Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast

When branding gets louder than the art.

A conversation with violinist and singer Lizzie Ball that begins with “big announcement week” energy and opens into a thoughtful exploration of intimacy, collaboration, and how classical music can be presented with integrity, warmth, and curiosity — from Ronnie Scott’s new series to life on and off the stage..

What’s the point of pursuing something you can never reach? Hope, apparently.Mezzo-soprano Katie Bray makes a compelling case. Her new album In Search of Youkali explores Kurt Weill’s musical response to longing, exile, and the fragile idea of belonging.

Discover Penelope Appleyard's Live from London’s festive Jane Austen programme with Zeb Soanes and pianist Jonathan Delbridge: song, domestic music-making, and Regency wit brought to life in an intimate Christmas performance.

How do we make the classical music industry inclusive for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds — when even the “comfortable” ones struggle to get a foothold?How does an industry that desperately needs a diverse workforce to survive remove the barriers it has quietly maintained for decades?

Composer and sound artist Ruby Colley releases her new album Hello Halo on 14 November 2025 — a work shaped by field recordings, family archives, and her lifelong conversation with her nonverbal brother Paul.It premiered at King’s Place in February, evolved through performances at Aldeburgh’s Britten Weekend, and arrives now as both an album and a film — an invitation to listen differentlyI met composer Ruby for a cup of tea in Hastings. It was a joyous afternoon — unhurried, thoughtful, all very British. The resulting conversation was about the shared joy of listening — to sound, and to silence. It is one of those of handful of very special podcast interactions which captures the spirit of the moment and returns it in spades, perfect for a dark winter evening. Soothing, consolatory and motivating.

Carole Hayman is a writer, director and producer best known for creating the long-running Radio 4 comedy Ladies of Letters, and for her work across theatre, film and television.This conversation explores her fascination with understanding the motivations and actions of women who kill. When she began interviewing psychiatrists and families, a nurse warned her: “It’s a minefield — and no one escapes.”Material from those interviews became The Hive — an opera born from years of verbatim testimony, a four-screen installation, and, by Carole’s own admission, a slightly wine-soaked rehearsal that turned into something bigger.The Hive challenges the familiar, sensationalised image of the “female killer,” aiming instead to reconnect with the basic humanity of the people who’ve caused suffering.The opera premieres at The Tung Auditorium, Liverpool, in partnership with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, on Saturday 8 November at 7.30 pm.We talk about violence, laughter, and the ethics of turning other people’s

Vache Baroque didn’t start with a five-year plan. It started with a can-do attitude. In 2020, soprano-producer Betty Makharinsky and conductor Jonathan Darbourne looked at a locked-down industry and staged Purcell's Dido and Aeneas outdoors—in eleven weeks. Since then they’ve built a distinctive live experience: bold repertoire choices, playful staging, circus performers, and sound design subtle enough that you barely notice it but absolutely benefit from. In this episode, Betty charts that journey—from scratch startup to trusted aesthetic—and why serving the audience sometimes means re-thinking tradition. Bear in mind this podcast does battle with some automated announcements from the Southbank Centre.

Pianist Clare Hammond is no stranger to the Thoroughly Good Podcast. She appeared here a few years ago to talk about performing Schubert in prisons.This time she returns with composer Michael Betteridge to discuss another prison project — one in which they co-created new music with prisoners, pieces Clare later performed.What follows is a conversation about impact — about leadership, trust, and humanity revealed and sustained through participatory music-making.Themes that are equally evident in Clare’s recent album of piano concertos by Britten, Walton, and Tippett.Substance.

When the leaves begin to turn and shifting clouds reveal brief bursts of autumn light, music like that on pianist Aïda Lahlou’s new album Mirrors and Echoes seems to meet the moment — even if you didn’t know there was one waiting to be met.The Casablanca-born pianist, winner of the 2024 Royal Overseas League Award, has assembled a beguiling selection of piano works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel, alongside a handful of lesser-known names she makes a compelling case for in this short interview.More than a conversation about repertoire, this is an introduction to a performer who thinks deeply about connection — between body and mind, performer and audience, sound and silence.

Thirty minutes with one of the loveliest leaders in the classical music industry.

Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen talks candidly about the additive experience of motherhood in this podcast episode recorded on Barbican terrace in mid-September 2025.

In this episode, conductor Alice Farnham is working with English Touring Opera in September and October in performances of The Elixir of Love and Britten's Rape of Lucretia. The productions pop up in a variety of different locations across England. Visit the ETO website for more details. When she and I met for this podcast interview, I provided a provocation. I'd seen something short and surprisingly thought-provoking on Instagram a week before inviting exploration of the definition of trust. Specifically the notion that trust is the active engagement of the unknown. I saw connections with the work of performers of all kinds, indeed even those in the audition if you've an especially imaginative mind. I put the idea to Alice before the interview. The result was thought-prpvoking. Here she talks candidly about what it takes to bring an opera to life — from building trust with singers and directors, to handling nerves before that very first rehearsal. She reflects on how rehearsal culture has changed

In this episode, composer Julian Anderson discusses his new work Life Cycle, to be premiered by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in September 2025. Conducted by Stephan Meier, and featuring soprano Anna Dennis, the concert also includes Charlotte Bray’s Reflections in Time and the premiere of Serpentine by Birmingham composer Marcus Rock.At the heart of this conversation, though, is Anderson’s Life Cycle: eight songs that span English, French, Spanish, German and Gaelic traditions, exploring themes of identity, memory, belonging, life and death. For Julian, it’s both a deeply personal project – shaped by family, friendship, and loss – and a vision of music that travels freely beyond nationality. It’s also a project that began life in an unusually unexpected way.We also talk about the early encouragement that set him on the path to composing, how musicology sharpened his creativity, and why he believes memory and play sit at the core of everything he writes.Our conversation was recorded on a hot Bank Holida

Trumpeter Matilda Lloyd releases her third album on the Chandos Label featuring four premiere recordings by Roxanna Panufnik, Richard Barbard, Deborah Pritchard and Owain Park, alongside transcriptions of music by Johan Sebastian Bach, Martini, and Johann Ludwig Kreps. Matilda is an invigorating presence on the classical music scene, combining her craft with an astute eye for social media content that avoids aesthetics, pays deference, and is useful all at the same time. It takes a certain kind of person to achieve all of that. You'll get a sense of what that is in this interview recorded in May 2025.

Audiences. Strategy. Credibility. What does cultural leadership in classical music look like when credibility is tested by data? Sam Jackson - Radio 3 Controller and BBC Proms Director - talks to Jon Jacob about Radio 3's new sound, recent listening figures (have they been spun or are they actually improving?), strategy, and his role as an audience-facing leader in a changing BBC challenged by funding, budget cuts, and future monetisation plans.

Composers Richard Blackford and Gavin Higgins return to the Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast talking about the Three Choirs Festival where Higgins has just been announced new Associate Composer. Blackford's new work The Black Lake premiered there. Also featuring CEO David Francis. Music: organist Oliver Latry's Festival improvisation in Hereford Cathedral.

Hello Grab a pillow and lay down. Drift off. Allow yourself to dream. Such overt direction wouldn't normally feature in a Thoroughly Good Podcast introduction, but its fitting for this one with pianist Hanni Liang who, ever the experimenter with concert formats, tests out an element of her forthcoming Edinburgh Festival appearance on me in a bit of a podcast first. Liang combines a performance of Debussy Reverie with audience-led improvisation at The Hub as part of Edinburgh International Festival this year, inviting people to share their dreams so that she can improvise on the ideas that emerge from it. She does the same here with me. It's only really since recording this that I've come to understand what my recurring dream really is about - in its simplest terms its to do with the panic of time running out. And now, having understood that, it is phenomenally disappointing to realise I've been having this same dream for as long as I can remember. Even so, I've not had it since recording t

Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili shares her journey from student to international artist. She reflects on her roots in Georgia’s rich musical culture, her transformative experience as a BBC New Generation Artist, and the thrill of returning to the Royal Albert Hall. Mariam discusses the emotional depth of Liszt’s music, recounts how reading Dante at 13 shaped her interpretation of his Fantasia quasi Sonata, and explores the spiritual dimension of performance

London chamber music venue Wigmore Hall stages something in the region of 600 events a year. That’s partly why its season brochure stretches to 206 pages — and that’s just for September to December 2025. A weighty piece of print that, for some (myself included), reads more like a guaranteed programme of discovery. An in depth syllabus. A prospectus. The new season sees the usual draw of international artists and homegrown talent: Christian Tetzlaff, Igor Levit, Les Arts Florissants, Dunedin Consort, Mitsuko Uchida, Martha Argerich, Stephen Kovacevich, the Kanneh-Masons, Hugh Cutting, Solomon’s Knot — and a debut from a previous Thoroughly Good Podcastee, Danish cellist Jonathan Swensen, whom I met way back when I was in Armenia for the Khachaturian Cello Competition.To appear at Wigmore is a reflection of the place you hold in the industry as a communicator. So why wouldn’t you make a beeline to go there — to hear the very best, and to hear that which you wouldn’t normally hear?This is not a promo for Wigmore