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This week English National Opera announced that Mark Wigglesworth will replace Edward Gardner as its Music Director in 2015.  Petroc Trelawny discusses the appointment with John Berry, ENO’s Artistic Director, in the first in a series of interviews with leading players from arts institutions at home and abroad. Berry vowed to take ENO out of the ‘last chance saloon’ when he became artistic director – has he succeeded in turning the company around?  Are co-productions with overseas opera houses the way ahead?  Why will ENO productions now be shown in cinemas, an idea Berry dismissed as a ‘distraction’ less than two years ago?  And how committed is he to continuing the founding mission of the company – to perform all its work in English?  

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Pinchas Zukerman is one of the world’s great violinists.   He is also a conductor,   Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa and Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  One of his great passions is teaching – he has pioneered the use of the internet and computer technology as a way of working with students across the world.  In an extended interview he discusses technology,  the globalisation of culture, how musicians will earn their living in the future, and recalls his own violin lessons as a teenager in New York. 

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The Italian conductor Claudio Abbado died on Monday 20th January at the age of eighty.  Noted for his work with Milan’s La Scala, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the London Symphony Orchestra, he also dedicated much of his life working with talented young players establishing the European Community Youth Orchestra and then the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.  To look back on Abbado’s life and career Petroc is joined by Sir Clive Gillinson, who played the cello in the LSO under Abbado and the EUYO’s CEO Marshall Marcus, who as Head of Music at the Southbank Centre also worked with Abbado. Petroc talks to the fellow Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda about Abbado’s influence on him and Rachel Gough, principal bassoon with the LSO, shares her memories of playing under Abbado in the ECYO twenty five years ago.

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