“Lockdown has been quite a time for podcasts,” writes Clive Paget in Wednesday’s (8/5) Musical America (subscription required). “What makes Aaron Cohen’s Embrace Everything—The World of Gustav Mahler stand head and shoulders above the crowd is its confident approach to the vastness of the subject matter, and its willingness to eschew the easy soundbite in favor of a satisfyingly meaty deep dive. Cohen, who is director of on-air operations at New York Public Radio, has created award-winning radio features for the likes of the Metropolitan Opera and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.… He’s also a self-confessed Mahler obsessive.… Season One, available for free on major streaming platforms, is a four-part examination of Mahler’s First Symphony. The plan is to bring out a new season each year over the next decade with each season focusing on a single symphony…. Each of Season One’s 20-minute episodes is devoted to one of the symphony’s four movements and combines a winning blend of narrative by Cohen himself—a refreshingly unobtrusive host—with the words of Mahler and his contemporaries.… There are musical examples from some of the world’s finest orchestras, interviews with conductors and expert musicologists, and performance insights from practicing musicians.”
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