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 Holiday Monday in August, at a busy Southbank Centre in London.

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 this episode. There is then a therapeutic impact to Hanni's work. More than that, Hanni's candid reflections on the experience of improvisation isn't that far from a theme stitched through recent episodes - leadership qualities, and specifically in this case, the need for and the experience of vulnerability.

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 Hall even if it does sound like it, its simply an articulation of a special home, a musical destination which stirs something inside whenever I find myself walking down Wigmore Street and I catch sight of that distinctive canopy.

Such a prestigious stage and reputation carries with it a considerable weight of responsibility, surely. How could it not?

What does it take to run one of the world’s busiest classical music venues?

In this candid conversation, John Gilhooly reflects on the complexity of his role at Wigmore Hall — a job he describes as a “seven-day liability.” From last-minute artist cancellations to long-term fundraising goals, Gilhooly shares how he balances tradition with innovation, protects artistic standards, and fosters a spirit of welcome across every part of the organisation.

It’s a rare, unguarded look at what it really means to lead in the arts today — from someone who’s done it, against the odds, for nearly two decades.

Four years after the premiere of ‘Woke’ at the BBC Proms in 2021, composer Daniel Kidane is riding high, this year Composer in Residence at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival. Kidane reflects on his training, his mindset for composing, and what’s changed (or not) since the work that promoted empathy, compassion and togetherness. The BBC Symphony Orchestra performs Woke (now named Awake) at the Aldeburgh Festival alongside a whole host of other works by Kidane.