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English composer

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Vett og vitenskap - med Gaute Einevoll
Om uløste fysikkmysterier - med Øystein Elgarøy og Anders Kvellestad - #120

Vett og vitenskap - med Gaute Einevoll

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2026 208:32


Selv om vi har funnet ut mye om hvordan naturen er skrudd sammen, så er det ikke mangel på spennende ubesvarte spørsmål. I podkasten har jeg invitert to fysikkvenner fra Universitetet i Oslo, Øystein Elgarøy og Anders Kvellestad, for å snakke om disse sammen med meg. Øystein er kosmolog og ekspert på det aller største, Anders er kvantefysiker og ekspert på det aller minste, mens jeg selv skal dekke det mellom. Og til slutt ender vi opp med det aller største mysteriet i naturen: bevissthet.  

KPFA - APEX Express
APEX Express – 8.06.26 – Obbligato – In Conversation with Composer Reena Esmail

KPFA - APEX Express

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2026 59:58


A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. For this episode of “Obbligato,” a show dedicated to AAPI classical musicians, composers, and scholars, host Isabel Li interviews Indian American composer Reena Esmail, who blends Hindustani musical themes with western classical compositional styles. Music in this episode: – This Love Between Us “Prayers for Unity”: II. [Sikhism] – Lacrimosa (from Malhaar: a Requiem for Water) – Terra infirma: IV. roaming the ghost forest Transcript Isabel Li: I'm Isabel Li, here for a new edition of “Obbligato,” which explores the AAPI community in the classical music world. Today, we're featuring the Indian American composer Reena Esmail and her unique compositions that blend Hindustani music with Western classical styles and how she writes music about religion, spirituality, and even environmentalism. Welcome, Reena, to Apex Express. Reena Esmail: Hey! It's so great to be here. IL: My first question for you is one that's probably a little bit loaded, but how do you identify and what's your story? RE: I don't know, it's interesting because I work in many different situations, and I think I always identify as the thing that isn't whatever the dominant situation is that I work in. Right? So it's like when I'm in America, I identify as an Indian American. When I'm in India, I identify as an American. When I'm working in Western classical music, I'm the person who knows stuff about Hindustani music. When I'm working in Hindustani music, I'm the person who knows stuff about Western music. So really. Actually, I think of identity not as a fixed thing, but as how you, um, delineate yourself, how you're unique in the situation you're in. You know, it's interesting because especially in the case of Asian Americans, Asia is such a broad thing, right? There are so many more East Asians in Western classical music than there are South Asians. Certainly in my generation. You know, I was surrounded by Chinese, Korean, some Japanese people who were always, you know, playing the piano when I was playing the piano. And, um, there really was not many other Indian people. And, you know, I'll, I'll actually say that even within India, um, you know, if you look at me in America, I'm just Indian. If you look at me in India, I have a very unusual lineage, which is that my dad is from the region of Gujarat and his family is Muslim. My mom is from the region of Goa and her family is Catholic. And so because of that, when I was expressing interest in music, My mom was the one who had more of kind of a musical knowledge in her family, even though there's no professional musicians in her family. So because Goa was colonized by Portugal, there is this element of Western classical music in Goan culture. And so because of that, my mom was like, oh, let's give her guitar lessons, let's give her piano lessons. And so that's how I landed up in Western classical music as opposed to doing Indian classical music. Um, so yeah, I kind of went through the Western classical scene. I was very interested in being a pianist. And, you know, I'm glad that I'm glad I'm a failed pianist in all honesty, because I see what my colleagues who are real, you know, professional pianists have to go through. And I just don't think I have what it takes to do that. It's really an intense job. Um, but when I was in high school, um, one of my theory teachers kind of said, hey, you know, you might be a composer. It seems like you think like a composer thinks, why don't you try composing and why don't you try writing things down? and one thing led to another. And basically a year and a half to two years after studying, I got one of a very few spots in the undergrad program in composition at Juilliard. And that was a point where my parents kind of said, okay, you know, we don't know a lot about the music world, but it seems like if she got into Juilliard, she's probably like somewhat good at this. Maybe we should kind of see how this goes. And, you know, from there on, I pursued composition. IL: And when and why did you start to study Indian classical music, which is a big element in your compositions now? RE: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's interesting because in every generation, I've seen so much change in how the diaspora views itself. And certainly when I was growing up, you know, I know this is hard to believe, but there were not if you were an Indian going to school, you were kind of the only one. If you were an Indian music, you were kind of the only one. So there was this element where when I went to Juilliard, um, there were I to my knowledge, two Indians in the entire school, me and an actress who had actually come from Calcutta. And so people were trying to, you know, make conversation with me and they'd be like, well, you know, do you do stuff with Indian classical music? And I would just be like, no, I'm trying so hard to even write music for orchestra and, you know, string quartet and all the things that my peers are trying to do. Like, is that not enough? Because I'm Indian, I also have to be doing all this other stuff. And so I resisted it for a long time because I was just trying so hard to do one thing well. But then, you know, I think what, what made me kind of unique is that, you know, I stood out, I was Indian and then, you know, when I was young, that felt really cool. The older I got, the more I thought, well, you know, I know I'm from this culture that has incredible music and I know it when I hear it, I know nothing about it, and maybe I should actually pursue it. And so I really separately kind of started meeting Indian musicians who lived in New York, and I would just ask them questions, and I got to know them. And I realized that while we didn't share a type of music, we did share a culture and we did share a love of music because it is interesting that the culture of Indian classical music is actually quite similar to the culture of Western classical music. You know, you study with a teacher over a really long period of time. You're practicing for hours a day. The kind of personality that would love Western classical music would also love Indian classical music. And so I just made friends with some of these Indian classical musicians. And of course, being a composer, I thought, why don't I put them in my music? You know, how do I do that? And so it was really just curiosity that led me down that path. And for many years, that path was very separate. Because again, I know it's very hard to believe now, but there was a time where people really did not want these cultures to be combined, and people just really looked down on cultures that were not, you know, the dominant Western European classical culture. And so I kept them really separate. And even when I started combining them, people were like, oh, that's sweet. She does stuff with Indian music, you know? And it was really not taken seriously. It's only really in the last decade that people have been embracing other musical cultures. And I mean, how glad I am that that's happening. But it was very, very hard fought and very separate at first. IL: And on that note, how do you navigate the unique challenges of composing with both these cultures in mind, but also being situated in the United States, where people come from all different backgrounds? And how do you as a composer approach that in this context? RE: I mean, I think it's interesting because first of all, I am musically bilingual now, so I can. I went to India, I studied Indian classical music. Seriously. I still work with Indian classical musicians very closely. And so, you know, I can be working on a piece that has Indian classical musicians in it, and I can turn to them and immediately speak in their language and their musical language. And then I can turn to the Western musicians and speak in their musical language. So every single piece I write, especially the ones that involve Indian classical musicians. There is a way through those pieces, both through the Western lens and through the Indian lens. And so I think I'm working in a position where I actually do know how to speak both those languages. And when you do speak both those languages, you know, just the way that if you speak any two, you know, verbal languages, you would know that there are sounds that are cognates. And so you're like, oh, I say the sound. So maybe and it means one thing in one culture and one thing in another culture. But you know that that sound is the same. And so with musical language, you can actually use those musical cognates to connect across cultures by saying, just listen for this thing. And when you listen for this thing, interpret it through the lens of your own culture. So that's certainly how I work. But, you know, I mean, again, I want to say that's not the only way to work. I don't think that you have to be, you know, I mean, again, there's probably most people who are listening to this probably have one musical culture and then maybe they know much less about the other musical culture. That is also fine. You know, you don't need to be an expert in order to want to explore and, and love a thing that's just, you know, where I am because it's the, the center of my musical practice. IL: Well, let's hear a selection from Reena Esmail's oratorio, “This Love Between Us.” This is the second movement titled Sikhism. David Hill conducts Juilliard415 with the Yale Schola Cantorum. [MUSIC: This Love Between Us “Prayers for Unity”: II. Sikhism] IL: That was Sikhism, the second movement from the oratorio This Love Between Us by Reena Esmail, who is here in conversation with me today on KPFA for APEX Express. Something that I really found interesting in especially your work — and I'm sure this has been asked many times, but This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity. This oratorio that you wrote, beautiful work where you use words from the seven major religions of India. And each movement of the choral work is also named after a different religion. In what ways did you adhere to or challenge norms of spiritual music? Because religion is so religion and music are so deeply tied together. How did you challenge those norms or how did you express those norms when you wrote this work? RE: You know, I think it's interesting because my own spiritual background is very kind of multi spiritual multi-faith. But like I said, my, my father is, is my father's side of the family is Muslim. My mom's side of the family is Catholic. My husband is Hindu. All of them grew up in a very singular practice in each of their religions. But for me, I grew up, you know, around my mom and my dad and then, you know, my husband later. And just there's a part of me that takes in the essence of each of these spiritual traditions. And, you know, I'm trying to kind of find what feels true to me in each of those places. And so to me, you know, this love between us is, is a place where I'm trying to essentially say, yes, we express things differently through whatever cultural, uh, history, that language or that that religion emerged through. And yet we're all trying to get at that same numinous thing. And, you know, I mean, I'm not saying, oh, all religions are the same. Definitely not. You know, there's, there's many different ways to practice things. And, you know, your unique way into your spirituality is your own. And that's, that's amazing. But also, we all kind of our cultures form religions for a certain reason, and it's because we want to try to understand things that are beyond ourselves. And so that's essentially what the piece is saying. So I know I'm sure there are purists who are like, you shouldn't be combining these things, but, you know, there's always going to be purists who do that and there's a role for that. But that's not really my role. So, I mean, I picked the pieces and I picked the religion specifically because of the numbers of people who practice that religion currently within India. And so it is like the largest, um, populations, you know, like Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, all, all of those things. And then there's one little tiny religion, Zoroastrianism. And while they are not, there's not many of them within India. They are the ones who are practicing Western classical music in India. So people like Zubin Mehta and all, they are Parsis that are Zoroastrians. So I thought, you know, it's important to include them too, because it's a piece that involves a lot of Western classical musicians. IL: I'm wondering now, as a composer who's working with music of different languages and religions and origins and also evoking a lot of these spiritual truths that are pretty universal in nature. What is your view on the function of music? There's the platitude that music is a universal language. Do you how to what extent do you agree with that? RE: You know, yeah, it's hard to, to, um, to think of music as a universal language. But I think sometimes we, how can I say this? It's such a broad question. When we are working in a form that isn't completely narrative, it gives us a little more chance to get at things that don't have to follow logically after one another. They're just feelings that we're able to feel. And I like working even when there are words, you know, there are certainly words in all of these, these, uh, pieces in this love between us. But I feel like sometimes we just feel something within us. And, you know, I experience this a lot when I have a piece performed, people will come up to me and say like, oh, this made me feel like this. And then the next person will come up to me and say, oh, this made me feel exactly the opposite thing. And I, I really love that we can have those experiences. And, you know, recently it's been really interesting because people have been asking these questions like interviewers, you know, before performances will be like, well, what do you want the audience to feel? And I'm like, oh, I don't want to answer that question. I want you to feel whatever you feel. There's nothing right to feel. And often, I mean, I'm not the one to ask. I'm so close to the music because when I'm listening, I'm thinking like, okay, was that C sharp in tune? Okay, you know, that's what I'm feeling. And I certainly don't want them to feel that. So I don't know. I think it's, it's just exciting to see how when we get out of these, what we should do this and this is the right thing to do. And this is the only way to do it. Um, how do we behave? And there are so few spaces left where if we don't say exactly the right words at the right time to the right people, you know, if we don't have exactly the right opinions that everyone around us has, We are so condemned and music might be one of the last places that we're allowed to feel whatever's inside of us. IL: Mhm. That's really interesting to think about. I think art in general is very beautiful because it allows people to interpret it in many different ways. I think for your music, you really draw on cultural specificity in terms of Hindustani music. What advice would you give to other young composers or also maybe artists of different mediums in creating that balance between specificity and universality? RE: Yeah, I think the thing is that the way into a deep practice is specificity. You know, I know people have asked me like, oh, you've done stuff with Indian music. Are you going to do stuff with other music? And I'm like, gosh, there's still so much to explore. I could have like three lifetimes and still not explore everything I want to explore just in the relationship between Indian and Western classical music. I mean, goodness knows I have four degrees in Western classical music, and I still am barely scratching the surface of it. Right. So I kind of feel like specificity is important because it allows you to access depth. And yet, you know, when you are specific about a certain thing, um, like for instance, like a scholar who only speaks Italian, I mean, they're going to know more than someone who maybe speaks five words of each language, right? So they can transfer over at a higher level and make more sophisticated points and understand the world with a more universal lens if they've gone really deep on one thing. So I would say, you know, to young composers, to young musicians, pick one practice and know it really, really well and deeply become go as far as you possibly can and then, you know, try to see if you can find relations between your primary practice and a different practice. Um, and I mean, some people, you know, I know in this generation that's coming up, that's like in their teens and twenties, there are South Asian, uh, kids who are here whose parents have come from India that are learning Indian and Western classical music side by side. And I think that's great. I mean, that's awesome. But I would also say make sure you don't just learn halfway. Both of those things, you know, if you're going to learn them, if at least with one thing, try to go as absolutely far as you can. IL: Let's hear another example of Reena Esmail's bilingual musicality with her work, Malhaar: A Requiem for Water, which was recorded fairly recently. The vocalist is Graycen Gardner with the choir conducted by Amy Fogerson. [MUSIC: Lacrimosa (from Malhaar: a Requiem for Water)] IL: Composer Reena Esmail used Indian classical instruments in that work, titled Malhaar: A Requiem for water. The vocalist was Graycen Gardner, with the choir conducted by Amy Fogerson. Percussionist was Rohit Panchakshari. I'm Isabel Li in conversation with composer Reena Esmail on this edition of Apex Express here on KPFA 94.1 FM. So when you integrate Hindustani classical Hindustani music, Indian classical music and those instruments into your scores, did you happen to did you have to develop a way to translate the notation of those notes in Western classical music notation, or vice versa? RE: Yeah, it it begs the greater question of what is notation for? Right? Because notation is essentially a way for Western musicians who read notation to look at a thing and be able to associate sounds with that thing. And so when I'm notating for Western classical musicians, I'm saying, okay, what is a cellist typically seeing and what are they doing based on what they're seeing? And then how can I take that language that they know really well that they play in Bach suites, that they play in Elgar, Cello Concerto, whatever it is, how can I take that language and just move it, you know, a couple degrees outward so that they're able to express different things, right? And so it's very much a psychological thing. You know, it's not a science the way that we think of it as and we learn it as this, oh, you know, eighths and sixteenths, and they divide this way. There's a lot you can do just to make someone feel a certain way with notation. On the other hand, if I'm writing for a sitar or tabla, the question is what? What is the role of the notation? Because the role of the notation for tabla player who has only Hindustani training and doesn't read music. It's certainly not for the tabla player that I'm doing the notation. Usually what I'll do is sit down with the tabla player in a, you know, more Hindustani style and say, hey, this is what I want. I want you to have like six overtones of teental. It should be at this tempo, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, oh, got it. I see what you want me to do. Right? And so all you need to figure out is the alignment points with the Western classical musicians. And so then the notation I put in the score is not really for them. It's for a conductor, for the Western musicians to be able to understand what they are doing and to be able to cue them in and help them kind of be in dialogue to one another. So it's interesting because, I mean, these days now I'm finding that there are tabla players who are both Indian and Western classical trained, and they want a part, but parts are not a thing. When I first wrote This Love Between Us, there were no parts for the tabla and sitar player. I actually had a cue sheet that I would actually point to as they were going, so that they knew, you know, what the different cues were because a part, you know, counting rests and stuff is not going to help them at all. So I think it's mostly trying to understand how is someone perceiving something and how can you give them the information they need in the most seamless way possible so that you can express what you want to express? IL: I love how technical that entire rundown was. I also wanted to talk a bit about your work, Terra Infirma, which is pretty recent. I had the honor of attending the premiere of Terra Infirma, a harp concerto that you composed based on your experiences with the Los Angeles fires in January of 2025. Um, it was such a wonderful work. I personally really loved hearing how you musically depicted the progression of a wildfire from despair to hope. It's also not the first environment based piece that you've written. YYou've written, for example, Earth Speaks in 2015. How do you approach composing works that are so rooted in environmentalism? And of course, have, have the undertones of speaking to the larger climate crisis at hand? RE: The thing that is interesting is, you know, someone was asking me about that piece, you know, you, you're, they're asking like, how do you kind of deal with activism in your work? And I was saying like, you know, I don't really think of myself as an activist because I think these issues are so fundamental to all of us, right? It's like you turn on your tap and you're just afraid that there's only going to be so long before water stops coming up. That's not, um, it doesn't feel like activism. It just feels like, you know, fear and it feels like we're tapping into these human emotions where people are so worried about what's going to happen. We don't really know what to do. And I think, you know, with anything, most people who have fear about things, you're going to just clam up if you feel that it's too, um, too much to deal with. And it is I mean, the environmental crisis is so huge that I think most people are just clamming up. And I guess, you know, what is our role as musicians? I think it's maybe to have some moments where we're not just like on our phones, seeing pictures of things burn down and freaking out where we can actually take some time to just reflect and be with one another. Because if we're going to solve this, it's going to be together and we need to come to some kind of like calm understanding of what is happening. And so a lot of my pieces are not accusatory. They're not, you know, pointing a finger. They're not supposed to rile people up. They're supposed to actually depict that experience of what it feels like to really sit with a hard thing for a long time and come to terms with it and then figure out how to move forward. And that's certainly the case with Terra Infirma and certainly the case with my Requiem. Certainly the case with curiosity, like you were saying, it's from Earth Speaks, which is many years ago. And that piece actually talks about the, the Pasadena institution's. It was actually for an organization called Pasadena Master Chorale. They commissioned the work many years ago. And what's so funny is I now live in Pasadena. I live in Altadena, up in the hills. So it's I wasn't living here at the time, but it is, you know, a place where many scientific institutions like the U.S. Geological Survey, you know, JPL, Caltech, all these places that are really exploring the environment in important ways are based. And so the piece kind of honors that and honors how we can interact positively with our environment. We can get data, we can find ways to do things that are, I mean, beyond my understanding, you'd have to ask a scientist, but but I just love that that we're in this place that sees the environment as something to understand more deeply instead of something that's just going to turn on us at a certain point. IL: Certainly. And I'm really curious, because Terra Infirma is also a work that was paired with multimedia animation and performance. Was there anything in your compositional process that differed when you're collaborating across these different mediums? RE: Yeah. So it's interesting because so the, there was, there were projections that were happening. And also in addition to that, it was a harp concerto, but a harp concerto where the harpist was also playing percussion. And so there were some elements that were so different than what would be typically like if harpist was like, I want a concerto. You would just be like, okay, you know, she sits there, she plays these notes. They're in that one position. That's all fine. Um, there was so much more, you're right with this piece than with, um, with my normal pieces. Um, and to me it's both, how can I say this? There's, there's such a different way I have to think about it, but I think that way starts with collaboration. So Yolanda Kondonassis, the incredible harp player, and Camilla Tassi, who was the production designer. These are people I know well and I've had multiyear relationships with. And so when you're thinking about how to build something, you're totally aware of what their work is like. I knew kind of the not even what Camilla's projections were going to look like, but the way that they interact with things. We've done projects together before. And so I pretty much had the sense of how she was going to respond. And I knew what she needed to know in order for her to do her work and make things kind of match up with one another. And then also with Yolanda, a lot of the stuff I put in that was like harp and percussion together. It wasn't something that I was making her do, right? It were things that we came up with together. We've spent so long workshopping things in percussion studios in, um, you know, we've met in all these different cities and we're basically like banging things against a harp and doing, you know, just so much experimentation. So for every technique you see in the concerto, you, um, you basically there's like ten things that we didn't do that didn't put in. So you're really only seeing the best of all the kind of crazy stuff that we tried. So I do think the thing is that when you're trying to invent something new and you're trying to invent new styles and new techniques, I mean, you can think of anything, but you're trying to find the things that A practically work and B allow the performers and the artists to really express themselves. So I found that I was actually choreographing the piece before I was composing it, um, that I had to figure out, okay, where are these percussion setups going to be? What are the instruments that I want? Okay. Are these chimes going to be like over her head? Or is she going to have to reach really far to get them? Are they going to be near the low end of the harp? Things like that that seem so practical. But the difference between having to reach out far and slowly versus having to like, quickly swat something near your ear, right? It makes a different choreography. And so I thought that way first. And then I kind of put the notes and rhythms and melodies and stuff in. IL: Let's now hear a selection from Reena Esmail's Terra Infirma. This is the fourth movement titled “Roaming the Ghost Forest.” Yolanda Kondonassis is the harpist with the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra. [MUSIC: Terra infirma: IV. roaming the ghost forest] IL: The harpist was Yolanda Kondonassis with the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra, playing the fourth movement of Terra Infirma by composer Reena Esmail. I'm Isabel Leigh, and in this episode of Apex Express, I'm joined by Reena Esmail, the composer, in conversation about her music and her approach to making art. Something else that I really was fascinated with on your on your Instagram account. You actually made a post a while back that I found to be very powerful. It's pinned as the letter to the young artists' immigrant parents. It's such an empathetic message that I also really relate to as a daughter of immigrants in the arts. And you kind of argue that these children's pursuit of the arts is a tribute to their parents immigrant struggles. Um, what motivated you to write this letter? RE: You know, I'm so glad you asked about that because so much has changed since I wrote that letter in a really good way. You know, first of all, I will say that when I wrote that letter, if you weren't a child of, you know, like Asian immigrant parents, you. And actually, I think this is true for most immigrant parents who, you know, have kind of given up everything to move to America so that their kids can explore all these opportunities they wouldn't get in their country of origin. When I first wrote this letter, it was really just, I felt like I was saying something really new. And now I think what's really interesting is that we have both parents who understand this and, um, kind of almost this parody way of seeing what Asian parents are like. Right. For me, one thing that I, that just makes my heart sing is the comedy of Zarna Garg. I don't know if you know who she is, but she is like an Indian American comic and she plays this role of being like this very typical Indian parent. And I will say, my parents weren't really like this because again, they were two different religions and married one another. So they were already quite open minded. But like 99% of Indian parents and even my parents, sometimes they have this thing of like, well, ‘why are you going into this?' Like you should make money, you should do this stuff. And I feel like, um, since Zarna's comedy came into the world, it's such an easy way to just point a finger at that and say, hey, this is what we're really dealing with as Indian immigrants. And, you know, we all just laugh at it. And I find that, you know, sometimes my friends who are just, you know, white Americans who have been in this family has been in this country for many generations. They don't get it. But like anyone who's a child of immigrant is like, oh yes, I completely understand what she's saying. So we have that. And I think that's really healthy and awesome. And she's very talented. Um, and on the other hand, I found that when I was first going into music and I mean, I, you know, when I was 18 and I was going to go to Juilliard, my parents were certainly supportive and curious and wanted me to do whatever they thought I might be good at enough to make a living and didn't want to optimize for, oh, you need to earn the most money or you need to, etc. but most other Indians around us were like, oh my God, she's so smart. Why is she like wasting her life doing music? You know, that was kind of the dominant narrative. And so I had to become very good at explaining why. And imagine my complete disbelief when I would go to conservatory and meet people whose parents had encouraged them to do music. I was like, what is happening? Like, we're like, there'd be four siblings and all of them would be in the arts. And I was like, oh wait, you're not the black sheep of your family. Like, I mean, half of my family, I don't think really knows what I do still even. Right? And so to me, it was so important to provide some kind of context. And like you said, it's like to, to come to this country and be an immigrant and to come with a lot of skills, but to have to just work in silence for so many years with no congratulation, with no one just constantly propping you up. That is what being an artist is. And you know, it's only maybe the past 10 years of my career that I've even been visible to people. Before that, it was just me doing my thing and like, no one cared about it. It was not not glamorous at all. And for me, that's what built the kind of strength in me to be able to sustain the career that I have now. And so I think if it had been a little too easy, I don't know that I would be able to handle, um, the, what I have now. So I think what's great though is that the Indian parents of kids who are teenagers and in their twenties nowadays are not coming to me being like, oh my God, what do I do with this kid who wants to be a musician? I've failed as a parent. Which again, for those of you who are not Asian, this is totally a true thing out there. They will come to me and say, hey, look, my, my child doesn't wants to be a musician. I want to help them. I can't tell like, are they good at this? Where should they be? Can you help me understand things? And that is really what my parents did. And I will, you know, kind of go further to say — PBS did a special on me a number of years ago, and I insisted on putting my parents in this special because I wanted people to see what it looked like to have really encouraging Indian parents who, again, they weren't going in blind. They were. They would go to my teachers and be like, well, I mean, is she good? Can she do this? We don't know what these answers are. Can you help us understand? And they really relied on the right people to be able to help me get to places that they couldn't get, but they also weren't just immediately dismissive of it. And that's what allowed me to kind of have a massive advantage, because I didn't have to also go back to school and do a medical degree. Or like most of my my peers of my age actually did. So I wanted to put them on that special to actually show that that is possible. And I'm seeing more and more that it is. There are many more parents like that now. And oh my goodness, I love every one of them. IL: That's wonderful. When you look back at your compositional career and how everything has changed since then, how do you think your work has evolved? RE: Oh, so you mean like since I began being a composer? IL: Yeah. Or maybe in the past ten years, even. RE: Yeah. It's interesting because I think one of the big inflection points in my work was when I did my Fulbright in India. So before that, I really didn't know very much about Indian classical music. And then the year before that, I really started to get deeper and started to integrate my Indian and Western classical world with one another. And then, you know, I from 2011 to 2012, I went to India and what was so different was actually seeing the music in its culture and actually getting to participate as an Indian in India, studying Indian classical music. Right. Because there's no filter. You're not going through a Western filter. You're just there in this culture. And I know that many of my Indian teachers, they kind of had this attitude of like, look, we don't know what kind of music you were doing before, but we're so glad you're here and studying your own music. And this is great. And so there wasn't this sense of having to go through another culture to get to their, their music. And to me, that really changed things because I don't see myself as writing music. That's one through the conduit of the other. I just see it as two streams that are equally incredible and equally independent, and they just meet each other in these interesting places. IL: And looking ahead into the future, is there an ensemble or an artist who you haven't worked with before that you'd love to work with? Ooh. It's interesting because, like, almost everyone who comes to mind is not a musician. Um, I've worked with so many. I mean, truly, I've been so lucky to work with musicians like Gil and Orli Shaham. Yolanda Kondonassis. I'm writing a piece for Hilary Hahn and Matthias Goerne right now. It's I mean, just like literally anyone who I could ever ask to work with, I have. I don't know. I mean, to me, it's like, gosh, someone like Misty Copeland would be amazing. Like, you know, there are so many actors like the world of Indian/South Asians in comedy and in drama and stuff like that is just incredible. People like Mindy Kaling who have done incredible things to me, people like that are just going outside of just music would be fascinating to me. IL: Absolutely. And I will put a link to your website, as well as the links to the music that will also be aired on this in this episode on KPFA.org, so our listeners can learn more about you and your wonderful work. Well, Reena, thank you so much for your time and thank you for talking to me today. RE: Absolutely. The post APEX Express – 8.06.26 – Obbligato – In Conversation with Composer Reena Esmail appeared first on KPFA.

Crisis What Crisis?
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER: The Day the Music Stopped

Crisis What Crisis?

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2026 53:04


Julian Lloyd Webber is undoubtedly one of the country's greatest living musicians – the man who, perhaps more than anyone of his generation, took classical music out of the concert hall and into the mainstream. But in October 2013, ten minutes into a recital in a Suffolk seaside town, the power drained from his right arm and he found he could barely draw the bow across his cello.Within six months, at 63, he was forced to retire – unemployed overnight and stripped of the thing that had defined him since he was a boy of thirteen.For half a century, the cello had been Julian's whole life. He toured the world, playing with everyone from Yehudi Menuhin to Elton John, took an Elgar recording to a Brit Award and his brother's Variations to number two in the pop charts. He was the first officially licensed busker on the London Underground and the only classical soloist at the London Olympics closing ceremony.Then, at 64, he sat the first job interview of his life and went on to lead the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire into a £57 million new home, winning it royal status along the way. On his 75th birthday – and while quietly managing a prostate cancer diagnosis – he walked back onto the Wigmore Hall stage and played again. And now, twelve years after the power drained from his arm, Julian is touring – a full run across Ireland this autumn with his cellist wife, Jiaxin.His memoir, Bows & Arrows, is out now, and this conversation is about the abuse he survived as a boy, the instrument he loved and lost, and how you rebuild an identity when the thing that made you who you are is taken away.POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEYI know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing a crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on. This episode is powered by Kingsley Napley.Visit www.kingsleynapley.co.uk for more details.FOUR LESSONS FROM JULIANTalent and hard work aren't enough on their own – you need passion, because that's the only thing that gets you up to do it all again after a bad night.A second string to your bow can end up saving your life. When you lose the thing that defined you, throw yourself into whatever else genuinely moves you – even if it's nothing like what you did before. Find something that truly absorbs you, and the healing takes care of itself.When a setback knocks you down, picture the alternative. For Julian, the fear of ending up disappointed with his life was the fuel that kept him going.Healing is not forgetting; it's reaching the point where the trauma you carry doesn't drag you down.CHAPTERS04:01 – Growing up in a chaotic, bohemian home09:12 – The day on the Tube that took his childhood11:03 – Why some things you don't get over – and shouldn't have to15:21 – His father's warning that lit the fire17:39 – Fifty years at the top: how he kept the flame alive27:25 – The longest relationship of his life33:12 – A football bet, a number two record, and a gold disc35:01 – The night the power drained from his arm39:02 – Losing your job, your income and your identity overnight39:59 – The first job interview of his life, at 6444:22 – The daughter's remark that brought him back to the cello47:57 – Facing a cancer diagnosis51:32 – Why he refuses to slow down, even nowBUY JULIAN'S BOOKBows & Arrows – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bows-Arrows-Julian-Lloyd-Webber/dp/1837360588SEE JULIAN LIVEJulian's Irish tour with his wife, Jiaxin – https://julianlloydwebber.com/events/FOLLOW JULIAN LLOYD WEBBERInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/julian.lloydwebber/FOLLOW CRISIS WHAT CRISIS?Instagram – www.instagram.com/crisiswhatcrisispodcastTikTok – www.tiktok.com/@crisispodThis was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)

Kalm met Klassiek
#140 - Zomertripjes - Salut d'Amour van Elgar (S06)

Kalm met Klassiek

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2026 8:00


We sluiten deze themaweek af met een romantisch muziekstuk van Edward Elgar. In het landelijke Yorkshire schreef hij, al fietsend en wandelend, een liefdesode aan zijn verloofde. Wil je meer Kalm met Klassiek? Ga naar npoklassiek.nl/kalmmetklassiek (https://www.npoklassiek.nl/kalmmetklassiek). Alle muziek uit de podcast vind je terug in de bijbehorende speellijst (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgSfm1Sux7CroiJvzeUdx?si=f0f254ee8f4048e7). 

The CoffeeHouse Classical
Episode 244: Elgar's “Skizze” for solo piano

The CoffeeHouse Classical

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2026 10:44


We hope you'll enjoy this short piece that's dense with complexity- a real microcosm! Be sure to like, and share with a friend!  Music: https://imslp.org/wiki/Skizze_(Elgar%2C_Edward) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

Private Passions
John Nichol, writer, former RAF Navigator

Private Passions

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2026 53:15


Thirty-five years ago, during the Gulf War, the face of the RAF navigator John Nichol appeared on news bulletins around the world. His Tornado jet had been shot down over Iraq, and he was captured, tortured and paraded on Iraqi television.Together with the pilot John Peters, he wrote about these experiences in their best-selling book Tornado Down. Since then, he's written many more books about military history, on topics ranging from the Spitfire to the Unknown Warrior. His most recent book, Blitz, focuses on the effects of German bombing, not just on London, but in Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and his native north east.John's music includes Chopin, Aaron Copland, Arthur Sullivan and Elgar.

Perfect Pitch
S2.E103 Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Beethoven Andante Favori, Berwald Scherzo Symphony 4, Elgar Imperial March.

Perfect Pitch

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2026 38:38


We would love to hear from you, wherever you are!We would love to hear from you, wherever you are! Drop us a reviewwww.perfectpitchreviews.com Win a night at The Royal Festival Hallhttp://www.perfectpitchreviews.com/giveaway Know someone who would love the show?http://www.perfectpitchreviews.com/referral Logo design by Robbie Mailer Howat @robbiemailerhowatWe would love to hear from you, wherever you are! Drop us a reviewwww.perfectpitchreviews.com Win a night at The Royal Festival Hallhttp://www.perfectpitchreviews.com/giveaway Know someone who would love the show?http://www.perfectpitchreviews.com/referral Logo design by Robbie Mailer Howat @robbiemailerhowat

Giocare col fuoco
Giocare col fuoco di domenica 21/06/2026

Giocare col fuoco

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2026 58:27


Giocare col fuoco: storie, canzoni, poesie di e con Fabrizio Coppola Letture: I giganteschi dataset di canzoni rubate usati dagli sviluppatori di IA (Il Post, 18/6/2026); Edgar Hilsenrath, Il nazista & il barbiere (trad. M.L. Bocchino e M.L. Cortaldo, Marcos y Marcos). Ascolti: Eels, E.W. Elgar, Interpol, Dalla, De Gregori, Badly Drawn Boy.

Klassik to Go
Elgar: Enigma-Variationen op. 36 | Klassik to Go

Klassik to Go

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2026 6:38


Welcher Freund? Welches Erlebnis? Julius Heile klärt auf - doch das letzte Rätsel in Elgars "Enigma-Variationen" bleibt ungelöst …Schon gewusst? Zahlreiche Konzerte der NDR Ensembles finden Sie auf YouTube im Channel "ARD Klassik" oder in der ARD Mediathek.https://www.youtube.com/@ARDKlassikhttps://www.ardmediathek.de/kultur_klassikAbonnieren Sie "Klassik to Go" und finden Sie weitere spannende Angebote des NDR in der ARD Audiothek!https://www.ardaudiothek.de/sendung/klassik-to-go/10778959/

The CoffeeHouse Classical
Episode 243: Elgar's The Wand of Youth, Suites no. 1 and 2

The CoffeeHouse Classical

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2026 27:52


We've have some youthful vibes for this late spring time episode, and we think you'll love the charming nostalgia of these pieces this week. Be sure to like and share with a friend!  Music: https://imslp.org/wiki/The_Wand_of_Youth%2C_Suite_No.2%2C_Op.1b_(Elgar%2C_Edward) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique
Elgar - Concerto pour violon : Frank Peter Zimmermann, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2026 18:01


durée : 00:18:01 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier - Frank Peter Zimmermann est le deuxième artiste allemand seulement à enregistrer ce chef-d'œuvre anglais. - réalisation : Pauline Boisaubert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Le Disque classique du jour
Elgar - Concerto pour violon : Frank Peter Zimmermann, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner

Le Disque classique du jour

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2026 18:01


durée : 00:18:01 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier - Frank Peter Zimmermann est le deuxième artiste allemand seulement à enregistrer ce chef-d'œuvre anglais. - réalisation : Pauline Boisaubert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Le Disque classique du jour
Elgar, Bridge, Ireland : English Cello Works – Andreas Brantelid

Le Disque classique du jour

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2026 22:42


durée : 00:22:42 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier - Le violoncelliste suédo-danois Andreas Brantelid est un musicien dont le répertoire est connu pour sa diversité. Dans ce nouvel album, il a choisit de réunir des oeuvres pour violoncelle d'Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge et John Ireland. - réalisation : Pauline Boisaubert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique
Elgar, Bridge, Ireland : English Cello Works – Andreas Brantelid

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2026 22:42


durée : 00:22:42 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier - Le violoncelliste suédo-danois Andreas Brantelid est un musicien dont le répertoire est connu pour sa diversité. Dans ce nouvel album, il a choisit de réunir des oeuvres pour violoncelle d'Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge et John Ireland. - réalisation : Pauline Boisaubert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Clásica FM Radio - Podcast de Música Clásica

Carlos Iribarren | Cuando algo es tan inabarcable como lo son los mares y los océanos, nos falta tiempo para hacer todas las preguntas que se nos ocurren a nuestra invitada y escuchar música estupenda relacionada con el tema. Así que nos hemos puesto a ello desde el primer segundo y hoy toca combinar la escucha de piezas “marinas” compuestas por autores tan variados como Debussy, Elgar, Bridge, Lazzari y MacDowell con aprender multitud de detalles sobre el mar con Sara Hernán, profe de biología y geología en institutos madrileños de educación secundaria. ¿Por qué se forman las mareas? ¿Cómo empieza un tsunami? ¿Cuál es el animal más voraz? ¿Y el más rápido? Da para mucho más pero lo importante es disfrutar de la amena conversación y de la mejor música del mundo en la nueva entrega de Hoy Toca, el programa de Clásica FM que te quiere sorprender.

YourClassical Daily Download
Elgar: Sevillana, Op. 7

YourClassical Daily Download

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2026 4:30


Elgar: Sevillana, Op. 7Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Keith Clark, conductorMore info about today's track: Naxos 8.550086Courtesy of Naxos of America Inc.SubscribeYou can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts, or by using the Daily Download podcast RSS feed.Purchase this recordingAmazon

Philipps Playlist
Philipps ABC der Ruhe - E

Philipps Playlist

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2026 23:52


Es erwartet Euch eine entspannte Episode! Mit Enya, Einer Englund und Edward Elgar.Diese Stücke hast Du in der Folge gehört:Englund, Einar - "Romanze" //Enya - "Na laetha geal m'óige" //Elgar, Edward - "Nimrod" //Eller, Heino - "White Night" //Eno, Roger - "Clearly" //Erlebach, Philipp Heinrich - "Air" //Den Podcast "Eltern ohne Filter" von Bayern 2 findest Du hier:https://1.ard.de/eof_28?q2=pp Wenn Du eine Idee oder einen Wunsch zu einem musikalischen Thema hast, dann schreib ihm eine Mail: playlist@ndr.de

Disques de légende
Un week-end à Londres ?

Disques de légende

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2026 89:09


durée : 01:29:09 - par : Lionel Esparza - Et si on allait passer l'après-midi à Londres ? En musique bien sûr, transportés par Haendel, Elgar, Haydn, Vaughan Williams et quelques autres... " A kind of musical cup of tea, in London ", pour en retracer l'histoire. - réalisation : Flora Sternadel Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Relax !
Un week-end à Londres ?

Relax !

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2026 89:09


durée : 01:29:09 - par : Lionel Esparza - Et si on allait passer l'après-midi à Londres ? En musique bien sûr, transportés par Haendel, Elgar, Haydn, Vaughan Williams et quelques autres... " A kind of musical cup of tea, in London ", pour en retracer l'histoire. - réalisation : Flora Sternadel Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Private Passions
Sir Ian Blatchford, Science Museum director

Private Passions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2026 52:12


Sir Ian Blatchford has been the Director of the Science Museum in London for more than 15 years – the longest serving director in its history. He also oversees the National Railway Museum in York, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, Locomotion in County Durham, and the Science and Innovation Park in Wiltshire - all enjoyed by more than four million visitors last year. He was the first in his family to go to university and his early career was in banking, but his passion was for culture. He combined the two as Finance Director at the V+A, before crossing the road to lead the Science Museum. It's currently a very challenging time for anyone running a museum, with hard questions about funding, sponsorship and exhibition content. His musical choices include Elgar, Monteverdi, Wagner and Sarah Vaughan.Producer: Katy Hickman

Desert Island Discs
Professor Michele Dougherty, scientist

Desert Island Discs

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2026 52:15


Professor Michele Dougherty is President of the Institute of Physics and Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She was appointed Astronomer Royal last year – the first woman to hold the post in its 350-year history.She was brought up in Durban in South Africa and studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in applied maths at Natal University. After completing a Master's and PhD she took up a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany where she investigated solar wind and galactic wind outflows.In 1991 she joined Imperial College London where she helped devise a magnetic field model for the Ulysses mission. In 1997 she became principal investigator for the magnetometer instrument on board the Cassini probe which was sent to study Saturn and its system.She is currently lead investigator for the J-MAG magnetometer instrument on the European Space Agency's JUICE mission (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) which launched in 2023. It will reach Jupiter in 2031 and spend at least three years observing the planet and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.Michele was appointed CBE in the 2018 New Years Honours List for services to UK Physical Science Research.DISC ONE: Puccini: Turandot, Act III: Nessun dorma! Performed by Luciano Pavarotti (tenor), John Alldis Choir, Wandsworth School Boys Choir and London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta DISC TWO: Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85: III. Adagio. Composed by Elgar. Performed by Jacqueline du Pré (cello) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli DISC THREE: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19: III. Moderato. Composed by Tchaikovsky. Performed by Frank Peters Zimmerman (violin), and Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Lorin Maazel DISC FOUR: We Three Kings of Orient Are - Robert Shaw Chamber Singers DISC FIVE: Dancing Queen - ABBA DISC SIX: Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross DISC SEVEN: Franck: Panis Angelicus. Performed by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barry Rose DISC EIGHT: Pie Jesu (From Requiem) Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Performed by Malakai Bayoh, Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School and London Mozart Players, directed by Scott Price BOOK CHOICE: The Lord of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien LUXURY ITEM: An assortment of wine CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85: III. Adagio. Composed by Elgar. Performed by Jacqueline du Pré (cello) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinleyDesert Island Discs has cast many space experts away to the island over the years including NASA's Dr Nicola Fox, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa
#114 BBC Armistice Broadcasts in the 1920s - with Professor Rachel Cowgill

The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2026 34:26


11 November 1923: The BBC's first Armistice broadcast. Back in our moment-by-moment timeline of what happened on the early BBC, it's three days short of its first anniversary. The BBC aired 'The Great Silence', speeches including the Prime Minister... and then the questions began regarding the soundtrack to the Armistice commemorations. Foulds' A World Requiem, even if the Church might not like it? Elgar? Jerusalem? It's A Long Way To Tipperary? Classical or songs from the troops? And how do you broadcast a silence? Guiding us through the music and lack of it throughout the decade, Professor Rachel Cowgill, cultural-historical musicologist, Professor of Music at the University of York. Her article is in the show-notes... ...as are details of some of the earliest recordings of a BBC broadcast - well, a recording of an event that was also broadcast on the BBC. That surely counts. We found some this episode - I think taking the number of 1920s recordings of the BBC to five. (We'll do an episode about them soon, I'm sure...)   And Trayce Arssow's research into how 1920's Funeral of the Unknown Warrior became the world's first electrical recording - despite claims it took till 1925.   SHOWNOTES: Prof Rachel Cowgill's article is Canonizing remembrance: Music for Armistice Day at the BBC, 1922-7  Trayce Arssow's article is Pioneers in the Evolution of Electrical Sound Recording: The Guest-Merriman Electrical Recording System, 1918-1922 1920's gramophone record of the Funeral of the Unknown Warrior, thanks to WW1Recordings on Youtube. 1927's Remembrance Festival at the Albert Hall - one of the earliest recordings of something broadcast on the BBC, thanks to Vintage Sounds on Youtube. 1928's Remembrance Festival at the Albert Hall, thanks to EMGColonel on Youtube. 1928's Remembrance Festival, as above, but a great tale behind its recording, thanks to Revolutions in Sound on Youtube. Original podcast music is by Will Farmer.  This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just about the old BBC. Support us on Patreon (£5/mth - thanks if you do!), for bonus videos, writings, readings etc. All keeps Paul in books and web hostings - so this podcast is what it is thanks to kinds patrons there. Thanks! See Paul on tour in An Evening of (Very) Old Radio - paulkerensa.com/tour Read Paul's Substack - paulkerensa.substack.com Share/rate/review this podcast if you have a spare 5mins - it all helps. Next time, Episode 115: Music from the BBC's first year, with musician, comedian and gramophone record enthusiast Earl Okin More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio  

Cities and Memory - remixing the sounds of the world

I composed this piece in an attempt to understand trance. I sought to merge specific leitmotifs and elements,embedding them within a classical orchestral context. This purely intuitive and emotional act, guided by the sensations inspired by the sound archive, follows no predefined methodology other than that narrated by improvisation itself, as articulated by the archive. The guiding thread is clearly the archive, serving both as a foundation of respect and as a compass for the composer. At eight distinct moments, sliding sounds of bowed strings emerge, followed like a shadow by a frenzied percussion that articulates an almost inhuman cadence. By placing these two sonic environments in contrast, the restraint of the classical orchestral language and the unbridled surge of ritual, I believe a union is established between two styles which, though articulated differently, pursue the same aspiration, the transcendental, the absolutely spiritual, intertwining and mutually illuminating one another.In order to avoid falling into a crude and short sighted orientalism, I have condensed into a modal term a sense of chaos and discomfort inherent to the ethnomusicologist or anthropologist, perpetually questioning themselves, when confronted with works of such overwhelming and divine intensity. Like the incarnation of a demon, of virtuosic prowess, of an abyssal instrumentation that never falters and never ceases, the new layers of the composition must become part of this sonic chaos. It is a distant voice, one that I recognise, and which has only been able to reach my ears through flamenco, native to my Spanish homeland. I deliberately refrained from pursuing deeper research so as not to over-determine symbolism, which, through my own interpretative lens, might have withered any attempt at spontaneity inherent in the experience of this music. Reference is thus made to sonic patterns, to repetition and recurrence, and almost to delirium and possession, of the musicians themselves and of the orchestral instruments. Ultimately, this composition stands as a nod to Edward Elgar, an abstract gesture of camaraderie in the face of the immensity of cultures and sonic narratives which, converging in a creative moment, are ultimately reduced to the act of recounting daily life and the emotions, inquietudes, and curiosities, that embody the human condition.Stringed instrument and tabla reimagined by Angela Tisner.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Thriving on Overload
Felipe Csaszar on AI in strategy, AI evaluations of startups, improving foresight, and distributed representations of strategy (AC Ep32)

Thriving on Overload

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2026 38:18


“You can create a virtual board of directors that will have different expertises and that will come up with ideas that a given person may not come up with.” – Felipe Csaszar About Felipe Csaszar Felipe Csaszar is the Alexander M. Nick Professor and chair of the Strategy Area at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He has published and held senior editorial roles in top academic journals including Strategy Science, Management Science, and Organization Science, and is co-editor of the upcoming Handbook of AI and Strategy. Webiste: papers.ssrn.com LinkedIn Profile: Felipe Csaszar University Profile: Felipe Csaszar What you will learn How AI transforms the three core cognitive operations in strategic decision making: search, representation, and aggregation. The powerful ways large language models (LLMs) can enhance and speed up strategic search beyond human capabilities. The concept and importance of different types of representations—internal, external, and distributed—in strategy formulation. How AI assists in both visualizing strategists' mental models and expanding the complexity of strategic frameworks. Experimental findings showing AI's ability to generate and evaluate business strategies, often matching or outperforming humans. Emerging best practices and challenges in human-AI collaboration for more effective strategy processes. The anticipated growth in framework complexity as AI removes traditional human memory constraints in strategic planning. Why explainability and prediction quality in AI-driven strategy will become central, shaping the future of strategic foresight and decision-making. Episode Resources Transcript Ross Dawson: Felipe, it’s a delight to have you on the show. Felipe Csaszar: Oh, the pleasure is mine, Ross. Thank you very much for inviting me. Ross Dawson: So many, many interesting things for us to dive into. But one of the themes that you’ve been doing a lot of research and work on recently is the role of AI in strategic decision making. Of course, humans have been traditionally the ones responsible for strategy, and presumably will continue to be for some time. However, AI can play a role. Perhaps set the scene a little bit first in how you see this evolving. Felipe Csaszar: Yeah, yeah. So, as you say, strategic decision making so far has always been a human task. People have been in charge of picking the strategy of a firm, of a startup, of anything, and AI opens a possibility that now you could have humans helped by AI, and maybe at some point, AI is designing the strategies of companies. One way of thinking about why this may be the case is to think about the cognitive operations that are involved in strategic decision making. Before AI, that was my research—how people came up with strategies. There are three main cognitive operations. One is to search: you try different things, you try different ideas, until you find one which is good enough—that is searching. The other is representing: you think about the world from a given perspective, and from that perspective, there’s a clear solution, at least for you. That’s another way of coming up with strategies. And then another one is aggregating: you have different opinions of different people, and you have to combine them. This can be done in different ways, but a typical one is to use the majority rule or unanimity rule sometimes. In reality, the way in which you combine ideas is much more complicated than that—you take parts of ideas, you pick and choose, and you combine something. So there are these three operations: search, representation, and aggregation. And it turns out that AI can change each one of those. Let’s go one by one. So, search: now AIs, the current LLMs, they know much more about any domain than most people. There’s no one who has read as much as an LLM, and they are quite fast, and you can have multiple LLMs doing things at the same time. So LLMs can search faster than humans and farther away, because you can only search things which you are familiar with, while an LLM is familiar with many, many things that we are not familiar with. So they can search faster and farther than humans—a big effect on search. Then, representation: a typical example before AI about the value of representations is the story of Merrill Lynch. The big idea of Merrill Lynch was how good a bank would look if it was like a supermarket. That’s a shift in representations. You know how a bank looks like, but now you’re thinking of the bank from the perspective of a supermarket, and that leads to a number of changes in how you organize the bank, and that was the big idea of Mr. Merrill Lynch, and the rest is history. That’s very difficult for a human—to change representations. People don’t like changing; it’s very difficult for them, while for an AI, it’s automatic, it’s free. You change their prompt, and immediately you will have a problem looked at from a different representation. And then the last one was aggregating. You can aggregate with AI virtual personas. For example, you can create a virtual board of directors that will have different expertises and that will come up with ideas that a given person may not come up with. And now you can aggregate those. Those are just examples, because there are different ways of changing search, representation, and aggregation, but it’s very clear that AI, at least the current version of AI, has the potential to change these three cognitive operations of strategy. Ross Dawson: That’s fantastic. It’s a novel framing—search, representation, aggregation. Many ways of framing strategy and the strategy process, and that is, I think, quite distinctive and very, very insightful, because it goes to the cognitive aspect of strategy. There’s a lot to dig into there, but I’d like to start with the representation. I think of it as the mental models, and you can have implicit mental models and explicit mental models, and also individual mental models and collective mental models, which goes to the aggregation piece. But when you talk about representation, to what degree—I mean, you mentioned a metaphor there, which, of course, is a form of representing a strategic space. There are, of course, classic two by twos. There are also the mental models which were classically used in investment strategy. So what are the ways in which we can think about representation from a human cognitive perspective, before we look at how AI can complement it? Felipe Csaszar: I think it’s important to distinguish—again, it’s three different things. There are three different types of representations. There are the internal representations: how people think in their minds about a given problem, and that usually people learn through experience, by doing things many times, by working at a given company—you start looking at the world from a given perspective. Part of the internal representations you can learn at school, also, like the typical frameworks. Then there are external representations—things that are outside our mind that help us make decisions. In strategy, essentially everything that we teach are external representations. The most famous one is called Porter’s Five Forces, and it’s a way of thinking about what affects the attractiveness of an industry in terms of five different things. This is useful to have as an external representation; it has many benefits, because you can write it down, you can externalize it, and once it’s outside of your mind, you free up space in your mind to think about other things, to consider other dimensions apart from those five. External representations help you to expand the memory, the working memory that you have to think about strategy. Visuals in general, in strategy, are typical external representations. They play a very important role also because strategy usually involves multiple people, so you want everybody to be on the same page. A great way of doing that is by having a visual so that we all see the same. So we have internal—what’s in your mind; external—what you can draw, essentially, in strategy. And then there are distributed representations, where multiple people—and now with AI, artifacts and software—among all of them, they share the whole representation, so they have parts of the representation. Then you need to aggregate those parts—partial representations; some of them can be internal, some of them are external, but they are aggregated in a given way. So representations are really core in strategic decision making. All strategic decisions come from a given set of representations. Ross Dawson: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So looking at—so again, so much to dive into—but thinking about the visual representations, again, this is a core interest of mine. Can you talk a little bit about how AI can assist? There’s an iterative process. Of course, visualization can be quite simple—a simple framework—or visuals can provide metaphors. There are wonderful strategy roadmaps which are laid out visually, and so on. So what are the ways in which you see AI being able to assist in that, both in the two-way process of the human being able to make their mental model explicit in a visualization, and the visualization being able to inform the internal representation of the strategist? Are there any particular ways you’ve seen AI be useful in that context? Felipe Csaszar: So I was very intrigued—as soon as LLMs became popular, were launched—yeah, ChatGPT, that was in November 2022—I started thinking, there are so many ways in which this could be used. So myself and two co-authors, Hyunjin Kim and Harsh Ketkar, we wrote a paper, one of the initial papers on how AI can be used in strategy. It’s published in Strategy Science, and in that paper, we explore many ways in which AI could be used in strategy. Of course, you can ask AI about coming up with answers to questions that you may have. You can also use AI to use any of these frameworks that have been developed in strategy. It was very clear to us that it was usable. Then the question was, how good are those uses? What’s the quality of current AI doing this type of task? So what we did is an experiment where we compared the performance of AI to the performance of humans. In strategy, there are two types of tasks: one is to generate alternatives, and the other is to select alternatives. You have a problem—the first thing you want to do is have possible solutions, and then you want to be able to pick the best out of those. So we had two experiments: one where we measured the ability of AI to generate alternatives, another to select. For generation, what we did is we got data from a business plan competition where people were applying with business plans that all had the same format. The important thing is that the first paragraph of that application had the problem—a problem that they thought was important. So we took all of those applications and removed everything except for the problem, and then we gave that problem to an AI and asked the AI, “Hey, complete the rest of the business plan.” So now we have business plans that are real, and the AI twins of those—business plans created by an AI that try to solve the same problem. Then we put both in a kind of business plan competition, where we had people with experience in investments ranking all of these business plans, and they didn’t know which ones were created by humans and which ones were created by AIs. We looked at their evaluations at the end of the day, and on average, the ones that were generated by the AI were ranked a little bit higher—7% higher—than the ones that were generated by humans. So at least in this very specific context of business plan competitions, there’s potential. We’re saying, hey, AI could generate things at a level that is comparable to the people applying to this type of business plan competition. That has a lot of potential. We could use it in different ways. The other part of this study was to measure the ability of AI to select strategies among strategies. There, what we did is use data from another business plan competition, where all of the business plans had been evaluated by venture capitalists according to 10 dimensions: how strong is the idea, how strong is the team, how strong is the technology, etc. Then we gave an AI the same rubric that the venture capitalists received and asked the AI to rank or grade each one of these startups according to these 10 dimensions. Then we compared how similar the evaluations of the LLM were to the evaluations of the venture capitalists, and we showed that they are quite similar—there’s a correlation of 52%. This, again, tells us that there is potential here. An AI could do things that are quite similar to an experienced human evaluating this type of startup. A very interesting result there is that the correlation between two venture capitalists is lower than that 52%. So if you want to predict what a venture capitalist is going to say about your business, you’re better off asking an LLM than asking another venture capitalist. Ross Dawson: Yes, which perhaps shows the broad distribution of VC opinions. So obviously, LLMs can play valuable roles in many aspects of the strategy process, but this brings us back to the humans plus AI role. There are many—again, a big topic—but rather than looking at them, comparing what humans and AI did, where do you see the primary opportunities for humans and AI to collaborate in the strategy process? Felipe Csaszar: Yeah, yeah. So I think that’s a fascinating question, and my guess is that the study of the strategy process will completely change in the next 10 to 20 years. So far, all of the strategy process has been to study what happens when you have multiple people making strategy decisions. In the past, we studied things like devil’s advocate, or we have studied the role of changing the size of the group of people making decisions, or the consensus level required. But in the future, there will be AIs in this process that will have completely different bounds or capacities than humans. So we will need to learn what’s the best way of collaborating with them and including them into the strategic decision making process. Today, we don’t know much about it. We are beginning to learn things, like the study I mentioned—hey, in this task, it seems to be better—but there’s so much that we need to learn. I am working on some things, but it’s still early. Ross Dawson: Going back to the distributed representation—this is something where, of course, distributed representation can be in multiple people. Arguably, it can include human and AI agents as each having different representations. But this goes, of course, to the aggregation piece, where the aggregation is—you have a board of directors, group of executives, potentially a participative strategy process bringing more people into the organization. What are the specific roles of AI in assisting or facilitating effective aggregation to form a cohesive strategy? Felipe Csaszar: Yeah, so the truth is, we yet don’t know. There’s not enough research. We’re starting to think about it. We can see many uses, and I think what people should be doing now is running experiments to see when those add value and when they don’t. It will be different for different companies in different industries, so probably there’s no one solution that’s the same for everybody. For example, one possible use in strategic decision making is predicting what your competitors would do. If I do this, what would be the most likely reaction of my competitor? That’s one. Another one is predicting consumers: if I launch this product with this set of characteristics, what would be the most likely response of my consumers? In strategy, something that has been very popular for the last 20 years is something called the Blue Ocean Strategy, which is a method to come up with new offerings, with new value propositions, but that requires a lot of creativity. With AI, you can automate part of that. At the end of the day, it’s a search process. You have to think about what would happen if I add this, or if I add this other thing, or if I increase this. Part of that can be automated—that would be another use. Or if you have different proposals—in this other study, we show, hey, AI is good at evaluating, so if you have the right rubric, this can automate the evaluation, or can automate the first part of that evaluation so that you only have to spend your time among the really complicated, more sophisticated decisions or alternatives. There are many, many things that can be done at this point. Ross Dawson: Which goes to, I think, one of the interesting points in your work—representational complexity. Some strategies are arguably simple; other strategies, you can call them more sophisticated, but they are more complex. The representation of complexity is greater. There are two things that are required for that. One is, of course, sophisticated thinking, but also, because strategy in any organization involves multiple people, it requires that there is an ability for a number of people together to hold a hopefully similar or very similar representation of a quite complex topic. What are ways in which AI can be used to enhance that development of more sophisticated or nuanced or complex representations that can support a better strategy? Felipe Csaszar: So that’s a great point. I have a paper from before this new round of AI called exactly that—representation complexity. There has been a long-standing discussion in strategy of when you want to use a simple representation, whether it’s better to use a complex representation, or something in between. We tried to clarify when each one of these applies. But then came this new round of AI, and I think it changes things a lot. I talk a little bit about this in a chapter I uploaded recently—it’s called “Unbounding Rationality.” The key thing there is that humans—we have our own computer here, it’s the brain, and the brain has some constraints. One very important for strategy is the capacity of our working memory. There’s this famous paper from the 1950s called “The Magical Number Seven,” that we can hold in our working memory seven plus or minus two items—so between five and nine things we can keep at the same time in our mind. That’s why, for example, I think all strategy frameworks are very simple. There’s the five forces—fits within our working memory—or these typical two by twos, they have four quadrants—fits within our working memory. But AIs don’t have that bound. They are not constrained by the same working memory constraint that we have. So I would expect that future frameworks will be much more complex, that representational complexity will increase because of AI. Of course, frameworks of the future won’t have a million things, because when you put too many things, you’re overfitting—it works well with things that happened in the past, but not in the future—but they will probably have more than five things. Also, another reason for not having a million things inside a framework is that at the end of the day, you will still need to communicate frameworks. You will need to convince the other people in the organization, the ones that are implementing the strategy, that this is the right strategy. You will need to convince them, so you don’t want to have something that’s extremely complex. But my guess would be that the complexity of frameworks and of strategies will increase with AI. Ross Dawson: So looking forward—you talked about 10 or 20 years. If we see the current pace of capability development of LLMs on a similar trajectory, where do you see the remaining role of humans as a complement to AI in shaping strategy? I think you mentioned this possibility of essentially AI forming strategy, but I think for a wide array of reasons, it will be human plus AI—humans will play a role as final decision maker or other things. So where do you see those fundamental human capabilities still being retained for the foreseeable future, as a complement to AI in strategy? Felipe Csaszar: So I think that for the next 10, 20, maybe 30 years, humans will be really busy coming up with how to use AI—all of these experiments that we mentioned, people will be running all of those things in all different industries, and that takes a while. That will require human ingenuity and trying things and really understanding strategy and understanding the capabilities of AI. So I don’t see AI replacing human strategists in the very short term. On the contrary, because of AI, strategists will be more busy finding what are the best ways of using AI in their businesses. I think 10, 20, or 30 years is very reasonable. If you think about the previous technological revolution, which I could say was the Internet—the technology for the Internet, we could say, existed since around ’94. The World Wide Web is from ’94, browsers are from ’94, bandwidth enough to send email. Essentially all of the technology that supports internet business today was mostly in place in the mid to late ’90s. But the businesses, or people, ended up using all of those things 10 or 20 years after that, because it takes a long time for people, for strategists, to come up with the idea—for someone to come up with the idea of, let’s say, Netflix or eBay or PayPal or Facebook—all of those things, they take time for people to understand this is doable. Then it takes time to implement. Then it takes time for users to say, “Hey, this is useful.” There’s a lot of adaptation, and then there will be regulation. So the whole process takes a long time. I don’t think that businesses will change from one day to the next. It will be a relatively slow process that will take decades. When we look back in 20 years from now, we will see, “Hey, everything changed,” but every year we will see just a little bit of change, like what happened with the Internet. So I imagine that people designing strategies, implementing strategies, they will be very busy in the next 20 years. Ross Dawson: So to round out, I won’t ask you to make predictions, but maybe some hypotheses. What do you think are some interesting hypotheses that will inform your research—not just next year, but in the years beyond? Where do you think are the interesting avenues that we should be not just exploring and researching, but where there is a valid and useful hypothesis? Felipe Csaszar: Yeah, so many things, but one very important—I think that strategy will be more about making the right predictions. The role of foresight. It turns out that when you want to train a machine learning algorithm, you need to have some signal that informs how you train the system. It’s called the gradient, or the objective function. So in strategy, we will need to make that more central, and then think, what are the best ways in which you can use AI to make the right predictions? That requires measuring the quality of predictions. So you change this in the business, and this ends up happening. We want an AI to be able to do that. So coming up with ways in which you can measure the quality of decisions will become more important, so that we can train those AIs. That’s one. And very related to that is, well, the thing that’s generating the predictions are representations, and then it’s coming up with those more complex representations that are better at making decisions or are better at discovering things that are hard for humans to discover. Those are the two main things. I think the future of strategy will be about finding ways of improving foresight and finding ways of improving the thing that creates that foresight, which are the representations. All of that will change what has been called the strategy process—how we make decisions in strategy. Ross Dawson: So I just need to pick up on that point around prediction. One of the challenges with external predictions is that, then, as a strategist, you have to say, either I will build my strategy based on that prediction, or I question that prediction. I think there are alternatives or attribute probabilities to it. So even if a prediction machine gets better, it’s still very challenging, particularly cognitively, in terms of accountability for the strategist to incorporate a prediction where you don’t necessarily have all of the logic behind the prediction as a machine learning model to incorporate. So how can a strategist incorporate what may be a relatively black box prediction into an effective strategy? Felipe Csaszar: Yeah, well, and here we are in the conjecture part of this interview. So my answer is in that spirit. I think there are two ways out of this. One is that we will ask for explainable predictions. There’s a whole area of AI called Explainable AI, which is exactly trying to do this—not just say what’s the best prediction, but why the AI is saying that’s the right prediction. So that could develop, and probably that will develop, because humans will question whatever the AI will predict. That’s one way. The other is, imagine that the AI becomes very, very, very good at making predictions. Then at some point, it doesn’t matter if it can explain it or not—it’s just making very good predictions. It’s like, imagine you want to win at chess and you have this machine that can play chess very well. This machine wins at chess. You don’t need to exactly understand how that machine is making each one of those decisions. But if the machine is very good at it, and it’s consistently good at it, people will use it. In a sense, the market will decide. If this works better than a machine that provides an explanation for each one of the steps, people will just go with the one that’s making the right prediction. Ross Dawson: I think there’s all sorts of other places we can go to from there, but that’s fascinating. So where can people go to find out more about your work? Felipe Csaszar: Well, I upload all of my stuff to SSRN. So if you Google my name and SSRN, you will find all of my papers. In the near future, like in the next three months or so, I’ll have two things coming out. One is a Handbook of AI, written also with my co-editor Nan Jia from USC, that will have 20 chapters that will explore different ways in which AI will be affecting strategies—the Handbook of AI and Strategy, published by Elgar. And then around that same time, there will be a special issue of the Strategy Science journal where I’m one of the co-editors, which will be exactly about the same—about AI and strategic decision making. We already have accepted several of the papers for that special issue. Those papers will be pushing the frontier of what we know about AI and strategic decision making. Ross Dawson: That’s fantastic. I will certainly be following your work—very highly aligned with the humans plus AI movement. And thank you for all of the wonderful research and work you’re doing. Felipe Csaszar: Thank you so much, Ross. It’s been a pleasure. The post Felipe Csaszar on AI in strategy, AI evaluations of startups, improving foresight, and distributed representations of strategy (AC Ep32) appeared first on Humans + AI.

Record Review Podcast
Elgar's Cello Concerto

Record Review Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2026 49:50


David Owen Norris picks his favourite recording of Elgar's Cello Concerto.

elgar cello concerto david owen norris
Private Passions
Peter Purves

Private Passions

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2026 47:30


Michael Berkeley's guest is actor and TV presenter Peter Purves. Purves has been involved in two of TV's longest-running and best-loved institutions - he was one of the earliest companions to travel in the TARDIS with Doctor Who (1965-66), and for ten and a half years from 1967 to 1978, alongside John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Leslie Judd, he presented Blue Peter – entertaining the nation's children with demonstrations in everything from competitive swimming to scaling the Fourth Road Bridge. A dog lover, he has also presented TV coverage of dog show Crufts for many years. Purves's musical passions include Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Elgar and Sondheim, alongside tracks by Louis Armstrong and Count Basie - both of whom he remembers seeing perform live in concert.Presenter: Michael BerkeleyProducer: Graham Rogers

The Gramophone podcast
William Vann on Elgar's choral music

The Gramophone podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2026 30:45


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.    

Countermelody
Episode 428. Alfreda Hodgson Sings Brahms

Countermelody

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2026 99:21


The English contralto Alfreda Hodgson (07 June 1940 – 16 April 1992) has been featured numerous times on Countermelody and when I recently acquired a copy of her 1980 solo recital recording originally released on Pearl Records, I decided that the time was right to do a full episode on this rich-voiced, profoundly musical singer. Though she was equally superb in Bach, Mahler, Handel, and Elgar, I have chosen to focus on her performances of the music of Johannes Brahms, including superb recordings of the Alto Rhapsody, the Songs for Alto and Viola, the Vier ernste Gesänge, and a posthumously-assembled collection of his Lieder published under the title Mädchenlieder. Artists accompanying Hodgson include Bernard Haitink, Edward Downes, violist Ludmila Navrath, and her long-standing pianist, the late Keith Swallow. I begin the episode with brief examples of Hodgson singing (in English) the music of her countrymen Lennox Berkeley, Edward Elgar, and John Ireland in the company of Peter Pears, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Steuart Bedford, and Alan Rowlands. Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel's lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody's core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody's Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

Grace Covenant Recordings
Music: Nimrod (Enigma Variations), Sir Edward William Elgar, 1857-1934

Grace Covenant Recordings

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2026 4:27


music nimrod elgar enigma variations
St. James Cathedral, Seattle
Poem of the Month: "Praise to the Holiest in the Height"

St. James Cathedral, Seattle

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2026 6:21


“Praise to the holiest”From The Dream of Gerontius by St. John Henry NewmanPraise to the Holiest in the heightAnd in the depth be praise:In all His words most wonderful;Most sure in all His ways!O loving wisdom of our God!When all was sin and shame,A second Adam to the fightAnd to the rescue came.O wisest love! that flesh and bloodWhich did in Adam fail,Should strive afresh against the foe,Should strive and should prevail;And that a higher gift than graceShould flesh and blood refine,God's Presence and His very Self,And Essence all-divine.O generous love! that He who smoteIn man for man the foe,The double agony in manFor man should undergo;And in the garden secretly,And on the cross on high,Should teach His brethren and inspireTo suffer and to die.On November 1 of last year, All Saints Day, Pope Leo XIV declared Saint John Henry Newman – Cardinal Newman – as a Doctor of the Church. There are thousands of saints—but there are only 38 Doctors: saints who not only inspire us by their example and aid us by their intercession, but whose writing and teaching have had a profound impact on the Church. Cardinal Newman's writings have shaped the Church's understanding in many ways—especially his teaching on the development of doctrine and on Catholic education. Newman was more than a theologian: he was a preacher, a poet, even a novelist. The poem Scott read is taken from his long poem The Dream of Gerontius, which was published in 1865, when Newman was 64 years old. This poem is written in parts like a verse drama or an oratorio (it was later magnificently set to music by Elgar).Gerontius means “old man.” In the poem, Gerontius is an “everyman,” a “soul” who experiences death and what comes after death.The poem begins with Gerontius, the old man, on his deathbed, friends and priest gathered around, praying for him. But his death is only the beginning. Most of the poem takes the form of a dialogue with his guardian angel, who introduces him to the mysterious world of heaven and helps him prepare to meet God face to face.  At the end, he comes before God's throne, and then is led –joyfully - to Purgatory to be made ready for heaven.The poem Scott read is one of several choruses of angelical beings which the soul hears along the way. It's a song of praise, which marvels at the “loving wisdom” and “wisest love” of God in the redeeming work of Christ. The poem uses the Scriptural image of Christ as the “new Adam.” In Adam, our “flesh and blood” was vanquished; in Christ, that same flesh and blood prevails against the enemy. But there is more than a victory won here: there is “a higher gift than grace,” for in Christ our “flesh and blood” are “refined,” with God's Presence, Self, and Essence. Christ is truly human—and truly God.The last two stanzas speak of the suffering Christ underwent, for us, and as one of us. The “double agony” is interior and exterior: anguish of soul in Gethsemane, and physical torment on the cross. God's wise love is also “generous love”: for when Christ dies on the cross, he is still teaching, showing us how to suffer, and how to die.This song comes close to the end of The Dream of Gerontius. This great mystery of our redemption is what prepares the soul to enter the presence of God. And judgment is no longer terrifying. In life, says Gerontius, “the thought of death / And judgment was to me most terrible. / I had it aye before me, and I saw / The Judge severe e'en in the crucifix. / Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled.” In the face of Christ's generous, self-emptying love, fear is no longer possible.Newman's poem about the life that awaits us after death has the feeling of an adventure, a great journey, as the soul discovers that life is not over—it has only just begun. As with poems like The Divine Comedy of Dante and Paradise Lost of Milton, we come away from The Dream of Gerontius feeling that heaven and the afterlife are more real, more vivid, than this life and this world.Newman describes eternal life with urgency and eagerness, without ever dismissing this life as unimportant. Instead, the poem invites us to live life differently, and to look to death—and even judgment—with joy and hope. As Pope Leo XIV said of Cardinal Newman, “The lives of the saints teach us that it is possible to live passionately amidst the complexity of the present, without neglecting the apostolic mandate to shine like stars in the world” ( Pope Leo XIV).

Private Passions
Pam Ayres

Private Passions

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2025 54:34


Michael Berkeley's guest is the poet Pam Ayres, who shares the music that matters most to her, including some seasonal favourites. It's now 50 years since Pam first won a vast national audience on the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks, with poems including her much-loved wintry verse 'Sling another chair leg on the fire, Mother!'Her musical choices include Rachmaninov, Elgar and Johnny Mathis.

Franck Ferrand raconte...
L'énigme d'Edward Elgar - 2ème partie

Franck Ferrand raconte...

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2025 21:20


Compositeur britannique le plus célèbre depuis Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, bien que marqué par le modèle allemand, sut donner une nouvelle impulsion à la vie musicale de son pays.Plongez dans l'histoire des grands personnages et des évènements marquants qui ont façonné notre monde ! Avec enthousiasme et talent, Franck Ferrand vous révèle les coulisses de l'histoire avec un grand H, entre mystères, secrets et épisodes méconnus : un cadeau pour les amoureux du passé, de la préhistoire à l'histoire contemporaine.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Franck Ferrand raconte...
L'énigme d'Edward Elgar

Franck Ferrand raconte...

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2025 21:20


Compositeur britannique le plus célèbre depuis Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, bien que marqué par le modèle allemand, sut donner une nouvelle impulsion à la vie musicale de son pays. Mention légales : Vos données de connexion, dont votre adresse IP, sont traités par Radio Classique, responsable de traitement, sur la base de son intérêt légitime, par l'intermédiaire de son sous-traitant Ausha, à des fins de réalisation de statistiques agréées et de lutte contre la fraude. Ces données sont supprimées en temps réel pour la finalité statistique et sous cinq mois à compter de la collecte à des fins de lutte contre la fraude. Pour plus d'informations sur les traitements réalisés par Radio Classique et exercer vos droits, consultez notre Politique de confidentialité.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

CURSO DE FILOSOFÍA
Curso de Filosofía: La escuela de análisis del lenguaje de Oxford.

CURSO DE FILOSOFÍA

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 23:57


🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy nos trasladamos a la Escuela de filosofía del lenguaje de Oxford, cuna de la llamada filosofía del lenguaje ordinario. Nos centraremos en dos de sus figuras más representativas: Gilbert Ryle, conocido por su crítica al “fantasma en la máquina” y por su defensa del análisis conceptual del lenguaje cotidiano, y John L. Austin, pionero de la teoría de los actos de habla y autor de How to Do Things with Words, donde muestra cómo al hablar no solo describimos, sino que hacemos cosas con palabras. A lo largo del episodio veremos cómo, desde Oxford, esta corriente propuso una filosofía entendida como clarificación de nuestros usos lingüísticos, una especie de “cartografía” de nuestro hablar cotidiano para disolver confusiones y falsos problemas. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este recorrido filosófico y por el apoyo constante que sostiene este proyecto. 📗ÍNDICE 1. PENSAMIENTO DE GILBERT RYLE. 2. PENSAMIENTOI DE JOHN AUSTIN. 🎼Música de la época: Pompa y circunstancia op. 39 de Elgar 🎨Imagen: Portada de la escuela de Oxford. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

CURSO DE FILOSOFÍA
Curso de Filosofía: La escuela de análisis del lenguaje de Cambridge

CURSO DE FILOSOFÍA

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2025 17:57


🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy nos adentramos en la Escuela de Filosofía del Lenguaje de Cambridge, un núcleo decisivo para el desarrollo de la filosofía analítica del siglo XX. Repasaremos las figuras clave que enseñaron allí —Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein y G. E. Moore— y su impacto en la manera de entender el lenguaje, el pensamiento y la realidad. Hablaremos también de la revista Analysis, de la figura de John Wisdom y del enfoque característico de esta escuela, concebida como una forma de “terapia lingüística” cuyo objetivo no es construir teorías, sino disolver confusiones conceptuales. ❓ ¿Crees que la filosofía debe ofrecer teorías sobre el mundo o, más bien, ayudarnos a aclarar y sanar los malentendidos que crea el lenguaje? Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este recorrido filosófico y por el apoyo constante que hace posible este proyecto. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. PROFESORES EN CAMBRIDGE. 2. LA REVISTA ANALYSIS. 3. JOHN WISDOM. 4. UNA TERAPIA LINGÜÍSTICA. 🎼Música de la época: Pompa y circunstancia op. 39 de Elgar 🎨Imagen: Portada de la escuela de Cambridge. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

Au coeur de l'orchestre
La musique symphonique britannique I : Sir Edward Elgar

Au coeur de l'orchestre

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2025 118:38


durée : 01:58:38 - La musique symphonique britannique I : Sir Edward Elgar - par : Christian Merlin - L'un des fils rouges de cette saison sera une exploration de la musique orchestrale britannique, trop méconnue sur le continent. D'Elgar, on connaît le Concerto pour violoncelle et la Marche "Pomp and Circumstance", mais qui sait qu'il a composé trois symphonies et des poèmes symphoniques ? - réalisé par : Marie Grout Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Au coeur de l'orchestre
La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (4/4)

Au coeur de l'orchestre

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2025 28:38


durée : 00:28:38 - La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (4/4) : de Falstaff à la Symphonie n°3 - par : Christian Merlin - L'un des fils rouges de cette saison sera une exploration de la musique orchestrale britannique, trop méconnue sur le continent. D'Elgar, on connaît le Concerto pour violoncelle et la Marche "Pomp and Circumstance", mais qui sait qu'il a composé trois symphonies et des poèmes symphoniques ? - réalisé par : Marie Grout Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Au coeur de l'orchestre
La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (3/4)

Au coeur de l'orchestre

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2025 28:39


durée : 00:28:39 - La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (3/4) : Symphonies n°1 et 2 - par : Christian Merlin - L'un des fils rouges de cette saison sera une exploration de la musique orchestrale britannique, trop méconnue sur le continent. D'Elgar, on connaît le Concerto pour violoncelle et la Marche "Pomp and Circumstance", mais qui sait qu'il a composé trois symphonies et des poèmes symphoniques ? - réalisé par : Marie Grout Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Au coeur de l'orchestre
La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (2/4)

Au coeur de l'orchestre

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2025 28:42


durée : 00:28:42 - La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (2/4) : Pomp and Circumstance, Cockaigne, In the South - par : Christian Merlin - L'un des fils rouges de cette saison sera une exploration de la musique orchestrale britannique, trop méconnue sur le continent. D'Elgar, on connaît le Concerto pour violoncelle et la Marche "Pomp and Circumstance", mais qui sait qu'il a composé trois symphonies et des poèmes symphoniques ? - réalisé par : Marie Grout Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Choir Fam Podcast
Ep. 137 - Connecting with Audiences Through Choral Storytelling - Joshua Habermann

Choir Fam Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2025 47:38


“My job is to make people love choral music as much as I do, and that's a lot. I really love choral music. My job is to say ‘you should care about this.' You might care about it because it's ravishingly beautiful or because it has a story to tell you. Even if you're not a person who relates to choral music, you can relate to stories. We're going to weave some sort of through-line through this program that tells you something about life that we hope resonates with you whether you're a musician or not.”Joshua Habermann is in his seventeenth season as Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, one of the nation's premiere professional chamber choirs. Since joining the ensemble, he has broadened its repertoire to include choral-orchestral masterworks and unique concert experiences ranging from early music to new commissions. Under his leadership, the Desert Chorale has been featured at regional and national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, and its summer and winter festivals are among America's largest choral events.Habermann's experience with symphonic choruses spans over three decades, encompassing the full range of the choral-orchestral repertoire. From 2011 to 2022 he was director of the Dallas Symphony Chorus, where highlights included Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the Requiem Masses of Mozart, Brahms, and Verdi, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Bernstein's Kaddish Symphony, Rachmaninov's The Bells, and Vaughan-Williams' Sea Symphony. He is a frequent guest conductor, and in 2022-2023 prepared Handel's Messiah, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, and Benjamin Britten's War Requiem for the San Francisco Symphony.A passionate advocate for music education, Joshua Habermann is a regular clinician for state and national events and has led honor choirs and choral festivals in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2024, he conducted Cantatas 72, 73 and 92 for Bach Santiago (Chile), a concert series dedicated to the first full cycle of Bach Cantatas in South America. He currently teaches choral literature at the University of North Texas.As a singer (tenor), Habermann has performed with the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus under Helmuth Rilling and Conspirare under Craig Hella Johnson. Recording credits include Requiem and Threshold of Night, both GRAMMY® nominees for best choral recording. Recordings as a conductor include The Road Home and Rachmaninov's All Night Vigil with the Desert Chorale.To get in touch with Joshua, you can find him on Facebook (@joshua.habermann) or visit the Santa Fe Desert Chorale website, desertchorale.org.Email choirfampodcast@gmail.com to contact our hosts.Podcast music from Podcast.coPhoto in episode artwork by Trace Hudson

Au coeur de l'orchestre
La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (1/4)

Au coeur de l'orchestre

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2025 28:37


durée : 00:28:37 - La musique symphonique britannique I - Sir Edward Elgar (1/4) : Froissart, Enigma, Gerontius - par : Christian Merlin - L'un des fils rouges de cette saison sera une exploration de la musique orchestrale britannique, trop méconnue sur le continent. D'Elgar, on connaît le Concerto pour violoncelle et la Marche "Pomp and Circumstance", mais qui sait qu'il a composé trois symphonies et des poèmes symphoniques ? - réalisé par : Marie Grout Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Private Passions
Hugh Bonneville

Private Passions

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2025 48:19


Hugh Bonneville is one of the most familiar faces on British TV and film. You might know him as the Earl of Grantham from Downton Abbey, or the long-suffering Mr Brown in the Paddington films, or the baffled Ian Fletcher in the London Olympics sitcom Twenty Twelve and its BBC-centred sequel W1A.Hugh was captivated by acting from an early age, staging his own plays at home and even making the tickets to sell to his family.More recently he's has branched out into writing, with a memoir Playing Under the Piano and a children's book Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room, which is inspired by some of the events of his childhood.Hugh's selection of music includes works by Beethoven, Strauss, Elgar and Faure.Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Clare Walker

En pistes, contemporains !
Elgar, Adès: Concertos pour violon - Christian Tetzlaff, BBC Philharmonic orchestra, John Storgårds

En pistes, contemporains !

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2025 10:02


durée : 00:10:02 - Elgar, Adès: Concertos pour violon - Christian Tetzlaff, BBC Philharmonic orchestra, John Storga°rds - Le violoniste Christian Tetzlaff, l'Orchestre Philharmonique de la BBC et le chef d'orchestre John Storgårds présentent dans cet album deux concertos pour violon britanniques majeurs, composés respectivement en 1910 et 2005. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

bbc orchestras radio france elgar philharmonic concertos violon bbc philharmonic christian tetzlaff bbc philharmonic orchestra john storg
Le Disque classique du jour
Rachmaninov, Elgar - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko

Le Disque classique du jour

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2025 13:33


durée : 00:13:33 - Rachmaninov, Elgar - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko - Le chef Vasily Petrenko continue son exploration du répertoire russe. Spécialiste de Rachmaninov, il enregistre son impressionnante symphonie chorale les Cloches. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique
Rachmaninov, Elgar - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko

En pistes ! L'actualité du disque classique

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2025 13:33


durée : 00:13:33 - Rachmaninov, Elgar - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko - Le chef Vasily Petrenko continue son exploration du répertoire russe. Spécialiste de Rachmaninov, il enregistre son impressionnante symphonie chorale les Cloches. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Disques de légende
Paul Tortelier interprète le concerto pour violoncelle d'Edward Elgar

Disques de légende

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2025 28:06


durée : 00:28:06 - Disques de légende du vendredi 31 octobre 2025 - Le fameux concerto pour violoncelle d'Elgar est ici sublimé par le violoncelle de Paul Tortelier, accompagné de l'Orchestre philharmonique de Londres dirigé par Adrian Boult dans une version de 1973. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

This Cultural Life
Thomas Adès

This Cultural Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2025 43:46


One of the most revered and prolific British classical musicians, Thomas Adès made his name with his 1995 opera Powder Her Face, written when he was just 24 years old. His orchestral composition Asyla was nominated for the Mercury Prize for album of the year in 1999. Recordings of his opera The Tempest and, more recently, his score for the ballet The Dante Project have both won Grammy Awards. His ten symphonic works, three operas and numerous chamber pieces are performed all round the world. In 2024 Adès was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's prestigious Gold Medal, previous recipients of which include Stravinsky, Brahms and Elgar.Thomas Adès talks to John Wilson about the influence of his family, including his art historian mother who is an expert in surrealism. Through her he was introduced to the surrealist artists, the films of Luis Buñuel and met the painter Francis Bacon. His grandmother introduced him to the work of T.S. Eliot as read by Sir Alec Guinness on a cassette recording, and it was some of these poems that he was to eventually set to music for his first ever composition. Adès also recalls getting to the semi-finals of the BBC's Young Musician of the Year in 1990, a watershed moment for him as it prompted him to pursue music as a composer rather than a pianist. He also cites going regularly to the English National Opera as a formative influence and talks about writing his own operas including Powder Her Face about the Duchess of Argyll, and The Exterminating Angel, based on the film by Luis Buñuel.Producer: Edwina Pitman

NDR Kultur - Neue CDs
Album der Woche: "Elgar/Adès" von Christian Tetzlaff und John Storgårds

NDR Kultur - Neue CDs

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2025 4:14


Der Geiger Christian Tetzlaff hat Thomas Adès' Violinkonzert zusammen mit Edward Elgars Violinkonzert eingespielt.

elgar thomas ad christian tetzlaff album der woche john storg
Countermelody
Episode 395. Hildegard Behrens, Liedersängerin

Countermelody

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2025 108:37


Today we celebrate the recorded legacy of Hildegard Behrens, but from an unexpected angle. Like George London and Cesare Valletti, the last two artists heard on the podcast, she is best remembered today for her operatic portrayals. But like both London and Valletti, she was also a recitalist, although this was not, admittedly, a prominent part of her repertoire. Nevertheless, as a recitalist, as in everything she sang, she displayed a keen musical intelligence, a commitment to the inherent drama in the text, and an insistence upon truth in expression. Today, however, we hear the great Wagner and Strauss singer not only in songs by both of those composers, but also less-expected music, including Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben, as well as songs by Bach, Elgar, and Zumsteeg. This material was featured in her Carnegie Hall recital debut in April 1985 and subsequently recorded in Paris at the legendary (and now no longer extant) Salle Wagram. This recording is supplemented by excerpts from three different orchestral song cycles, Les nuits d'été or Hector Berlioz, the Wagner Wesendonck-Lieder, and Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder. May this episode serve as a tantalizing Vorspiese to an upcoming episode celebrating the operatic career of the great Hildegard! Countermelody is a podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel's lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody's core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody's Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.