Benjamin Zander on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

In this week's edition of the Gramophone Podcast Editor Martin Cullingford was joined by conductor Sir Mark Elder and composer Huw Watkins to talk about the Hallé's new recording of Watkins's orchestral music, featuring his Symphony No 2, Concerto for Orchestra and Fanfare, all w ...  Show more

For this episode, we're joined by conductor Edward Gardner, who talks to Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford about his new recording of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra, which is newly released on the Chandos label. Recorded by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and wit ...  Show more

Synopsis On today’s date in 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic in a concert billed as “the first of a series arranged in chronological sequence, comprising the most famous composers from the period of Bach to the present day.” Mahler’s program included works ...  Show more

Synopsis For later Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was “the apotheosis of the dance,” and certainly sitting still during the Symphony’s dizzying finale is not always easy. But for those in the audience at its premiere in 1813, as part of a benef ...  Show more

Synopsis It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied, “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.” Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók wer ...  Show more

Synopsis The Grove Dictionary of Music defines “aleatory” as follows: “music whose composition and/or performance is, to a greater or lesser extent, undetermined by the composer.” But isn’t music supposed to be organized, planned, determined sound? Isn’t “aleatoric music” a contr ...  Show more