Time for some music from one of the oldest instruments in the orchestra. True to the Old French word its English name came from… ‘hautbois’ with ‘haut’ meaning both high and loud and ‘bois’ meaning wood… the oboe found its pl...

Music written by people related to the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. That may seem an odd way put a show together. If you were to make a playlist of the greatest hits of people related to Taylor Swift, it would be a very sh...

Why a conductor? The outcomes of the complicated relationships conductors have with orchestras and ensembles, with record companies and the public; and with composers living and dead, are in themselves interesting… but for th...

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the frustrations of insomnia hit the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is pe...

I was listening to the conductor Joshua Weilerstein’s podcast ‘Sticky Notes’ the other day. It was an episode on Ludwig van Beethoven’s 8th string quartet. He was playing the second section and he described the music as havin...

The relationship between classical music and William Shakespeare’s writing is one of the longest and most productive partnerships in the history of either art form. Composers have been drawn to Shakespeare's plays for four ce...