Classical Music Hot Takes

Classical Music Idols!

Who were the musicians, performers and teachers who first opened the door to classical music? In this episode of Classic! Pod, Alex Maxted and Jonny Whiting talk musical idols in the broadest possible sense: not just the grand names — Callas, Pavarotti, Sondheim, Bernstein — but the performers, recordings, videos and teachers that shaped how they listen. There are formative encounters with Alicia de Larrocha’s crystalline pianism, Diana Damrau’s Queen of the Night, Joyce DiDonato’s masterclasses, Antonio Pappano’s piano-side opera explainers, Gerald Finley’s Figaro, and Stephen Sondheim in person — or, at least, in the same room. Along the way, Alex and Jonny consider the cult of the soprano, the risks of meeting your idols, the weird glamour of classical celebrity, and whether the art form might benefit from a little more screaming. Plus: dodgy conductors, accidental oboe trauma, The Magic Flute’s chaotic pacing, recommendations from Amadeus to Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and the eternal question: who are your musical idols?

Don't do heroin at the Royal Albert Hall

In episode 4 of The Classic! Pod, we ask whether people are really “classical music novices” — or whether classical music is already everywhere, quietly sneaking into films, adverts, TV shows, video games, McDonald’s after 11pm, and probably your childhood without you even noticing. We talk about film music, John Williams, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Brief Encounter, Kubrick, Bach in unexpected places, Lady Gaga’s extremely surprising connection to the Well-Tempered Clavier, and why film scores absolutely count as classical music. We also get into Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, video game soundtracks, Animal Crossing village tunes, Wii Music, and why composing for games deserves to be taken seriously. Along the way, there’s classical music in adverts, classical music as “fancy perfume energy”, Shostakovich in McDonald’s, MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, and Jonny carrying a suspiciously large trombone case on the Tube. Plus, our recommendations of the week: a vivid, theatrical recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Billie Holiday’s version of Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low”. Basically: you probably know more classical music than you think.

New Music, Old Problems

In episode 3 of The Classic! Pod, we’re talking about new music: what it is, why people are sometimes scared of it, and why “modern” classical music somehow still often means Schoenberg — despite the fact that Schoenberg is now over 100 years old.There are also detours into seeing elephants, smelling elephants, Mahler titles, whether anyone writes symphonies anymore, and the eternal question of how to get people to come back for the second performance of a new piece. Plus, our recommendations of the week: Mentor from the London Choral Sinfonia and Michael Waldron, and Iberia from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Domingo Hindoyan.

Classical Music Hot Takes

In episode 2 of The Classic Podcast, we’re getting into our classical music hot takes — the opinions that might get us disinvited from polite concert conversation. We talk about staged overtures, children in theatre, why some productions feel a bit too eager to spell everything out, and whether opera acting has become overly physical. We also get into the composers and styles we just don’t quite click with, from Chopin and Debussy to the broader question of why some music grabs us and some simply doesn’t.Along the way, we end up talking about everything from Handel and Puccini to Bach chorales, new music, Schoenberg, and why audiences still seem far more excited by the classics than by work being written now. It’s opinionated, slightly chaotic, and very much from the heart — in other words, exactly what you’d hope for from a podcast about classical music that refuses to be too serious.🎧 Listen to The Classic! Podcast EVERY other FRIDAY on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts🔔 Don’t Forget to Subscribe!📱 Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theclassicpod/Facebook: @theclassic!podTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_classicpod

This is the Opera House, not the O2

Welcome to the very first episode of The Classic Pod. We’re Jonathan and Alex, and in this episode we’re introducing ourselves, explaining why we started the podcast, and getting into the strange, funny and occasionally chaotic experience of going to classical concerts today. We talk about concert etiquette, what on earth you’re meant to wear, whether anyone is actually concentrating the whole time, and why live music still matters so much to us. There are also stories from the Proms, opera houses, student days and a few too many near-sleep incidents.