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 Sp...

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 20 th centur...

‘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 epis...

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 56 th Street in Manhattan around the corner from Carnegie Hall and up the road from The Museum of Modern Art...

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...

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 ...