We're proud to be working with Gramophone Magazine, the world's leading review publication for classical music, on a new filmed podcast series, The Listening Room.
The Listening Room is an exciting new edition to the Gramophone's Classical Music Podcast series, offering weekly conversations with leading classical musicians and Gramophone’s writers.
Hosting the podcast is journalist, broadcaster & friend of dCS Charlotte Gardner, known for her deep knowledge of classical music and infectious passion for the genre. Charlotte has both wide expertise in the traditions of the classical world and a desire to push the boundaries — supporting young talent, new approaches and innovations in the industry.
In the latest episode of The Listening Room, presented in partnership with dCS, Charlotte welcomes trumpeter Matilda Lloyd and Violist Timothy Ridout to the studio.
Conceptually, The Gramophone Listening Room is about exploring recent and historic treasures of the recordings catalogue through the ears and player perspectives of some of today’s finest younger-generation musical voices, hopefully in such a way as to not only entertain the existing Gramophone readership, but also enthuse a new, perhaps younger online audience for the joys of intentional, deep, comparative listening.
Each episode sees me joined by two guests, who take turns to each share two recordings significant to their own lives. I then proffer a recording myself, but with the twist of not revealing its details until after my guests have listened and expressed first reactions, thus offering live insight into how they listen, along with perhaps some transferable techniques or ideas for our own listening lives. The joy of Gramophone is that they are encouraged to be as erudite and technical as they like. The joy of this format is that these are turning out to be truly three-way, convivial conversations.
We could not have wished for a more special and appropriate series sponsor with whom to launch than renowned British audio manufacturer, dCS Audio...
Underpinning everything (at dCS) is the belief that every detail of a recording deserves to be heard with the utmost clarity, nothing added or lost.
In short, the dCS Audio team loves music and its creators. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m very familiar with the various dCS systems myself. More than that, one of my most moving encounters ever with recorded music was testing out the Varèse system with Jascha Heifetz’s Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto recording with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it genuinely sounding as though Heifetz was right there in the flesh, playing in front of me.
Back in The Gramophone Listening Room, guests are listening to their choices on dCS’s most compact system, the Lina Headphone Amplifier and DAC, and their reactions to hearing their favourite recordings in this audio quality is adding a further layer to the pleasure.
Read Charlotte Gardner's full feature on the Gramophone Listening Room podcast here.
