More Free Classical Music Podcasts: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and Some Yo-Yo Ma

We spent some time this week­end over­haul­ing our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion (plus cre­at­ing a

new Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion), and, along the way, we dug up sev­er­al good free pod­casts for clas­si­cal music fans. Here’s a quick overview of what we found:

With last year being the 250th anniver­sary of Mozart’s birth, there was no short­age of pod­casts ded­i­cat­ed to Mozart’s mas­ter­pieces. First, Radio Swe­den (iTunes  Feed  Web Site) reis­sued a dig­i­tal archive of Mozart record­ings by the Roy­al Swedish Opera from the 1940s and 1950s. And, along very sim­i­lar lines, Dan­marks Radio (Feed  Web Site) issued pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies record­ed by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny
Orches­tra. (You’ll find here sym­phonies num­bers 15, 17, 23, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, and 41.) Since the web site is in Dan­ish, we’d rec­om­mend access­ing
these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the rss feed list­ed above. Last­ly, we should men­tion here that, as part of last year’s fes­tiv­i­ties, The Inter­na­tion­al Mozart Foun­da­tion pub­lished online for the first time the entire­ty of of Mozart’s musi­cal scores.

Along with Mozart, you can find plen­ty of Beethoven. We have high­light­ed here before, but it’s worth not­ing again, Deutsche Welle’s pod­cast col­lec­tion called Beethoven­fest (iTunes  Feed  Web Site). You’ll want to give it a look, and also see the pod­cast col­lec­tion put togeth­er by the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry (iTunes  Feed  Web Site). This edu­ca­tion­al series offers an exten­sive overview and record­ings of Beethoven’s work, as well as that of Arnold Schoen­berg. You can also catch more Beethoven (as well as a lit­tle Mozart and Bach) with the pod­cast series called The Con­cert (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), which fea­tures record­ings from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um in Boston.

Speak­ing of Bach, you may want to give some time to these two pod­casts: Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia (Feed  Web Site) and Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com  iTunes  Feed  Web Site).

Let’s now leave you with a few oth­er good finds. Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast (iTunes  Feed  Web Site) lets you lis­ten in on record­ings from the annu­al Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, plus more. The Gramo­phone Pod­cast (Feed  Web Site) offers “a month­ly win­dow into the world’s most author­i­ta­tive clas­si­cal
music mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing an overview of the best releas­es, news,
exclu­sive inter­views with lead­ing fig­ures from the music world, and
lots of great music.” An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma (iTunes  Feed  Web Site) offers essen­tial­ly what the title says. Final­ly, we’d rec­om­mend Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), which con­sists of clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston. Hope this fills your week­end (and your iPod).

Get more clas­si­cal music pod­casts here.

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)