Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

The celebrated pianist Dame Imogen Cooper recently announced that the coming year will be her last of public performances. To mark the occasion - and the release of her new album of late Beethoven sonatas on the Chandos label - Editor Martin Cullingford welcomed her on to the Gramophone Podcast, and invited her to select a number of her recordings that have meant the most to her.
This podcast is in association with REMA/Early Music Day

Kevin Puts' newest song cycle sets Emily Dickinson's poetry for mezzo and three instrumentalists. Hattie Butterworth speaks to Joyce DiDonato and ensemble Time for Three about this unique collaboration and recording, 'Emily: No Prisoner Be'

The soprano Adriana González has just released a new Audax album, 'Rondos for Adriana', inspired by her namesake, the Italian 18th-century diva Adriana Ferrarese del Bene. Ferrarese was Mozart's first Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) and she sang Susanna in the Viennese revival of Le nozze di Figaro in 1789.
Joined by Ensemble Diderot (led by Johannes Pramsohler, who also plays a couple of rondos for violin and orchestra), conducted by Iñaki Encina Oyon, Adriana González performs arias and rondos by Vicente Martín y Soler, Angelo Tarchi, Ferdinando Gaspari Bertoni, Giuseppe Giordani, Pasquale Anfossi and Joseph Weigl.
James Jolly caught up with Adriana González in Vienna while she was rehearsing for her debut at the Staatsoper as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro.

Toronto's ARC Ensemble have been exploring the music of composers forced to flee their homeland by the Nazis. The most recent release in Chandos's Music in Exile series – of music by Ernest Kanitz (1894-1978) – drew an enthusiastic welcome by Gramophone's critic Richard Bratby, a review that closed with the hope that 'there's more Kanitz to come'.
James Jolly spoke by Zoom to the ARC Ensemble's Artistic Director Simon Wynberg about the musicians of the Ensemble and the music that animates this important recording project, bringing this often totally forgotten music back to life – and also about their forthcoming visit to London's Wigmore Hall for a day of concerts on February 1.

This month's Gramophone Podcast sees Editor Martin Cullingford joined by William Vann, Director of the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, to talk about his new album of choral music by Elgar: Light out of Darkness, released on Somm Recordings. The wonderfully-chosen selection of music spans the composer's career, and even includes five premiere recordings.