Composer of the Week Podcast

Robert Simpson - once described as "Britain's most important composer since Vaughan Williams", and "one of the century's most powerful and original symphonists" - was a man of integrity, a champion of lesser-known composers, and a man who lived his own life by strict principles: pacifism, socialism and what he called "anti-pessimism". This week, in Simpson's centenary year, Donald Macleod looks ba...

Donald Macleod explores some of the many turning points in Fauré’s career Gabriel Fauré’s story begins during the second half of the 19th century, when the musical world was dominated by the heavily romantic voices of composers like Wagner, Brahms and Liszt. Fauré became a key protagonist in a musical revolution that opened audiences ears to new modes of expression - modern, refined and utterly Fr...

Robert Schumann’s early training was focused towards his ambition to become a celebrated concert pianist, but a hand injury quickly put that career option out of reach. Schumann turned instead to composition and put all that piano study to good use, writing many important works for his own instrument. This week, Composer of the Week unpacks the moments in Schumann’s life when he was creating some...

This week, Donald Macleod explores Aaron Copland’s most productive decade, and features some of his best loved works in full. During this time Copland hit his prime. He became recognised as America’s leading composer, winning the Pulitzer Prize in Music and an Academy Award for his work in Hollywood. He toured Europe and South America, absorbing diverse influences from each, and composed key works...

Donald Macleod explores five aspects of Satie This week, Donald Macleod looks at Satie as a trailblazer and humourist as well as his penchant for composing in threes, his copious, playful and highly idiosyncratic writings and his serious side. Music featured: Trois Gymnopédies (No 1, Lent et douloureux) Trois Sarabandes (No 2) uspud – ballet chrétien (3rd act) Le piège de Méduse Relâche – ballet i...

Donald Macleod explores Chopin’s time in Britain Chopin made just two trips to Britain, both in later life. These visits are often portrayed as a disaster - a calamitous mistake of no worth to Chopin which hastened the composer’s death. This week, Donald Macleod explores these two trips in depth, during which the virtuoso pianist gave six of the thirty public concerts he gave during the whole of h...

Donald Macleod surveys the string quartets of Joseph Haydn. From his opus 0 and opus 1 of the 1750s to his unfinished opus 103 of 1803, Haydn’s 68 string quartets span the major part of his compositional life. While he wasn’t the inventor of the form, he’s fully deserving of the epithet, the “father of the string quartet” as he elevated the form to new heights. It’s his ideas that take the quartet...

Maurice Ravel is one of France’s most enigmatic, original and beloved composers. While less prolific than some of his contemporaries, Ravel was a master of detail - his works are elegant and exquisitely crafted, and precision was a guiding force in both his creativity and personality. He is often linked with impressionism for his painterly approach to orchestration and vivid soundworlds of his pia...

This week, Donald Macleod looks at Handel’s life and work during an important decade of his life. The 1730s saw Handel create some of his best-loved works, but also saw him fall out with singers and patrons in London, endure a stroke and attendant poor mental health, and mourn the death of one of his chief supporters, Queen Caroline. Music Featured: Esther HWV 50b (revised version 1732) (excerpts)...

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of the English composer Ruth Gipps. Ruth Gipps was born in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1921. Her Swiss-born mother was an accomplished pianist and, recognising her daughter’s aptitude, taught her piano from an early age. Gipps was four years old when she gave her first public performance, at Grotrian Hall in London. It was from that moment on, she said later, that...

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of the young Richard Strauss During Richard Strauss’s lifetime the sound and form of music altered radically. He was born at the tail end of the 19th century and saw the emergence of twelve tone music and atonality from younger composers like Arnold Schoenberg and his pupil Alban Berg. Strauss belonged to a previous generation and his music came to be reg...

Felix Mendelssohn was one of the most gifted and versatile musicians the world has ever seen. As a child prodigy he was likened to Mozart and he grew to become one of the most famous and beloved composers in Europe, during the middle of the 19th century. His life was cut tragically short, at the age of 38, while he was at the very height of his powers. This week, Donald Macleod focuses on the fina...

Donald Macleod finds connections between Mozart’s operas and the composer’s own life Born in 1756, the theatre was a life-long passion for Mozart. Starting at the tender age of just 11, in the space of 22 years he produced an astonishing 24 theatrical works. His destiny was to follow in his father’s footsteps, as a court musician. Instead, by 1781, after a disagreement over his frequent absences f...

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of Britain’s most loved composers, and best-known symphonists, writing nine symphonies which span almost fifty years of his career. These works evoke a wide range of moods, each creating its own unique world, from his first stormy choral symphony, through the aggressive and the tranquil, to his final...

Franz Schubert’s short life spanned a crucial period in music history as the elegant, classical stylings of Mozart and Haydn were giving way to the drama and passion of the romantic era. Schubert came to embody that transformation, in music that was all about personal expression and individual inspiration. This week, Donald Macleod throws the spotlight on Schubert’s chamber music and explores the...

In a first for Composer of the Week, Donald Macleod surveys the life and music of Joseph Martin Kraus. Kraus has been called the Swedish Mozart; he was born in the same year as Mozart, in 1756, and survived him by just twelve months. Originally from Germany, Kraus found work as a composer based at the Swedish royal court and quickly came to be regarded as one of the leading music directors in all...

This week Donald Macleod reflects on five aspects of Tchaikovsky. The rich vein of fairy tale and fantasy, his love of literature and his long-standing love-affair with Italy. Also, the composer’s relationship with the man he called ‘Modya’, his beloved younger brother, Modest. In 19th-century Russia, music was a key strand in national identity. Tchaikovsky’s ancestral Russian roots were a matter...

Donald Macleod explores Grieg's music through the places from which he took inspiration. On 9th September 1907, it’s estimated that some forty to fifty thousand people turned out to pay their respects and watch Edvard Grieg’s cortège pass through the streets of Bergen. It’s an image that speaks of the enormous affection and esteem in which Grieg was held at the time of his death. Bergen was where...

Donald Macleod introduces personal highlights of his year-long celebration of Beethoven Donald Macleod embarks on the final week of his year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, selecting his personal highlights of conversations he's had with special guests over the course of 25 series. Composer of the Week has this year, every alternate week, explored th...

Donald Macleod is joined by Sir George Benjamin to discuss his musical influences Composer of the Week marks the sixtieth birthday of the celebrated British composer Sir George Benjamin. This week, Benjamin joins Donald Macleod in the studio to provide listeners with personal insights into his music and distinguished career. They discuss the composer's musical connections, his inspirations, his in...

This week, Donald Macleod reaches the final chapters of his year-long biography of Beethoven. The composer’s remaining years, 1825-1827, were marred by failing health and a traumatic family crisis but also saw Beethoven pushing resolutely forward in his art. He continued to surprise and astonish, producing a series of extraordinary late string quartets. Composer of the Week is returning to the sto...

Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, joins Donald Mcleod to discuss Beethoven’s symphonies They have been described as “the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man”, “an expression of monumental intellect and innermost feeling”, and “music [which] sets in motion the machinery of awe, of fear, of terror, of pain.” There is no question that Beethoven’s nine symphonies changed m...

James P. Johnson is known as the Father of Stride Piano, and composed the most iconic work that captures the essence of the Roaring Twenties, the Charleston. Both pianist and composer, he not only wrote jazz but also music for theatrical shows, symphonic works and opera too. He performed alongside jazz greats such as Fats Waller, Willie The Lion Smith and Sidney Bechet, and also collaborated with...

This week, Donald Macleod explores Ludwig van Beethoven’s life through the years of 1822-1824 – a period during which the composer completed his greatest late masterpieces. It was also a time at which Beethoven became acutely aware of his own mortality, struggling with both his dwindling finances and his deteriorating health, and sought help from, among others, his brother Johann and a new secreta...

Donald Macleod steps into the French baroque with Desmarets and Boismortier Donald Macleod discovers the stories of two very colourful figures of the French baroque, Henri Desmarets and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. Born a generation apart, Boismortier and Desmarets are perhaps lesser known figures of the French baroque, but together they provide a fascinating picture of life and music-making in th...