John Humphrys, one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters, explores some of classical music’s most fascinating stories and the common ground between them in Connecting Notes, Saturdays from 9pm-10pm beginning on Saturday 6 January.
With a successful career spanning six decades, John has presented on both radio and TV, and has anchored many of the country’s flagship news programmes, including the Today Programme.
The legendary broadcaster and journalist John Humphrys returns to Classic FM for a new series exploring the themes and trends that have connected classical music through the centuries.
For the first programme, John examines the role of vocal choruses in classical music. He explores how to define a chorus and why they are important. He also chooses some of the most famous and significant examples of a chorus in action, including the ‘Humming Chorus’ from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Verdi’s ‘Va, pensiero’, also known as the ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’, and ‘The Drinking Song’ from La Traviata.
