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.

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

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.