Episodes
| Series | Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 01 | 20111121 | This week, Donald Macleod explores the unconventional life and music of Percy Grainger. In today's programme, he eavesdrops on Grainger's hot-house upbringing in Melbourne, where he was home-schooled by his obsessive mother, Rose; his years of musical study in Frankfurt, where he teamed up with a group of English composers, Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, Cyril Scott and Norman O'Neill; and his move to London, where he embarked on a career as a concert pianist, struck up a close friendship with Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg and made an energetic contribution to the burgeoning English folksong movement. Donald Macleod focuses on Grainger's upbringing in Melbourne and study in Frankfurt. | |
| 2011 | 02 | 20111122 | In today's programme, Grainger finds himself in demand as a concert pianist, and with the backing of his old friend Balfour Gardiner has his first taste of success as a composer too. At first, London must have seemed the perfect base for his activities, but when war was declared in August 1914, he and his mother Rose decided to up sticks and head out of harm's way - to the Big Apple - on the not unreasonable grounds that a war casualty could not become Australia's first significant composer. In New York, Grainger quickly established himself as a pianist, becoming known as 'the Siegfried of the piano' for his dashing good looks. He found himself a publisher and commissions started to follow - one of the earliest resulted in one of his best-known compositions, the orchestral suite In a Nutshell. A promised ballet commission from the conductor Thomas Beecham failed to materialize, but Grainger wrote the work anyway; it became his 'imaginary ballet', The Warriors, one of his most original and inventive scores. Donald Macleod focuses on how Grainger established himself as a pianist. | |
| 2011 | 03 | 20111123 | At the start of today's programme, Grainger - a pacifist - joins the US army, as Bandsman, 2nd Class. Soon after, he was to plant still deeper roots on that side of the pond by becoming an American citizen and buying a house for himself and his mother Rose, about an hour's journey from New York - a faintly Oedipal domestic idyll which would be rudely shattered the following year, when Rose committed suicide by throwing herself from the 14th storey of Grainger's management office. Grainger's reaction was to throw himself into his work - a music festival, a teaching commitment and a protracted European tour. By this time, his arrangement of 'Country Gardens' was flying off the shelves of music shops everywhere at a phenomenal rate, making trips to his native Australia affordable. It was on the return journey from one such trip that he met his 'Nordic princess', Ella Viola Str怀m, who approached him in the ship's music room for a banjulele lesson and ended up with a husband. Their wedding ceremony - and indeed their marriage - was as unconventional as Grainger himself. Donald Macleod focuses on Grainger's adoption of US citizenship and his marriage. | |
| 2011 | 04 | 20111124 | In today's programme, Grainger turns adversity to advantage in 'The Immovable Do' - a charming short composition built around a stuck key on his harmonium. Around the same time, he came up with the mildly eccentric idea of founding, in effect, a museum of Himself - the Grainger Museum - in his home town of Melbourne, Australia. It's a little as if Elvis had opened Graceland as a visitor attraction while he was still alive! The Grainger Museum may sound like a monstrously self-regarding enterprise, but in fact, with its display of first editions of his music, it came to represent to Grainger 'a measure of his artistic defeat' rather than a celebration of his achievements; as he noted in an introduction to the proposed display, most of his music was no longer being played - and, as he put it, 'music that isn't heard isn't alive.' Another example of Grainger's unusual slant on reality was his concept of 'blue-eyed English' - an attempt to turn back the linguistic clock and expunge all traces of post-Norman-Conquest verbiage from the English language. Accordingly, concerts were 'tone-shows', quartets became 'foursomes' and vegetarians mutated into 'meat-shunners'. Grainger even went so far as to collaborate on a blue-eyed English dictionary, whose Newspeakish goal was to eliminate all alien admixtures from the language. Grainger carried on presenting his own 'tone-shows' - as an internationally celebrated concert pianist. But here too he acquired a reputation for eccentric behaviour - not many performers fulfil their touring commitments by jogging from one engagement to the next, with their concert clothes in a rucksack on their back; but Grainger did, even becoming known as 'the jogging pianist'. Donald Macleod focuses on Grainger's founding a museum of himself. | |
| 2011 | 05 LAST | 20111125 | The main work in today's programme is Grainger's Jungle Book cycle, which he worked on, on and off, for nearly 50 years. It's the culmination of his boyhood love of Rudyard Kipling, instilled in him in his teens by his father, who wanted to 'tickle up the British lion in him' during his years at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Shortly before Grainger completed his Kipling cycle, he had performed the Grieg Piano Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl under the baton of Leopold Stokowksi. The two men enjoyed working together, and a couple of years later, Stokowksi, a master-arranger himself, wrote to Grainger asking if he would make fresh arrangements for a new recording of his 'greatest hits' - Molly on the Shore, Irish Tune from County Derry, Early One Morning, Handel in the Strand, Mock Morris and Country Gardens. Grainger was evidently very pleased with the resultant recordings, but remained deeply ambivalent about his own achievements as a composer: 'I am not very fond of my own music. If there is anything I hate it is listening to my own silly music and having to sit there like a fool while I see how much others also dislike it.'. Donald Macleod focuses on Graingers's Jungle Book Cycle and his 'greatest hits'. | |
| 2019 | 01 | With His Mother At The Piano | 20191209 | Donald Macleod begins this week of programmes about Percy Grainger by tracing the composer's ambivalent relationship with his primary musical instrument, the piano, and the ever-present influence of his mother. Percy Grainger had a conflicted relationship with the piano. It was the instrument through which he learned music, taught by his mother to begin with. Through the piano he gained access to a wider world. But he had a love-hate relationship with it, boasting that from the age of fifteen he had never written a work for solo piano - .and yet across his huge output of works there's hardly one that he didn't end up arranging for the piano. His highly successful career as a performer was something he was equally ambivalent about at times. Any close view of Percy Grainger and the piano will find the shadow of his mother, Rose Grainger, looming across it. She was a domineering, controlling presence for the first 40 year of his life, and her death - and the dramatic manner of it - marked a crucial watershed in his - unpredictable life. It was Rose who directed him towards the piano and then towards composing. Mowgli's Song Against People Penelope Thwaites, piano John Lavender, piano Molly on the Shore Percy Grainger, piano Walking Tune BBC Philharmonic Richard Hickox, conductor Tribute to Foster Monteverdi Choir English Country Gardiner Orchestra John Eliot Gardiner, conductor Marching Song of Democracy Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Sir Andrew Davis, conductor Hill-Song 1 and 2 Geoffrey Simon, conductor Producer: Martin Williams Donald Macleod traces the early life of Percy Grainger. |
| 2019 | 02 | Some Friends And Travelling Companions | 20191210 | Donald Macleod follows Percy Grainger to London, where his composing took second place to performing, leading to concert tours of Scandinavia, South Africa, New Zealand and back home to Australia. Percy Grainger came to London with his mother, Rose, in May 1901. The way London musical life operated at the time was very much a function of the prevailing social structure and for a musician who was minded to make a career for himself it was necessary to curry favour with a circle of aristocrats or rich patrons who could provide the essential openings. Grainger said he was horrified by the `cruelty and inhumanity` of so many of the smart set that he was forced to mix with, if he wanted to get on, who often preyed upon the circle of people they `collected.` He was never comfortable in a succession of stuffy drawing rooms, always with the expectation that he would perform. It was with a certain amount of relief, then, that Grainger was able to come up for air on several successful concert tours, taking him to Scandinavia, South Africa, New Zealand and back home to Australia. Handel in the Strand City of London Sinfonia Richard Hickox, conductor English Dance BBC Philharmonic Colonial Song Martin Jones, piano Scotch Strathspey and Reel Joyful Company of Singers Richard Broadbent The Warriors Producer: Martin Williams Donald Macleod on the life and work of Percy Grainger. |
| 2019 | 03 | In The Field | 20191211 | Donald Macleod explores Percy Grainger's enthusiastic and sometimes controversial role in the folksong revival of the 1900s. Folksong collecting provided a glorious escape for Percy Grainger, away from all those starchy drawing rooms and concert halls, but it also offered him a `mission`, to salvage what was left of something that then seemed bound on a course towards extinction. The industrial revolution and the spirit of modernism, the music hall and the gramophone had together set in train the death throes of folk art in general and the music of the people, outside the towns, in particular. As the singer Peter Pears observed, Percy Grainger was `obviously in love with folk-song.` Brigg Fair Mark Padmore, tenor Joyful Company of Singers Peter Broadbent, conductor Creeping Jane Stephen Varcoe, baritone Penelope Thwaites, piano I'm Seventeen Come Sunday English Chamber Orchestra Ambrosian Singers John McCarthy, conductor Four Settings from 'Songs of the North Martyn Hill, tenor Green Bushes Steuart Bedford, conductor Lincolnshire Posy Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra Timothy Reynish, conductor Producer: Martin Williams Donald Macleod explores Percy Grainger's enthusiasm for folksong collecting. |
| 2019 | 04 | In America | 20191212 | Donald Macleod keeps up with Percy Grainger as the composer moves to America during the First World War. When Percy Grainger and his mother, Rose, boarded the liner Laconia bound for Boston in September 1914. There were many accusations of cowardice and failure to face up to his patriotic duty. The decision to leave for the US had been taken hastily. He had just had a very successful sixty-concert tour of Europe; his works had been taken up in Amsterdam and in Vienna. But all this burgeoning activity came to an abrupt halt with the declaration of war on the 4th of August 1914. The Graingers hadn't anticipated this development and they now made a momentous decision to uproot themselves for the third time, leave Europe and travel to the USA. Rose was worried that the war would blight her son's career and Grainger was very anxious over his mother's health. He later explained his decision as having been made on the basis that he wanted to establish himself as Australia's first significant composer, and he couldn't do that if he were to die an early death in Europe! Country Garden The Bilder Duo Caroline Weichert, piano Clemens Rave, piano Suite: In a Nutshell BBC Philharmonic Richard Hickox, conductor The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra Timothy Reynish, conductor Irish Tune from County Derry The Bride's Tragedy Monteverdi Choir English Country Gardiner Orchestra John Eliot Gardiner Producer: Martin Williams Donald Macleod follows Percy Grainger to America |
| 2019 | 05 LAST | Purity And Freedom | 20191213 | Donald Macleod concludes his week of programmes about the life and music of Percy Grainger with an exploration of some of the composer's more unsavoury views and his quest for musical 'freedom'. There's no question that Percy Grainger had some pretty strange ideas. Some of them seriously offensive, such as his notions about racial purity and the superiority of the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon races. One of his cranky obsessions was a long-held quest to purify' the English language, avoiding what he termed `French-begotten, Latin-begotten and Greek-begotten` words, to achieve his goal of a blue-eyed English' and this he applied to musical terms as well. In later life he also devoted time to developing his ideas about free music, which he had had for some time. As a young man he had heard in his head what he called `nature-echoing, gliding, scale-less and non-metrical sounds`. Grainger's gloriously open-minded approach to music was such that he loved upsetting musical apple-carts wherever he found them, flying in the face of orthodoxy and relishing the opportunity to try new musical experiences and constantly hurtling himself into bruising brushes with authority. His pioneering trail culminated in the almost unique experiments he made with `free music`. Shepherd's Hey Percy Grainger, piano The Power of Love Claire Booth, soprano Christopher Glynn, piano Jutish Melody (Danish Folk Song Suite) Penelope Thwaites, piano To a Nordic Princess Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Richard Hickox, conductor Immovable Do Joyce Griggs, tenor saxophone J Michael Holmes, soprano saxophone Phil Pierick, alto saxophone) Adrianne Honnold, alto saxophone Adam Hawthorne, alto saxophone Drew Whiting, tenor saxophone Jesse Dochnahl, baritone saxophone Ben Kenis, bass saxophone Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble Free Music No 2 Lydia Kavina, theramin The Jungle Book (excerpts) Polyphony Stephen Layton, conductor Producer: Martin Williams |