Presenter of Composer of the Week on BBCRadio3, & other stuff. Freelance voice: exhibition/gallery guide. Might-have-been furniture maker. Enthusiastic cook
Not a day
@BBCRadio3
thinks worth celebrating, but I do: 20 yrs to the day since my 1st broadcast as sole presenter of COTW. 2 decades of immeasurable privilege & pleasure. Thanks to all composers living & dead who’ve made this the most joyous & fulfilling time
V difficult week: having lived with him as const companion for a year finally say goodbye & God rest to Beethoven. He’s left a huge chasm in my working life. Limitless thanks to production team
@BBCRadio3
Cardiff, esp. Chris Taylor master-architect, particularly final week
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your powerful responses to final episode of Beethoven Unleashed, the biography. The architect, Chris Taylor, will attest to the fact that it took me several takes to record the link into the 5th Symphony without breaking down
It’s something of a mystery: completely unmusical family; rubbish or totally absent training in music at primary and secondary level. But then, around the age of 13, the discovery of the Third Programme. I owe it everything. Thank you BBC
Macleod looking a right mug! Heartfelt thanks to my brilliant production team on
#COTW
#Beethoven
Unleashed
@BBCRadio3
for this memento of an unforgettable year
It had to be done! Very best wishes to all loyal listeners to
#COTW
@BBCRadio3
- and to disloyal ones too! - for a Happy Christmas and for better things in 2023.
Writing a week of Schubert. There are certain pieces of music, aren’t there, which no matter how often you hear them, pierce your very soul? The Adagio of the String Quintet has undone me, yet again…
OTD 80 yrs ago Composer of the Week was first broadcast on BBC Home Service. It’s been my honour to present the programme on
@BBCRadio3
since 1999. These are some of the talented people who have helped me make it over past few yrs. Thank you all, producers past & present
And this is my current fantastically talented team who have brought you Composer of the Week over the past few years. Two of them either programme for almost as long as me!
Thanks beyond bounds to the miraculous teams
@Moorfields
, tomorrow I will have distance vision I haven’t had in 60 years. I am so humbled by their phenomenal expertise. Thank you.
I like to be on time and am invariably early. Sometimes absurdly early. But tonight I broke my own record, turning up exactly a month early for a concert.
Forgive terrible moment of vaingloriousness. Today I interviewed Sir John Tomlinson for imminent Bernard Haitink celebration on
@BBCRadio3
. He said I have a great voice. What?!? He said that? It doesn’t get better than this.
We are delighted to announce Beethoven Unleashed: Composer of the Week on
@BBCRadio3
has won
#vlvawards2020
for Best Music and Arts Radio Programme. Congratulations
@DonaldMacleod01
and the team behind this ambitious series. Find winners and nominees at
From tomorrow,
#COTW
celebrates the 400th anniversary of the English composer William Byrd with glorious performances of his sublime music. I’ll be visiting some of the places he knew in the county of Essex, priest-holes and all….
Hugely disappointed that the prospect from the top (i.e. no view!) was as if inside a cloud, but hugely exhilarated that the old goat managed to get to stand on top of Suilven, so long admired from a distance
Your wonderfully positive and supportive comments about
#COTW
and other
@BBCRadio3
programmes are immensely appreciated at this dark, solitary, isolated time. Hugely motivating and encouraging. More valuable than you can imagine. Thank you.
This is a momentous day in my broadcasting career, welcoming on board the good ship
#COTW
on
@BBCRadio3
the gloriously imaginative, articulate, insightful and wide-ranging wordsmith
@KateMolleson
, opening up another dimension to this programme in its 80th year
One of most moving messages ever abt COTW:”For past several years R3 has been companion & joy for my father, especially as he reaches out to end of his life, now listening to COTW peacefully & happily. Thank you for all work, all music. Clear you all love what you do, felt by us”
Sorry Elgar and Mr. Phoebus, but I now have an e-bike and it’s absolutely magic...especially the satnav which guides me through -always with three options- London’s by-ways and green spaces. Transformational.
Inside a 250 year old French Violin. Photographed with a Medical Laparoscope adapted to a Lumix G9ii Camera. A 1770 violin by Augustin Chappuy.
#music
#art
#photography
McSweens & the obligatory complements. The hyper-observant will have spied an unusually bright hue to the neeps. A first for me (+carrot). The tincture is Laphroaig. Here’s to RB!
This is the fabulous cake that we were presented with after last night’s amazing concert by
@BBCSingers
@HoddinottHall
. It tasted as good as it looks. You can hear the concert on 25th September. Yes indeed, Happy 80th Anniversary 🎂 Composer of the Week!
For the avoidance of doubt, though I thought I had made myself clear: I am not retiring. I am delighted that
@KateMolleson
is going to be SHARING the pleasure of presenting
#COTW
.
Profound thanks to everyone for the overwhelming messages of appreciation and, yes, love, for
#COTW
that you’ve posted in this 80th anniversary week. We’re all very touched and grateful that you’ve taken the trouble.
Another perfect day in Paradise, with lunch outdoors in fabulous sunshine. I think that glass of Prosecco is winking at me. Piazza San Marco with practically no-one…
I have lived in a wierd, self-isolating bubble for more than 20 years, working on COTW. That now seems an advantage. My heart goes out to so many beloved musician friends, who, by definition, cannot live in that way, whose careers are being devastated
What an astounding
@E_N_O
‘s drive-in La Boheme proved to be. Technically towering achievement, making all that complexity work so magnificently in a car park, but artistically, from every point of view, a triumph. Funny, clever, moving. Manna from heaven for the opera-famished
Neil,
#COTW
now needs 2 presenters, I am happy to say, not because I am being “forced out” but because I am getting old and have asked to do fewer weeks each year than I have for the past couple of decades. Couldn’t be more pleased that
@KateMolleson
is stepping into the breach.
@BBCRadio3
@KateMolleson
@DonaldMacleod01
Absolutely no idea why this programme now needs two presenters, considering how the BBC is looking to cut its Arts budget; is Donald Mcleod being forced-out in favour of the ubiquitous Kate Molleson?
Oh gosh, Roger. I remember that meeting in your office so well. I thought it was going to be curtains for my broadcasting career and instead you offered me the best job in radio anywhere on the planet. I can never thank you enough. Still feel a total fraud.
Honestly some of the piles of excremental musicological rubbish I have to wade my way through. Currently writing a week on Szymanowski, where I find some jerk writing of how a piece ends “by collapsing, like Petrushka, on a dry non-arpeggiated chord.” So illuminating
Inaugural “at home” session of
@BBCRadio3
#R3COTW
with brilliant star guests
@iainburnside
&
@SYoungConductor
. Huge thanks to both. This is my studio for foreseeable future so some acoustic adjustments required. My stand-in is modelling Sennheiser headphones
Very, very weird, unprecedented experience today. Sitting in barber’s chair having my hair cut at midday, while man who has cut my hair for years tuned radio to
@BBCRadio3
& had to listen to myself. Fortunately buzzing & snipping sounds almost completely drowned it out.
This is the heavenly week each year when I get paid to sit and listen to Bach all day long. Sometimes I feel this is the best job in the world. It could only be better if I could actually play Bach...
This may be lore widely known, but not by me. The secret of unwilting tulips? The placing of a cuprous coin in the bottom of the vase, as evidenced here…
It begins tomorrow:
#COTW
’s contribution to
@BBCRadio3
’s Beethoven Unleashed: 25 weeks, so 125 programmes, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. This first week, unlike anything we’ve done before, in conversation with
@marinalsop
&
@simon_schama
In exceptional circumstances, on my birthday today I was sent the most exceptional musical greeting by musical neighbours. When I can figure out how to post it- it’s in an unfamiliar format- I will. Moved me to tears. Boundless thanks.
Had the pleasure of seeing Gainsborough’s portrait of J. C. Bach back on show, with Abel high on the wall above him, in the new salon hang at the joyfully re-opened
@NPGLondon
yesterday
Still reeling from the extraordinary deluge of love and approbation last week. Thank you so much for making me feel so valued & appreciated. Totally overwhelmed. Never forget the team of fabulous producers who make me sound so much better than I am
Yet another occasion when this city -London- I have lived in for most of my life brought me up short. Have driven by hundreds of times but today, for 1st time, I walked through Bunhill Fields, burial place of John Bunyan, William Blake & Daniel Defoe
Sincere apologies. Just been pointed out that we played the wrong Te Deum in today’s programme: the 1928 one, not 1937. I think this is probably a consequence of not having physical CDs to work with any longer. Perhaps if we had, this horror might have been avoided.
A bit of an amalgam here, or should that be hodge-podge? A highland shepherd’s pie: lamb & leftover haggis with a covering of mashed neeps & tatties & celeriac, with that heretical dash of carrot. It’s no’ half bad!
Reason I’m in Paris? Lucky me: to interview the unique phenomon who is Kaija Saariaho, coming up soon, at long last, on
#COTW
@BBCRadio3
. Absolutely riveting, honest, compelling, revealing. I’ll let you know when the progs are going out
Crême de Cacao has been sourced, or at any rate, Cacao White Liqueur & the legendary “Maurice” cocktail has been prepared in honour of Ravel:
"Three measures of Bacardi rum, one measure of lemon juice, sugar- to taste - and a little crême de Cacao, - very strong but marvellous!”
I was applauding too much to take a photo of the curtain calls but absolutely bowled over by the Barrie Kosky production of Das Rheingold
@RoyalOperaHouse
. What a magnificent triumph and how splendid to see the entire orchestra on stage to take a bow at the end.