Episodes

Music from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Morten Lauridsen, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Philip Glass and Benjamin Britten… chosen pretty deliberately for its calming qualities. I’m guessing that quite a few of you are balancing the joys and challenges of the holiday season. So if you just want to put your feet up… or you’ve come to the end of a day with too much red and green in your world and are unwinding… or perhaps heading toward sleep, then I hope you’ll enjoy this episode called ‘Lull...

The title of this episode is perhaps a little misleading and it certainly contains a contradiction… namely, if I have a recording, and I can play it to you, then really, is ‘forgotten’ the right adjective? But it is, I hope you’ll agree, a little catchier than… ‘music from Antonio Vivaldi that might get a bit more prominence if his set of solo violin concertos called ‘The Four Seasons’ wasn’t so extremely popular’. And as we go along, I’ll tell you a little about the remarkable journey of Vivald...

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 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 week… Philip Glass’ ‘Low’ Symphony from 199...

From playing piano in the waterfront bars of Hamburg in his teens, through the failed premiere of his first Piano Concerto, his fortuitous friendship with Clara & Robert Schumann, reviving the String Sextet… to writing a Requiem more about the living than the dead; Johannes Brahms created incredible music well before he became a grand old man of the nineteenth century symphony. Performances by Serkin, Szell, Cleveland, Amadeus Quartet, Ugorsky, Ashkenazy, Perlman, Tuckwell, Eschenbach, Klemperer...

In recent years music written by women has at long last begun to be commissioned, programmed, performed, recorded, discussed, reviewed, studied, and celebrated. And of course, most importantly, composed… in greater and greater quantities. Last time I checked women account for half the planet’s human population and if this podcast is called ‘Classical For Everyone’ then perhaps the music should be from ‘everyone'. And even though I’ve scattered some wonderful music written by women through earlie...

An episode back in late May 2025 featured music written for the clarinet from the 20th century. This is a companion show goes back to close to the invention of the clarinet with a work from 1755 and then finishes up with a gem from 1894. Music from Johann Stamitz, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber and Johannes Brahms. My AI friend Claude came up with the title of the episode and I hope you find ‘The Clarinet... Masters and Masterworks’ a pretty accurate descript...

At the end of the last episode Georg Friedrich Handel had just composed the anthem ‘Zadok The Priest’ for the coronation of King George II of Great Britain. The year was 1727 and it was the same year that Handel; who had grown up and begun his career in what is now Germany, and who had spent an intensely formative four years in the city states of the Italian peninsula, was granted British citizenship. In the next three decades he would write another dozen operas, over twenty oratorios, a slew of...

I hope you’re in the mood for some truly beautiful music… much of it involving singing. I don’t know if I can convert anyone to the delights of early 18th century opera but the songs I’m going to play you in this episode are I think some of the most exquisite ever written. Handel was born in 1685 in Halle near Leipzig in what is now north-eastern Germany and died in London in 1759. By the time he died he was not just the most successful composer in Great Britain… he was one of the most successfu...

Probably adopted from early pagan traditions, 'All Hallows Eve', which became Halloween; was, and perhaps in some places still is, a night of rituals to call on the spirits of saints and martyrs for our protection in the year ahead; and prayers for the souls of loved ones who might not yet be fully at rest. So when I call this episode 'a different Halloween' all I really mean is that some of the music in this episode is more about sincere spirituality than trick-or-treating. But there are still ...

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 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 week… Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony from 1...

This corner of classical music is more generally known by the odd term ‘chamber music’ but please don’t let that stop you from experiencing some incredible music. This is music originally intended for smaller performance spaces… sometimes even just a dining room… written for a small number of instruments and by virtue of that the connection between players and audience can be more intimate and more intense. The music in the episode is by Anne Cawrse, Giovanni Sammartini, Sergei Prokofiev, Felix ...

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 ...

On January 27th 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned 30. He had already written an astonishing amount of music of an incredible standard. He had been happily married to Constanze Weber for three years and their son Karl Thomas was fifteen months old. After moving to Vienna from Salzburg in 1781; Mozart had by 1786 reached perhaps the most economically secure position he would ever have. Essentially he was an in-demand freelance performer / composer with an emphasis on keyboard works and a growing...

Benjamin Britten is today perhaps best known for his operas which included ‘Peter Grimes’, ‘The Turn of The Screw’, ‘Billy Budd’ and ‘Death In Venice’. But I am actually going to feature more of his orchestral work in this episode. There’ll be a bit of singing today but I’m going to save up his operas for another time. You’ll hear some of his Violin Concerto, Simple Symphony, Ceremony of Carols, Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, War Requiem, Young Persons Guide To The Orchestra... and the in...

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 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 week… John Luther Adams’ ‘Become Ocean’. Pe...

Wondering if I could produce an episode without my AI pal Claude and I going down too many rabbit holes… I thought I’d see what I could come up with if I revisited past episodes and cherry-picked some favourite pieces. To be honest I was not that optimistic but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I hope you will be too. It has ended up being quite an eccentric and eclectic collection. But it’s all very good. In the next hour you will hear music from Aram Khachaturian, Osvaldo Golijov, Ludw...

Johann Sebastian Bach’s‘ The Goldberg Variations’ was the only work that Glenn Gould recorded twice. Now, he died only about a year after this recording so it’s not possible to say that he would not have re-recorded other works… but there is something a little haunting that the work that took him from quirky prodigy to global star in 1955 was the one he returned to in the final year of his life. If you are after some background to Gould and the music he made, then please listen to the previous e...

This is the first episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’ devoted to just one musician so I better have some good reasons… apart from just a personal affection for his recordings. In the English speaking world, the Canadian Glenn Gould was amongst the most recognised and popular pianists in the second half of the 20th Century. In fact, even today, over forty years after his death at the age of 50 in 1982 there are not many pianists of similar stature. Ok, so he has enduring popularity. But why is th...

Music that takes its inspiration from humanity’s gaze out into the cosmos and from our attempts to reach beyond this fragile planet we call home. And to access some music that predated the quite modern science of ‘astronomy’ I’ve thrown in some works that may owe rather more to ‘astrology’ or perhaps even to the realm of ‘mythology’. As a result this is I think the most eclectic collection of music yet put out into the universe under the ‘Classical For Everyone’ banner. In the next hour and a qu...

I am being a little deliberately opaque with the title of this episode. There is a certain logic to letting people know what they are going to get. But not today. Because I am hoping that for a good selection of listeners out there the date of 22nd December 1808 is pretty much meaningless. And that what follows will be a bit of a surprise. What happened? Well I guess a lot happened but for our purposes there was a concert. A thirty-eight year old composer, with the help of some aristocratic patr...

‘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’…...

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 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 week… Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. Perfor...

I get it that for some people opera is just noise that they are not ever going to enjoy but if there are listeners out there with a bit of curiousity and an inquiring mind… and that is how I would describe anyone listening to this podcast… then I urge you to have a listen to this episode. Why? Well because if you enjoy any music with singing… then you can enjoy opera. And the selection I have made for this episode is based on one simple criteria… pure pleasure. I think you might enjoy ten pieces...

The second of a two episode special. His music uniquely blended Western European compositional techniques with distinctly Russian melodic and harmonic elements, creating a style that was both internationally appealing and unmistakably Russian. Remarkably successful in his own lifetime and responsible for so much music that remains popular to this day he is still perhaps not quite given his due. In these two episodes Sleeping Beauties, Memories of Beloved Places, Teasing Peasants, Violins, Pianos...