Anderson, Johannes Brahms, Michael Norri

In the latest episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ podcast… Scottish caves and rescuing Bach, becalmed boats and banking intrigue, Shakespearean fairies and a garment sellers’ orchestra, a prophet in the wilderness… and a stolen statue. And… if that wasn’t enough… eleven pieces of music from Felix Mendelssohn... perhaps the most gifted and quietly underrated composer of the nineteenth century.[Episode image: Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Friedrich von Schadow, 1834.] And here is a lin

A good friend asked if I could do an episode of music for her very young daughter. So, welcome to a bit of a Classical For Everyone podcast experiment. On the plus side for the intended audience… There’s not a lot of talking. And the show is well under an hour. This might be balanced by the host’s attempt to channel the children’s books of his (distant) youth. Like I said, it’s an experiment. But the music is terrific… Some perhaps expected… some not so much… The beginning of Michael Haydn’s Toy

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the frustrations of insomnia hit 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 month… Camille Saint-Saën’s 3rd Symph

Is Ludwig van Beethoven neglected? No, not at all. But with the well-deserved emphasis on his symphonies, a couple of piano concertos and a handful of piano sonatas and string quartets; there is another roughly eighty hours of music to explore. And in the same way that maybe Picasso, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Dickens created very little that is not of extraordinary quality… there is a bunch of incredible music that is not going to be encountered by the casual listener and that is what I want to