Episodes
Aug. 7, 2025
New York... Sounds of a City
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...
Aug. 1, 2025
The Violin... miracle of woodwork… and then there’s the music.
I’m going to start with a question. If one thinks of musical instruments as tools… as things humans create to perform tasks… other than the violin, is there any other tool you can think of used in an area of incredibly comple...
July 27, 2025
Sunday Night Special 1… Mahler’s 1st Symphony
The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps ...
July 24, 2025
Music For Airports… Immersive, Architectural & Contemplative.
Brian Eno’s 1979 LP ‘Music For Airports’ launched the genre of ‘Ambient Music’… an alternative to the dreadful ‘muzak’ inflicted on humans in most public spaces… music that reduced stress rather than added to it… music for co...
July 17, 2025
Secrets and Codes… Music with Hidden Meanings.
I nstances where composers have hidden something in their works… sometimes for the sheer ingeniousness of being able to do it… sometimes to send a secret message to someone… sometime to create a puzzle for generations to come...
July 10, 2025
Italy… Violins, Operas and Popes.
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...
July 4, 2025
The Ballet... Music in Pursuit of Beauty
From fairy tale romances to dark psychological dramas, discover how ballet music evolved while maintaining its essential power to match the poetry of human movement with unforgettable musical expression… what I’m calling gras...
June 26, 2025
Mozart’s 1791… Music from his final year
You could take almost any year of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life, probably from the age of fifteen onwards and be staggered by both the scale of his output… AND the quality… but his final year… 1791.. was a truly ast...
June 19, 2025
Ghosts & Monsters… Music of the Supernatural
There are composers who revel in depictions of the unseen… manifestations of the darker aspects of our imaginations… creatures from realms that four centuries of science just can’t seem to eradicate from our vulnerable psyche...
June 12, 2025
Aotearoa / New Zealand… New Sounds and Cultures for Classical Music
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 ...
June 5, 2025
Early Beethoven... From Provincial Pianist to Vienna Celebrity
Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna in late 1792 as a 22-year-old from the town of Bonn to study with Josef Haydn who was at the time undeniably Europe's most celebrated living composer. Beethoven also quickly established ...
May 30, 2025
The Clarinet… In The Twentieth Century
This episode starts in Paris in 1909 and ends up in Buenos Aires in 1994… and the music includes a healthy dose of the influence of jazz. If you have a small voice inside saying this is going to be a little more ‘modern’ and ...
May 22, 2025
Music for Small Spaces… aka ‘Chamber Music’.
There’s no way around the fact that this entire corner of classical music is generally known by the term ‘chamber music’ but please don’t let that stop you from experiencing some incredible music… even if you find the term, a...
May 16, 2025
Stanley Kubrick’s Music… The impact of a well-placed tune.
No other filmmaker has used classical music to better effect than the American director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999). Whilst composers did score some of his films, Kubrick frequently used existing classical pieces… in particul...
May 8, 2025
Antonio Vivaldi… So much more than changes in the weather.
If you have hit play for this episode then that means you are in that part of the population who have not been entirely turned off Vivaldi by the overuse of his deservedly popular set of violin concertos… ‘The Four Seasons’. ...
May 2, 2025
The Guitar… From Spanish Courts to Global Stages.
This first adventure with the guitar on Classical For Everyone features quite a bit of music from Spain.. probably the country that was most closely identified with the instrument until companies in America popularised the el...
April 24, 2025
Happiness… Music to make you feel good.
Sometimes music can just be for pleasure and if that is the composer and the performers’ intention, then good for them… and good for us listeners. If most music is created to make you ‘feel’… then some music can just be to ma...
April 17, 2025
Muses. Six people who have inspired great music.
Much music has been inspired by love, passion or obsession… but only in a handful of cases has the person who was the inspiration… the muse… become publicly linked to a work. Here are the stories of six of them… Alma Schindl...
April 10, 2025
Percussion. A loud episode.
A percussion instrument is pretty much anything that can be hit, tapped, scraped, scratched or banged. In an orchestra it is generally the responsibility of the individual or small group up the back… the ones who get to make ...
April 3, 2025
Johann Sebastian Bach. An introduction in nine pieces.
If you’ve ever been puzzled why once you scratch the surface of classical music the name Johann Sebastian Bach seems to just keep turning up… this episode might offer some clues… beyond the fact that the music is pretty good....
March 27, 2025
The Cello. Music as expressive as the Human Voice.
Amongst all the instruments in the modern string family… violins, violas, cellos and double basses… it is the cello that most closely approximates the range of the human voice… from the lowest bass to the highest soprano and ...
March 21, 2025
Farewells. Music for Partings, Journeys & Goodbyes.
This episode of Classical For Everyone includes musicians slowly leaving the stage… lovers separated by the call of duty… music for beginning a journey… and music for a sad and very final farewell. A section of a symphony by Josef...
March 16, 2025
Not Dead Yet. Music from Living Composers.
This episode is all music written by people who have the particular distinction of still breathing. I think it’s important to say that nowhere near all classical music is written by dead men from Vienna. One of the unintended consequences of a whole...
March 8, 2025
Mini-episode: Why is some Classical Music so damn long?
There’s a string quartet written by the American composer Morton Feldman in the 1980s that is about 6 hours long. ‘Einstein on the Beach’, the opera by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson, is about five hours long and is performed without an...