Isn’t it great to be able to listen to so much music, to be able to search and scroll and find anything you want…? Or to have tracks suggested for you without even thinking about it…? Or is it? Perhaps you miss the days when you had to save up to buy a recording, and you loved it so much you listened over and over again. Or you waited for something to be played on the radio, knowing it might be the only chance you’d have to hear it. Tom Service explores how we listen today in the digital age and reflects on the pieces of music that changed his life when he heard them first, and then really lis ..read more

"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument". So said one of Britain's greatest 20th-century composers, Elizabeth Maconchy. Who?? Despite her many awards and medals - including a damehood in 1987 - and a lifetime spent promoting new music, Elizabeth's work slipped out of fashion and out of view in the latter part of her remarkable career. With concertos and symphonies, vocal music, chamber works, five operas, an operetta and three ballets to her name, Elizabeth's voice is that of economy, elegance and rich expression. And it is in her century-spanning 13 string quartets that her develop ..read more

Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony is given the subtitle "Pathétique", the use of the French word removing some of the negative connotations that the word pathetic has in English, which is the literal translation. Pathétique suggests something of great passion with perhaps a sense of great sadness too. Tom Service examines how this word might apply to one of Tchaikovsky's most profound and intense works ..read more

It made Pierre Boulez want to vomit: Francis Poulenc thought it was atrocious: and Igor Stravinsky said all you needed to write it was enough manuscript paper. But its composer wrote all 80 minutes of it as a love song, and a hymn to joy. So just what is Olivier Messiaen’s epic Turangalila Symphony, premiered in 1949 by Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, why did it divide opinion so much, and what does it mean today? Producer: Ruth Thomson ..read more

Tom Service explores the world of the Ukulele, from the Hawaiian Royal Court of King Kalakaua to Blackpool Pier with George Formby, the Royal Albert Hall where hundreds of ukulele players performed Beethoven's Ode to Joy at the 2009 BBC Proms, and into thousands of classrooms where it's now the most widely taught instrument in British primary schools. With Hawaiian born ukulele virtuoso and composer Taimane Gardner. Producer: Ruth Thomson ..read more

The word 'resolution' has several meanings. It can refer to something that has been settled or resolved. It can infer a desire to do something differently or to behave in a changed way - as in a New Year resolution. It can also mark the final unravelling of some great complication or drama. In music, it means something more specific: the progression from discord to consonance. With New Year in mind, Tom Service considers the idea of resolution in music in the widest sense of the word; including a look at how composers set about creating a resolve to their musical ideas. Tom's guest expert is t ..read more

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's Tom Service, exploring the musical life of The Big Apple, from its underground scene to John and Yoko's loft and Superman's skies. He roams The City That Never Sleeps, whose origins as the swampy "hilly island" known as Mana-hatta are buried under the modern day powerhouse that acts as both setting and character in the music it inspires. From Bach in the subway to minimalist taxi drivers and King Kong, by way of Varese, Thomas Ades and Bernstein, Tom celebrates this astonishing musical city ..read more

At the back row of the orchestra, usually three in number, sit the trombone section, but why three and how long have they been there? Tom Service reflects on their history and the ways in which they are employed. He looks back on over five hundred years of the story of the trombone and offers insight into the meaning of things such as 'Tower Music' and 'Stadtpfeifer'. Tom looks at the role of the trombone in religious music and in music for the theatre, and at its comparitively late arrival within the symphony orchestra, back in the final decades of the 18th Century. And there's a chance to en ..read more

Tom Service explores J. S. Bach's extraordinary Well Tempered Clavier, a series of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard in all 24 major and minor keys. It's widely regarded as a towering achievement and a cornerstone of western art music. The 19th century German conductor and pianist, Hans von Bülow famously described it as “The Old Testament of Music” and generations of musicians and scholars have spoken of its monumental stature in the history and development of music. From the first, C major prelude with its lean and simple series of arpeggios, taking listeners on an exquisite harmonic journ ..read more

From Strictly to village fête vegetables, competitions are embedded in our culture. And music is no exception: think of the Pythian Games of ancient Greece, the mediaeval singing competitions which selected the Master Singers, the improvisatory keyboard face-offs of 18th-century Vienna, and the international media-driven events of our own times. But are musical instinct and the competitive spirit uneasy bedfellows? Why do some musical tournaments consistently produce winners who go on to have spectacular careers, and others winners who sink without trace? What’s the value of music written for ..read more