The Listening Service Folgen

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.

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 enjoy some of the distinctive qualities that trombones offer to the orchestral music of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich and Berg. This week's guest expert is the principal trombonist of the Halle Orchestra, Katy Jones.

Tom Service explores JS Bach's extraordinary The 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 journey, through to darker and more complex moments, with plenty of playfulness and joy along the way, The Well-Tempered Clavier is an astonishing feat of imagination. These two books of preludes and fugues are a treasure trove, where Bach combines contrapuntal wizardry with his extraordinary gift for expressing human emotion. With help from American pianist, Jeremy Denk, Tom Service lifts the lid on The Well-Tempered Clavier to discover its secrets.Producer: Jonathan Hallewell