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Classical For Everyone: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Peter Cudlipp
Five hundred years of incredible music. No expertise is necessary. All you need are ears. If you've ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 1 weeks ago1h 16m
Longing
We bring meanings to music that the composers often didn't intend. And this episode is going to be an example of that. There is something in some music that for me triggers a sort of longing. The writer and composer Jan Swafford describes some of Mozart's music as having a 'deep yearning' and I think that is in the same general area. And you can't be too prescriptive about this. It is a bit different if there are lyrics but music on its own is generally suggestive rather than specific. And when I describe the music I'm going to play as inspiring feelings of 'longing'… that in itself is a broad and perhaps vague concept… the music might bring up feelings of someone you have lost… or of a place you can't return to… maybe a golden time you can't recapture… or an ache for someone you can't be with. And of course it may do none of those things for you but for the next hour and a bit there will be music with maybe a hint of melancholy or wistfulness or searching or longing… from Frederic Chopin, Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré, Edward Elgar, Anton Arensky, Jean Sibelius, Arvo Pärt, Johann Sebastain Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Aram Khachaturian and Ludwig van Beethoven. [Episode image: 'A distant star' Chania, Crete.]
- 1 weeks ago1h 14m
Sviatoslav Richter - Part One
The Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, as I hope this and the following episode will illustrate, is one of the greatest musicians of the recording era… unsurpassed technical expertise matched with a profound depth of musicality. But those clichés (whilst true) could be applied to a not insignificant number of other players. So why Richter? More than most musicians he was touched by history. Born in 1915 and dying in 1997, he outlived the Soviet Union but his life was utterly entangled with that state and the impact its leaders had on the people under their iron fists, Richter included. There is I think something in Richter's absolute immersion in his music that was a result of these extraordinary times and his strategies to protect himself from them. And along with the first part of his story there will be music from Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Schubert and Rachmaninoff. [Episode Image: Richter c.1960 Time Life - Walter Sanders]
- 3 weeks ago1h 25m
Mozart Opera Overtures
Why Mozart Opera Overtures? Well, whilst they were not really intended to be stand-alone pieces they have in many instances become favourites of concert programmers and broadcasters, not to mention the public. And with most of them being about five minutes long you can fit eleven of them into a podcast episode! They are also in a way an interesting lens into the development of a composer… since Mozart wrote his first opera very early and completed two in the final year of his life. And in between he wrote another 15 to 20 operas depending on how you define them. So I'm going to play them in chronological order. And as a parallel they chart the changes in the make-up of a theatre orchestra in this time of intense development… the late 1760s to the early 1790s. What we think of as the modern orchestra was starting to settle at this time and the difference in the resources, in terms of instruments, Mozart had from the beginning of his career to the end is striking. And music is pretty damn sensational. [Episode image: 'Cosi Fan Tutte' – Opera Australia.]
- 3 weeks ago1h 24m
Film Music
Who knew that Camille Saint-Saens of 'Carnival of the Animals' fame wrote the world's first film score? Or that the Pulitzer Prize for music has been given to only one work for the screen. Or that five composers, including the American music theatre legend Richard Rodgers, were approached for 'Lawrence of Arabia' before the job fell to an unknown Frenchman who was given six weeks to get the job done. Or that one of the great 20th century symphonies started out as music for a movie. Well I certainly didn't… until I started working on the 'Film Music' episode of 'Classical For Everyone'. [Episode image: The Embassy Cinema; Wellington, New Zealand.]
- Sep 25, 202642 min
Diving For Pearls – Part Two
[Please feel free to leap straight into this second part of the 'Diving for Pearls' episode but there's background information in the first half you might enjoy if by chance you have missed it.] How did the term 'baroque', the French version of a very old Portuguese word for a misshapen pearl… which became an insult applied to complicated music… and was then rehabilitated as a description of an ornate style of art and architecture… become the term now almost universally used to describe music written between 1600 and 1750? And what has 'diving' got to do with anything? The answers are in this two part episode of Classical For Everyone exploring lesser known Baroque composers. And there's a merman. But way more importantly… there is amazing music by Rameau, Rebel, Caldara, von Biber, Marais, Keiser, Leonarda, Strozzi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Locatelli and Valentini. [Episode image: The Canning Jewel (reverse) – Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum.]
- Sep 25, 202648 min
Diving For Pearls – Part One
How did 'baroque', the French version of a very old Portuguese term for a misshapen pearl… which became an insult applied to complicated music… and was then rehabilitated as a description of an ornate style of art and architecture… become the term now almost universally used to describe music written between 1600 and 1750? And what has 'diving' got to do with anything? The answers are in this two part episode of Classical For Everyone exploring lesser known Baroque composers. And there's a merman. But way more importantly… there is amazing music by Rameau, Rebel, Caldara, von Biber, Marais, Keiser, Leonarda, Strozzi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Locatelli and Valentini. [Episode image: The Canning Jewel – Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum.]
- Sep 13, 20261h 7m
Night and Darkness
It could be argued that Night and Darkness are sort of the same. The Night is Dark. That's kind of the point. But there are brightly moonlit nights and there are very dark nights; in more ways than one, and then there is darkness that is as black as night. So it's "Night and Darkness"… including symphonic night music from Gustav Mahler, a song of a rose on a summer night from Hector Berlioz, a night of love from Augusta Holmès, Ludwig van Beethoven's political prisoner crying out from a pitch black dungeon, Sergei Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil and Arnold Schoenberg's music of two lovers sharing secrets walking through a dark forest at night. [Episode image: Night Sky. Christian Hoiberg Digital Photography School.]
- Sep 6, 20261h 14m
Frederic Chopin
I have been asking myself why it has taken close to a hundred episodes before I got around to one devoted to Chopin. When I was chatting with Claude about doing the episode he described my neglect of the composer as, and I quote, 'an alarming gap… genuinely startling given Chopin's centrality to the repertoire and his obvious appeal to audiences'. So, if even my AI buddy is scratching his virtual head (and frankly being a little pretentious and unsupportive); then there may be listeners to the show who feel the same. So, with the help of eight pianists, a couple of cellists, a conductor and an orchestra let me make it up to you with an hour and a bit of the music of Frédéric Chopin.[Episode image: Detail from 'Chopin Playing the Piano in Prince Radziwill's Salon' by Henryk Siemiradzki 1887.]
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