Naxos Classical Spotlight
Naxos Classical Spotlight explores the world of classical music. Along the way host Raymond Bisha shares the stories about the music, and the musicians who make it.
Episodes
Florence Price’s abiding interest in the literary arts helps explain the extraordinarily large number of vocal compositions in her catalogue – well over one hundred – as well as the fact that she occasionally supplied texts of her own for these pieces. Conductor John Jeter discusses with Raymond Bisha his latest album of Price's music which comprises a dozen of these choral works, including Price's two significant cantatas – Abraha...
Collected for use in the chapel of Cambridge University's Peterhouse college in the 1630s and hidden during the Civil War, the Peterhouse Partbooks represent one of the most important manuscript collections of sacred choral music from the period. In this podcast, Raymond Bisha presents performances of those works by the Peterhouse choir, affording a snapshot of its chapel's distinctive musical heritage, with recently unearthed musi...
Although the music of Polish composer Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909) is less well known than that of his teacher (Stanisław Moniuszko) and his stu...
In this podcast, Raymond Bisha unearths captivating performances of horn concertos by Rosetti, Vivaldi and Telemann. Did the latter have a few Steins of Alsterwasser to hand when depicting concertising frogs and cr...
Valentin Silvestrov was forced to leave his native Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022. His music has a prescient quality that unerringly seems to express the fate of his homeland. Raymond Bisha introduces the world premiere recordings of his intimate Read more
This album with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra features music by Australian composer Liza Lim, with whom the orchestra has an ongoing relationship. Over the past decade the orchestra has been involved in commissioning all three works on this album: The Compass for orchestra with solo flute and digeridoo, A Sutured World for Cello and Orchestra, and Mary / Transcendence after Trauma.
The music of Alan Hovhaness, one of America’s most prolific composers, enchants with his signature synthesis of East and West. Influenced by his Armenian heritage and a fascination with nature and spirituality, Hovhaness sought to create music “for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.” Ray...
There is a span of nearly six decades between the first and last of the compositions on this album of piano music by Czech composer Alois Hába, with works written during various creative periods and with differing intentions. As a whole, they document both the development of the composer’s musical thinking and goals and the diversity of approach to composing for the piano in the 20th century.
Vasari Singers, one of the UK's pre-eminent choirs, have titled their new album The Music Never Ends, referencing Michel Legrand and his celebrated song How do you Keep the Music Playing? And by the end of the album's twenty-one tracks, you'll wish it could be so. Raymond Bisha dips into the programme'...
Composer/poet Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1897. He went on to become a leading figure in the development of Brazil's classical music scene, as a composer, conductor, musicologist, and a professor of harmony in the National Music Institute in Rio de Janeiro, as well as other in...
In this podcast Raymond Bisha talks with Julian Azkoul, Director of United Strings of Europe, about how the group started, about their album, and about how they started recording for BIS label at the invitation of their legendary founder and producer Robert von Bahr. It is hard to overstate how important Robert's unequivocal support was for the ensemble. All that, plus music by Osvaldo Golijov, Olli Mustonen, Dobrinka Tabakova an...
In Biber’s time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental, and celestial bodies. After all, the string instrument in early modern Europe was configured as a human body – with a neck, belly, and ribs to match....
“I feel that you will achieve your greatest triumphs in [the symphonic] genre for I consider you to have precisely the properties that make a great symphonic composer. This is my firm belief.” Thus wrote Jan Sibelius in 1914 to his former student Leevi Madetoja. Raymond Bisha presents supporting evidence for that foresight in extracts from Madetoja's First and Third Symphonies and the Okon Fuoko Suite performed by the Helsinki Phil...
The musical partnership of pianists Anna Geniushene and Lukas Geniušas, both esteemed prize-winners of major international competitions, is not just a testament to their flourishing solo careers and a shared musical heritage and philosophy. It is a profound expression of their deep emotional connection, a bond that resonates in their performances and captivates audiences world-wide. With their unique synergy, this hus...
Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's ballet The Winter's Tale (after Shakespeare) was first performed by Covent Garden's Royal Ballet in 2014. In this podcast, the score's creative unfolding is described by composer Joby Talbot, prior to a 2025 performance of the ballet in New York City. The presenter is Raymond Bisha.
This podcast introduces a recently released, diverse programme of works for guitar trio bound by the common thread of music inspired by stories from literature, stage or screen. Performed by the Volterra Project Trio, the album's seventeen tracks take us from the Read more
In his album liner notes Behzod Abduraimov writes: "I see this pairing as an opportunity to present two vastly different emotional and philosophical worlds within the same album. I want to offer listeners a striking contrast: the depth and complexity of Prokofiev’s world against Shor’s more lyrical and accessible approach. Each piece reflects different facets of the human experience, and I believe there is value in sharing this d...
In his later years, Liszt increasingly pursued his favoured causes by using piano transcriptions of other composers' works; and his own symphonic poems appeared as transcriptions from the 1850s. In 1865 Liszt famously complained to Hans von Bülow that “I have better things to do with my time than trans...
This project by Alon Sariel and the Kölner Akademie celebrates the versatility of the mandolin on the cusp of the classical period. However, the (hi)story of the mandolin in Vienna is surprisingly different from elsewhere in Europe, and in some cases we are still discovering new astonishing aspects. In contrast to the rest of Europe, Vienna seems to have almost completely ignored the popularity of the new Neapolitan m...
This podcast introduces two works by Karl Weigl (1881-1949), his Symphony No. 3 and the Symphonic Prelude to a Tragedy. Both were written at the beginning of the 1930s but then suffered from decades of neglect. Weigl drew on the sound world of late Romanticism, never abandoning this aesthetic in favour of more progressive contemporary trends. Happily, his distinctive style can now be savoured in these long-awaited world premiere re...
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