Cacophony

In his Cello Suites, JS Bach catapulted the instrument into the solo spotlight and discovered new worlds of sound and possibilities, full of riches to explore. Nominally it's dance music but its depth and beauty bring us stillness and solace.  Listening time: 25 mins (podcast 7', music 18') Performances here on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Music (whole album link) played by the wonderful David Watkin. If you like it, you can buy a recording as a high quality download here. The proper title for the piece is: JS Bach: Cello Suite no. 1 in G, BWV1007   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode with someone you know - share the 100 second trailer - send us a little something at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!  

Carrying a fragile flower whilst walking a tightrope. Finding the balance between beauty and chaos. Being pulled along by forces outside of our control. On Cacophony we talk about 'diving into great music': Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Metacosmos might be the biggest dive yet - into a black hole! Universal and yet personal, her music is distinctive, compelling, moving and profound. Listening time: 23 mins (podcast 9', music 14') Performances here on Youtube (with video), Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp played by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daníel Bjarnason.   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode with someone you know - share the 100 second trailer - send us a little something at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!  

With the wonders of our imagination and some great music to help, all things are possible - so let's enjoy the views from the top of a mountain: leaving the house (or even getting out of bed) is entirely optional. Richard Strauss takes us over the top (in every sense) in his epic, excessive, exuberant Alpine Symphony, with great views and plenty of thrills but also moments that inspire deeper contemplation on the glories of nature. It's a trip you don't want to miss. Listening time: 62 mins (Podcast, 11', music 51')   In 1982 Herbert von Karajan conducted An Alpine Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first thing to be put on cd, and those who know these things maintain that it's still one of the best: Links here to performances on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Music . If you can, try to listen without adverts, which are particularly interrupting in this piece! If you like to see huge orchestras in action, there are good films performances on youtube. I like the Oslo Philharmonic with Vasi

Brilliant and meaningful, North by Southwest may have been the initial name for Billy Strayhorn's Suite for The Duo, a brilliant, late work for horn and piano: it's a title that suggests confusion and conflicting ideas about the dying composers direction of travel. It's a great piece: virtuosic but raw and written with a total understanding of both horn and piano and what they can do. It's a longer episode than normal because (amazingly) I was able to speak with Willie Ruff, the horn player for whom it was written. Willie, now in his nineties, joined me from his home in Alabama and he talked about his life and career, the Mitchell-Ruff duo, Strayhorn and how Suite for The Duo came to life. Listening time 37 mins (podcast 25', music 12')   The Suite for The Duo can be found here on Apple Music, Youtube and Spotify.   Other music clips in the episode: Take the A-Train [Strayhorn], All the things you are [Jerome Kern], Serenade for tenor, horn and strings [Benjamin Britten]   Willieruff.com has further info on W

Heat, danger, emptiness and space. Plenty of all of this in Peter Sculthorpe's excellent Kakadu - inspired by northern Australia but featuring universal themes of humanity, life, death, and timelessness.  Listening time c22 minutes (podcast 6', music 16') Music here: on Youtube, on Spotify or Apple Music played by the Queensland Orchestra, conducted by Michael Christie with William Barton on didgeridoo.  You can buy this recording as a download here (though you have to buy a whole album, but this recording is the one that I think does best justice to the piece and gives the didgeridoo proper prominence). What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

It's not about that sort of passion, but this symphony La Passione is intense, dark, thrilling, and one of Haydn's best! Listening time c30 minutes (podcast 5.5', music 23') Music here: on Youtube, live in concert with video, on Spotify or Apple Music (Apple Music is a link to the first track only, sorry) played by Il Giardino Armonico, conductor, Giovanni Antonini.   You can buy this recording as a download here.  What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

One of my favourite joyful but heavyweight quick fixes, Robert Schumann's original Symphony no.4 is an intense and inventive stream of consciousness full of light and life. It's a thrill. Shame Schumann didn't see it that way... Listening time c35 minutes (podcast 10', music 25') Music here: on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Music (Apple Music is a link to the first track only, sorry) played by the brilliant Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (from London!) conductor, John Eliot Gardiner. The later version of the symphony is out there too (earlier in the same youtube clip). You can buy this recording as a download for less than £9 here. Be careful to get the right version! What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

Another forgotten gem from a late 18th century woman composer, Marie Emmanuelle Bayon Louis's overture to d'Épine is boisterous and brilliant. You can listen to the piece here played by the excellent and stylish Academy of Ancient Music. Listening time 11 minutes (podcast 5', music 6')   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If female French composers are your thing check out others on Cacophony, Lili Boulanger (featuring an interview with champion of female composers, Diana Ambache) or Louise Farrenc.   The picture isn't a Mayflower...but does look a bit like one... If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

So much more than just a famous TV theme tune, Prokofiev's music for Romeo and Juliet is full of intensity, drama, passion, wit and the occasional brilliantly pure dance number. Simultaneously draining and energising it's a fabulous demonstration of the sheer power of music. I love it. Listening time 41 minutes (podcast 11', music 30') There's a mistake: Tybalt is Juliet's cousin, not her brother. Oops! There goes my GCSE English grade!   Here are complete performances of Prokofiev's 2nd suite from Romeo and Juliet on Youtube and Spotify and (maybe only a link to the first track?) on Apple Music, played by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi. You can buy the recordings as a download here. What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thank

Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (Cacophony ep.117) features the driving funky rhythms at the expense of the wit, poetry and driving funky rhythms of the song numbers... so this episode features four of my favourites. Listening time 22 minutes (podcast 7', music 15')   Here are complete performances of my choices on Youtube and Spotify from the soundtrack album of Steven Spielberg's 2021 movie. What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks to NY resident, Emma Cotter for the photo - actually taken from Queensboro bridge, so it's an East Side Manhattan photo, but in the right uptown/ downtown area!   Thanks for listening!

I played this over a week ago and still the tunes dance around inside my head - it's the jazz- and latin-fuelled brilliance of the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein's smash hit musical, West Side Story - perhaps the greatest musical there is? Let me know! Listening time 34 minutes (podcast 10', music 24')   Complete performances of the music on Youtube (filmed concert performance with The Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Mikko Franck), Spotify and Apple Music (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Christian Lindberg, conductor). The Apple link only plays the first track - you'll have to work out the rest, sorry.   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks to NY resident, Emma Cotter for the photo - actually taken from

I'm no fan of horror films - too scary for me - but, in any case, nothing really scares us more than the thoughts in our heads! I do love scary music though and Béla Bartók wrote the best. Music for strings, percussion and celesta is unusual, gripping, terrifying and thrilling. It's also brilliant at clearing my mind of any 'unneccessary' thinking. Listening time 40 mins (podcast 11', music 29'). Listen to the complete music, played by the awesome Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer on Spotify or Youtube, or Susanna Mälkki conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic on Apple Music (where you have to find the tracks after track 1, sorry) Sometimes, especially with unfamiliar, complex, music I find it's good to have something to watch - it can help guide our ears a bit, and make concentration easier. There's are two exellent filmed performances on youtube: this one shot during the pandemic with no audience, with the Oslo Philharmonic and conductor Vasily Petrenko, and this one from The Orchestre Phi

When Haydn came to London he was treated like a superstar: wined and dined by the great and good, and his concerts were the hottest ticket in town. The 'Miracle' Symphony, no.96, was Haydn's first written for Londoners and is designed to win us over with its charms. Music to put a smile on our faces and a spring in our step! Listening time c32 mins (podcast 10', music 22')   Click here for complete performances of the Symphony on Youtube, Spotify or here. What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!  

A mix of grit, swagger and persistence help us to make it through in the big city. Shirley Thompson's Urban Livinggives us all this plus, perhaps, a tinge of fear and some pheonmenal piano sounds in 7 minutes of [mainly] self-assured city beats. The only performance of the music I can find is here, on Soundcloud, played by the Shirley Thompson Ensemble. Listening time 12 mins (podcast 5', music 7')   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!  

I've come over all nostalgic at the prospect of returning to London in a few days, so here's a swaggering piece of escapism back to the heady optimistic days of the 1930s in Eric Coates London Suite. Listening time 21 mins (podcast 7’, music, 14’)     Music here on youtube, Apple Music or Spotify, conducted by John Wilson, who's unbeatable at this sort of thing, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. You can buy a recording as a download here. If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

Bursting full of life, Ravel’s music for this everyday love story of shepherd meets goatherd meets Greek god of nature is dreamy, sensual, and downright thrilling, all delivered in glorious orchestral technicolor. Meet Daphnis & Chloé! Listening time: 25 mins (podcast 9', music 16 Complete music is here on Spotify or Apple Music played by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. (Start at Track 16 on Apple Music.) Music here on Youtube with pictures but (no choir) played by the London Symphony Orchestra with conductor Simon Rattle. There is a video of a great performance conducted by Mr Chung, but the sound is a bit dodgy. It's on Youtube here   What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks for listening!

Comfortably crossing cultural boundaries, composer Reena Esmail draws on both western and Indian traditions to write distinctive music that is at home in both. Darshan is a terrific solo violin piece which transports us to a timeless state and may even offer a glimpse of the divine! Listening time 21 mins (Podcast 9', Music 12')   Music on Youtube (video performance), Spotify or Apple Music (Bihag and Charukeshi)  What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. You can buy a recording as a download of Vijay Gupta's performance on Bandcamp.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Extract from The Americans for the Arts 33rd Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy given by Vijay Gupta provided by AmericansForTheArts.org.   Thanks for listening!

Shakespeare reaches people across the world with his insights into our shared humanity and his plays have inspired countless composers to write music - providing their own way for us to connect to Shakespeare, each other and ourselves. Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest overture gives us a torrential storm, a big love theme that beats Romeo & Juliet, and one of the most atmospheric, goose-bump-inducing beginning and end to any piece of music. And almost no one knows it at all! Listening time 33 mins (podcast 9’, music, 24’)     Music here youtube with pictures and then here, brilliantly played by the Orchestra of St Luke's with conductor Pablo Heras-Casado on Spotify or Apple Music.    What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. You can buy a recording as a download here, but you have to buy a whole album to get the brilliant Spotify/Apple recording. A cheaper alternative is the equally assuredly brilliant Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abba

How is it that when an artist shares their pain we can all feel it? And how does listening to music full of suffering make us feel better? I don't know how or why, but I know that it does. Dmitri Shostakovich knew all about war, loss, and suffering. His 8th string quartet is desperate but defiant and deeply moving, bleak but often beautiful and whilst it doesn't provide any answers it somehow gives consolation to us all. Listening time 28 mins (podcast 8', music 20')   Music here youtube, and then here on Spotify or Apple Music. If you use Spotify with adverts I'd avoid it for this piece, because this is really a piece you don't want interrupted!    What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter. You can buy a recording as a download here.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways: - share this episode - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe/ review and keep listening!   Thanks fo

We've all got pieces of music that instantly remind us of special times and places in our lives. What are yours I wonder? (Tell me!) We're in Sri Lanka at the moment and, bizarrely, the piece of music we've heard more than any other in the last few months has been Beethoven's perfect little piano piece, Für Elise, but perhaps not as we're used to hearing it... Here's the story of why, and how it's in the ears of everyone Sri Lanka. (Listening time 8 mins: podcast 5', music 3') Apologies for the gratuitous idyllic beach photo. Listen to the piece played by Rudolf Buchbinder on Spotify or Apple Music or on Youtube (Georgii Cherkin).   What do you think? What are the pieces of music from the soundtrack to your life? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.   If you'd like to support Cacophony there are four easy great ways - share this episode with everyone you know. - share the 100 second trailer - buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com - subscribe and keep liste