Cities & Countries Episodes

Music from and about Seville, the city of Carmen’s tobacco factory and Figaro’s barber shop; the city of flamenco and fiestas; the city where more operas are set than any other; and the city where almost eight centuries of Spanish dominance does not seem to have been able to erase the sense of the proximity of North Africa and the cultural heritage of the Moorish world. Music by Isaac Albeniz, Joaquin Rodrigo, Georges Bizet, Joaquin Turina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Francisco Guerrero and Giochhi...

I am looking out at the New York skyline as I record this episode and in the distance in particular I can glimpse the Ansonia Building. Completed in 1904 as an apartment hotel, it was for the early decades of the 20th century popular with visiting European composer/performers who would supplement their income with concert tours of the USA. In particular Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky both stayed at the Ansonia… with Stravinsky becoming a frequent resident for over a decade. Researching ...

‘Unfairly neglected’ is a bit of a cliché and pretty subjective but I do think it could describe a mass of great music that a lot of us (us Anglos at least) are missing out on… music from South America. Before I put this episode together I only knew about half the pieces I am going to play. The rest are as new for me as I suspect they might be for you. Which is, I hope, more of a positive than a negative. I don’t think I can even get away with describing this episode as ‘scratching the surface’…...

Why New York? Well, mainly because I love the city… and I’m here. I’m recording this episode in a hotel room on West 56th Street in Manhattan around the corner from Carnegie Hall and up the road from The Museum of Modern Art… which is incidentally a very popular place to make TikTok videos. I think there might still be some paintings there… but it was hard to tell today. More importantly… the music in this episode is from Steve Reich, Charles Ives, Jessie Montgomery, Leonard Bernstein, Phillip G...

Can something of a survey of the music of Italy… including music of the city states, republics and kingdoms that became the nation of Italy in the late nineteenth century… be done in a little over an hour? Absolutely not. But what I have chosen does perhaps suggest a few themes that can be found in the music made on the Italian Peninsula over the last several centuries. Please enjoy… Giuseppe Verdi, Archangelo Corelli, Claudio Monteverdi, Ottorino Respighi, Carlo Gesualdo, Tomaso Albinoni, Giova...

Even if you have listened to a fair bit of classical music I’m quietly confident you will not have heard a note of any of what I am going to play you in this episode… unless you happen to hail from or reside in that jewel of a nation… New Zealand / Aotearoa. Trust me, if you can overcome a nervousness about the unfamiliar… you are going to hear some remarkably good music… by composers Anthony Richie, Gillian Whitehead, Martin Lodge, Tabea Squire, John Psathas, Douglas Lilburn and Claire Cowan. ...