The secret life of musical instruments

As he returns to his native Scotland to conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Bruckner’s mighty eighth symphony, Kate speaks to the conductor Donald Runnicles about his relationship with the composer’s music and a lifetime spent making music. Kate visits Xenia Pestova Bennett at Queen Mary University of London to hear about her second album which features a new instrument, the Magnetic Resonator Piano. She tells Kate about her creative responses to the effects that electromagnets can induce on a regular concert grand piano. And marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henri Veuxtemps, Music Matters hears from the violinist Anne Akiko Meyers – the current custodian of the composer’s famous Guarneri del Gesù violin. She describes the sound characteristics of what is reportedly the world’s most expensive instrument. Kate also catches-up with the author Sophy Roberts to learn about her travels across Siberia in search of the backstories of keyboards scattered across an eleventh of the world’s landmass. From clavichords transported by governors on sledge, through pianos which have weathered the region’s furtive cold, to a keyboard hacked out of a Gulag bunkbed frame, Kate hears how these instruments embody the soul of Siberia.