PODCAST · music
The Lebrecht Interview
by BBC Radio 3
Classical music critic Norman Lebrecht talks to major figures in the field
Episodes
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Wasfi Kani, founder of Pimlico Opera and Grange Park Opera
Please note: This programme includes very strong, racist language describing the racial challenges Wasfi Kani faced when growing up in London. In this insightful interview, Norman Lebrecht sits down with Wasfi Kani, the visionary opera director and founder of Grange Park Opera. Kani, known for…
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Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen
Norman Lebrecht talks to the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, about her meteoric rise to fame as one of the greatest operatic voices alive today. In this episode, Norman Lebrecht interviews Lise Davidsen, the rising star of the opera world renowned for her powerful voice and commanding stage...
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American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas
Norman Lebrecht interviews the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas about life, death, music and his memories of Gershwin, Bernstein and Stravinsky.
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John Adams
Norman Lebrecht talks to the American composer and conductor John Adams in the week that he conducts his opera Nixon in China at the BBC Proms. Adams who was born in Massachusetts is one of the most celebrated composers alive. Many of his pieces are in the repertory, including his operas Nixon in...
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Riccardo Muti
Norman Lebrecht talks to the great Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Muti's career has spanned key orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the orchestra of La Scala in Milan and the Vienna Philharmonic. Elegant and erudite, this is the...
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Andris Nelsons
Norman Lebrecht talks to the young Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons currently music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Born in Riga to musical parents Nelsons cites one of his earliest formative musical experiences as a performance of Wagner's Tannhauser which his parents took...
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Graham Vick
Norman Lebrecht talks to the British opera director Graham Vick whilst in rehearsals in Birmingham for Stockhausen's massive opera Mittwoch. Vick is one of the leading British directors. He works in all of the worlds' major opera houses directing the standard operatic repertoire and was for a...
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Lilian Hochhauser
Norman Lebrecht meets celebrated impresario Lilian Hochhauser, who along with her husband Victor, introduced British audiences to some of the greatest Russian musicians of all time, during the fraught period of soviet rule. Now in her eighties, Lilian - from a Jewish Ukrainian background…
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Ivan Fischer
Norman Lebrecht meets Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer, who looks back on a career characterised by ground breaking musical achievements and occasional political controversy. Fischer recalls his elite musical education under communism, singing as a boy in the opera house where Gustav Mahler was...
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Menahem Pressler
Norman Lebrecht meets pianist Menahem Pressler, founder of one of the most prolific and influential piano trios of all time: The Beaux Arts. Pressler looks back on a career which began in Nazi Germany, before he emigrated to Israel in 1939 and went on to win The Debussy Piano Competition in 1946....
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Gustavo Dudamel
The Lebrecht Interview is the interview series that runs during the Proms season in which the writer and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht talks to key figures in the world of classical music. Today, Norman is in conversation with the Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, Music Director of the Los...
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Janet Baker
In the last edition in this series, Norman Lebrecht talks to the great English singer, Dame Janet Baker. The Yorkshire-born mezzo-soprano has mostly been known for her performances in operas by Mozart, Monteverdi, Purcell and Berlioz. In the concert hall she was renowned for her lieder singing...
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Edward Gardner
Edward Gardner is the Music Director of English National Opera and about to become Principal Guest conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He talks to Norman Lebrecht about his career to date. Gardner was appointed to the post at ENO in 2007 while in his early 30s and began by...
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Monica Mason
Dame Monica Mason has spent all of her working life at the Royal Ballet in London. Now 70 she is about to start her final season as Director of the Royal Ballet. In conversation with Norman Lebrecht she talks frankly and warmly of the experiences her various roles in the company have given her....
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Valery Gergiev
Norman Lebrecht meets the conductor Valery Gergiev, head of the Kirov Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the World Orchestra for Peace. Gergiev also runs festivals in Russia, Holland, Israel and around the Baltic, and was recently...
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Richard Rodney Bennett
Richard Rodney Bennett is a contemporary of Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies but his musical life has pursued a very different path. From his childhood onwards music was there for him. His mother was a pupil of Holst while his father wrote children's books and ballad lyrics. But his frailty meant…
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Thomas Quasthoff
Norman Lebrecht meets the German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, widely considered to be one of the finest lieder singers performing today. Although only four feet tall, with very short arms - Quasthoff's mother was prescribed thalidomide during pregnancy - Quasthoff is nevertheless a towering...
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Deborah Borda
Deborah Borda's is Chief Executive Officer of the hugely successful Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her career has also spanned a range of the great American institutions, including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Detroit and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras and the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra....
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Semyon Bychkov
In the first of a series of interviews with prominent musicians, writer and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht talks to one of the world's most sought after conductors, Semyon Bychkov. Born in Russia, growing up during the Soviet era, he finished his education in the United States. He talks about living...
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Patrice Chereau
Now 65, Patrice Chereau is one of the most highly regarded French directors. He began his career directing at his Lycee and running a theatre in the Parisian suburbs in the 1960s. Not long after he was invited to Italy and to Germany initially directing plays by the classic dramatists. His first...
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Sir Clive Gillinson
Sir Clive Gillinson began his musical life as a cellist, holding positions in the Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. When that orchestra got into financial difficulties in the 1980s he was asked to become Managing Director. He held the position for twenty years, turning...
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Stephen Kovacevich
Norman Lebrecht talks to the American born pianist Stephen Kovacevich in the year of his 70th birthday. Originally from Los Angeles, Kovacevich's father was Croatian and his mother American. After studying with the Russian pianist Lev Schorr he won a scholarship which brought him to London where…
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Joyce DiDonato
Norman Lebrecht meets the acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. The sixth child of an Irish Catholic family in Prairie Village, Kansas, she married young and was almost thirty before anyone was prepared to back her talent. In the decade since then, she has taken on mezzo roles in…
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Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Norrington has been one of the major movers and shakers on the classical music scene for nearly half a century. He founded the Schutz Choir and the London Classical Players, and was Music Director of Kent Opera for 15 years before taking his place on the podium with some of the great...
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Simone Young
Simone Young is an Australian conductor whose career has centred around the opera world and conducting the great Austro-German symphonic works. She appeared as a judge in the BBC TV series Maestro and has conducted here occasionally. She is currently Music Director of the Hamburg opera but her...
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Marilyn Horne
Norman Lebrecht talks to the American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, tracing her career from precocious Shirley Temple sound-alike, to pirate recordings of pop songs in the 1950s, to dubbing the title role in the movie of the Oscar Hammerstein musical Carmen Jones, and finally the breakthrough to…
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Riccardo Chailly
In the first of this year's Lebrecht Interviews, Norman meets the Italian conductor Riccardo Chailly. For more than 30 years, Chailly has been one of Europe's most important conductors. The son of a well-known Italian composer and music administrator, his career has taken him from the opera house...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Classical music critic Norman Lebrecht talks to major figures in the field
HOSTED BY
BBC Radio 3
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The Lebrecht Interview currently has 27 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Classical music critic Norman Lebrecht talks to major figures in the field
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The Lebrecht Interview has 27 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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The Lebrecht Interview is created and hosted by BBC Radio 3.
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