Composer of the Week Podcast

Donal Macleod explores how, from childhood, Poulenc was exposed to two versions of Paris: one that was working class and religious, another that was high society, secular... and avant-garde. Francis Poulenc was the epitome of Parisian high society: suave, convivial and connected. Or was that how he wanted us to see him? The critic Claude Rostand famously commented that Poulenc was a combination of...

Sir Arthur Sullivan became the most renowned composer of the Victorian era, with his fame spreading across Europe and America too. His output spanned many genres including oratorios, a symphony, chamber music, hymns and anthems, but it was for his collaboration with the librettist W. S. Gilbert on operetta’s that he is best remembered today. He was a personal friend to royalty, and he was knighted...

As Christians around the world prepare for Easter, Donald Macleod explores the life and music of two nuns who were also composers. Though Hildegard of Bingen and Isabella Leonarda lived five centuries apart, their stories and music are connected by their shared faith and their shared vocations. Both lived cloistered lives, shut away in convents and cut off from the everyday concerns of the societi...

150 years ago this week, Sergei Rachmaninov was born: one of the finest pianists of his generation, touring the world in the 1920s and 30s as a musical megastar. Composing had been his real passion since childhood, and towards the end of his time in Russia before the Revolution, it was farming. Though St Petersburg and then Moscow was his base for much of his early life, it was Ivanovka – a countr...

Georges Bizet’s story ought to have been a very straightforward one. It was clear to everyone who met him just how brilliantly and excitingly talented he was. He was also fortunate to live and work in Paris, a city laden with musical opportunities in the mid-nineteenth century. Donald Macleod shows how Bizet’s life proved more challenging and event-filled than anyone might have expected – and that...

Johanna Müller-Hermann once held a significant place as a composer and teacher in Vienna, yet has been largely forgotten over the decades since her death in 1941. Radio 3 has been working to unearth her music and story through its Forgotten Women Composers project, in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Dr Carola Darwin. This week, Dr Darwin and Professor Robert Evans j...

The singer, and composer Barbara Strozzi neither held any position at church or court, nor had a consistant patron, and yet she published eight volumes of her own music, and had more secular music in print than any other composer of the era. Donald Macleod is joined by Professor Laurie Stras to explore the life of this extraordinary musician, and the world of 17th Century Venice in which she lived...

“So great a musician are you.....that if the Fates carried you off.....music would be mute.” So wrote a contemporary of Thomas Tallis, showing us just how highly this composer was regarded in his own time. Over the course of this week, Donald Macleod traces the career of Tallis, unquestionably one of England's greatest ever composers. We follow him from the early faint mentions of the composer in...

Donald Macleod explores how Smetana created a musical Czech identity The title of Smetana’s most popular work, ‘Ma Vlast’, gives us a clue to what drove him through much of his career. It translates as ‘My Homeland’ and the music is Smetana’s ardent tribute to the Czech sprit of his beloved Bohemia. The composer was deeply involved with his people’s struggle for cultural and political independence...

As performer, composer, impresario, musical director, and teacher, Antonio Vivaldi was a key figure in the musical life of Baroque Italy. Thanks to his set of Concertos “The Four Seasons”, he remains one of the most famous and best loved composers today. This week, Donald Macleod puts these four celebrated concertos front and centre as he also explores the four seasons of Vivaldi’s own life, linge...

Mel Bonis's name may not be a familiar one these days, but she produced somewhere in the region of three hundred compositions. There's no doubt that she was sensitive to gender discrimination. It's why she chose to publish her music under the name of Mel rather than her birth name Mélanie. She was born in 1858 to parents of modest means. Her father worked for the watch company Breguet, still in bu...

Donald Macleod explores the turbulent life of Dmitry Shostakovich, and asks the ultimate question: Who was he? A faithful Soviet lackey… or a secret dissident? Dmitry Shostakovich, like his home country of Russia, was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. From the very beginning of his career, he pushed the boundaries, but under Stalin’s stifling regime, experimental artists were enemi...

Donald Macleod chats to Max Richter, one of the world’s most in-demand composers German-born British musician Max Richter is one of the most influential composers of his generation. A streaming sensation with over a billion listens, he blends classical and electronic elements in his music and is just as at home on 6Music as on Radio 3. He’s a producer, pianist and serial collaborator whose trailbl...

Donald Macleod presents another selection of composers who are most famous for a single work. Last Easter, Composer of the Week explored the lives of ten composers whose music we adore but mainly only for a lone composition. This week, Donald Macleod makes a second selection of classical ‘One Hit Wonders’ - ten more composers who have been catapulted into the mainstream thanks to the surprising po...

Donald Macleod presents another selection of composers who are most famous for a single work. Last Easter, Composer of the Week explored the lives of ten composers whose music we adore but mainly only for a lone composition. This week, Donald Macleod makes a second selection of classical ‘One Hit Wonders’ - ten more composers who have been catapulted into the mainstream thanks to the surprising po...

Donald Macleod invites us to join Bach and his family during the Christmas season, at five different periods in his life. Christmas can be special wherever you live, but to experience a truly Christmassy Christmas, many would say that the only place to go is Germany. Plenty of Britain’s favourite Yuletide traditions originated there and Germany’s citizens have always had a special knack for celebr...

Donald Macleod explores the recently unearthed life and works of Leokadiya Kashperova, one of the most talented composers and pianists of her generation. The name of Leokadiya Kashperova was, for many decades, recorded in mainstream musical history as a footnote: the piano teacher of Igor Stravinsky. Her full story as a musician and composer has finally now been unearthed, through the researches o...

Donald Macleod explores how Cesar Franck, who was, known for being retiring and unassuming, became a leading figure of French musical life. It seems as if Franck's diffident character positively hindered his advancement. He wasn't interested in moving in glamorous social circles, and lived, according to one visitor who called on him the year before he died, "like a monk". This natural reticence ma...

Donald Macleod explores Chopin and his relationship with novelist George Sand, from their first meetings to their fractious end. Early in 1837, Franz Liszt introduced Chopin to a woman who would have a profound influence on his life. Her name was George Sand and Chopin’s relationship with the novelist would go on to stretch for almost a decade and prove to be the longest romantic bond of the compo...

Marking the centenary of her birth, Donald Macleod delves in to the little known world of 20th century British composer Doreen Carwithen. Doreen Carwithen is one of only a handful of female British composers who worked in the film industry in the 1940s and 1950s. Dramas, mysteries, horror flicks, documentaries, the thirty plus films she scored form a substantial part of her musical legacy. An awar...

The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them. In the early 1900s, in what became known as the Great Migration, African-Americans from the South moved north to New York in droves, searching for work after the war, and hoping to escape the racial violence...

Donald Macleod explores the relationship between Verdi and the city of Milan. As the hearse carrying the coffin of the composer Giuseppi Verdi travelled through Milan, more than half of the city’s population lined the streets to pay their respects and catch a final glimpse of their hero. Few musicians have made such an indelible impression on the population of a country, and become more linked to...

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, from his first steps up the musical ladder, to his premature death at the age of 37 and the legacy left behind. At the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor could have been described as the most famous Black person in Britain. His cantata trilogy, the Song of Hiawatha, was an overnight success, and by the age of 25...

Donald Macleod delves into the life and works of Robert Schumann during the 1840s. The 1840s was the decade when Robert and Clara Schumann’s married life began, and was the decade in which he established himself as a significant composer. Focusing on both his personal and professional life, Donald explores the ups and downs Schumann faced during these revolutionary ten years. Music Featured: Der H...

Donald Macleod journeys into the varied musical landscape of Adolphus Hailstork, in conversation with the composer himself. American composer Adolphus Hailstork has written in many genres ranging from orchestral and chamber, to choral, song cycles and operatic scenes. Of African-American heritage and now in his eighties, Hailstork’s works have been performed by major orchestras in Chicago, New Yor...