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Creating music in isolation

Tom Service meets the pianist Benjamin Grosvenor and explores the prophetic voice of Glenn Gould. And how amateur music making in the UK has gone online.

Presented by Tom Service

Ahead of a concert with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Tom talks to the winner of the 2020 Diapason d'or de l'année concerto award, the pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, about setting up a new festival in lockdown, and the sense of freedom he creates in his performances, from Chopin to Rachmaninov.

And the prophetic voice of Glenn Gould: Tom is joined by the Canadian music historian Kevin Bazzana, the American-Canadian clarinettist James Campbell, and the American journalist Tim Page, to explore how Gould’s decision to recede from public performance and communicate instead using contemporary recording technologies - mediums such as vinyl, radio, television and film - makes him the perfect musician for our times.

As Northern Opera Group prepare for their film adaptation of Pauline Viardot’s opera, Cinderella, Tom hears from the company’s artistic director, David Ward, director Sophie Gilpin and the stage director and academic Rachel M Harris, about Viardot’s musical language and how to make film for, and with, the community.

And we hear from amateur music-makers across the UK - the Open Arts Community Choir in Belfast, Derwent Brass in Derbyshire, and Helensburgh Orchestral Society in the West of Scotland - about making connections online and how much they’re missed by the communities and audiences they live for.

Available now

44 minutes

Last on

Mon 7 Dec 2020 22:00

Broadcasts

  • Sat 5 Dec 2020 11:45
  • Mon 7 Dec 2020 22:00

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