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Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast

Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast

Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast 474 Episodes Aug 1, 2026

Jon Jacob talks to artists, writers, and audience members about classical music. The podcast features interviews that explore how classical music is made, performed, and appreciated. It offers diverse perspectives from both professionals and listeners. Suitable for anyone interested in classical music culture.

Episodes

237: Three Choirs 2026 in Gloucester with composer Grace Evangeline-Mason
237: Three Choirs 2026 in Gloucester with composer Grace Evangeline-Mason Aug 1, 2026 00:30:01 A scrapbook in sound: voices, reflections and field recordings from Three Choirs Festival 2026 in Gloucester — a postcard from two life-enhancing days.
236: Guy Johnston on Britten’s Cello Symphony
236: Guy Johnston on Britten’s Cello Symphony Jul 21, 2026 00:41:08 Days before his BBC Proms appearance marking 50 years since the death of Benjamin Britten, cellist Guy Johnston talks candidly about his career, his influences, and his preparation for performance.
235: Pianist Beatrice Nicholas
235: Pianist Beatrice Nicholas Jul 17, 2026 00:38:43 Beatrice Nicholas is a British concert pianist and composer. She performs the traditional classical canon, and she composes and arranges, fusing classical and jazz together. She's also a member of the Chineke! Chamber Ensemble, drawn from principal players of the Chineke! Orchestra.On the seventeenth of August, she makes her debut Upstairs at Ronnie Scott's — a set that runs from a straigh
234: Laura Bowler and the Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy
234: Laura Bowler and the Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy Jul 10, 2026 00:28:28 Composer Laura Bowler on leading the Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy, recorded on-site during the week of workshops in Gloucestershire. She talks about what conservatoire didn't teach her — pitching, funding applications, resilience — plus a look back at Houses Slide, her 2021 piece for London Sinfonietta and seventeen cyclists.
233: Belly of the Beast at Aldeburgh, Spitalfields and Edinburgh
233: Belly of the Beast at Aldeburgh, Spitalfields and Edinburgh Jun 21, 2026 00:30:50 Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre isn’t a name many will recognise — despite an opera that reached the Paris stage in 1694, two books of biblical cantatas published three years apart, in 1708 and 1711, and a career that ran for decades either side of those dates. The point this episode seeks to highlight is that legacy isn’t always guaranteed. You’ll need more than talent writing and managing busines
228 Repeat: Aldeburgh & Snape, 50 Years After Britten's Death
228 Repeat: Aldeburgh & Snape, 50 Years After Britten's Death Jun 18, 2026 00:38:53 This episode is being republished during this year's Aldeburgh Festiva. This episode was first published 1 June.Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape still carry his fingerprints — and still provoke the same question: what is this place actually for? In this special episode, contributors who've performed there, programmed it, and thought hard about its future speak in
232: Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings
232: Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings Jun 16, 2026 00:36:25 Cellist Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings, his new Dorset festival — the Harrison Birtwistle story behind its name, genre-mixing, and watching his father Alfred's final tour from the audience, occasionally incognito.
231: Bergen International Festival's Lars Petter Hagen
231: Bergen International Festival's Lars Petter Hagen Jun 8, 2026 00:44:49 Bergen International Festival Artistic Director and Chief Executive Lars Petter Hagen talks programming, audiences, leadership and listening in this special Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast episode - something of a pilgrimage for Jon Jacob.
230: Franco Fagioli
230: Franco Fagioli Jun 4, 2026 00:38:15 Time with the most playful of interviewees, Franco Fagioli, recorded in Versailles in March 2026. Fagioli appears with Orchestra de l'Opera de Versailles at St Martin in the Fields on 13th June 2026.
229: Christophe Rousset on Lully, Mozart, and playing with rules
229: Christophe Rousset on Lully, Mozart, and playing with rules Jun 3, 2026 00:33:53 Christophe Rousset is a harpsichordist, conductor, and founder of Les Talens Lyriques. In this conversation, recorded in Paris, he talks about completing his twenty-year project to record all thirteen of Lully's operas — a composer long dismissed as boring, and why that dismissal gets the history wrong.We also discuss the young Mozart as musical sponge, absorbing Jommelli and Gassmann before findi
228: Aldeburgh & Snape 50 years after Britten's Death
228: Aldeburgh & Snape 50 years after Britten's Death Jun 1, 2026 00:38:53 Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape still carry his fingerprints — and still provoke the same question: what is this place actually for? In this special episode, contributors who've performed there, programmed it, and thought hard about its future speak in their own voices about why they came to East Suffolk, and why they couldn't leave.
227: Claire Booth
227: Claire Booth Apr 24, 2026 00:42:56 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026 curator Claire Booth was asked a blunt question when she was invited her to put together this year's programme: why is selling a song recital so difficult? This year's Sheffield is the answer — or rather, her answer, or the argument. Or maybe its her case for it. Across a week of concerts, she pulls in Ravel's Scheherazade into the orbit of folk ta

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