Alexander Goehr's guest appearances

Alexander Goehr

Composer of the Week

Striking Chords - Memorable encounters with great artists

Radio 3’s Composers’ Rooms

The Samuel Andreyev Podcast

Judith Weir

Harrison Birtwistle

Mark-Anthony Turnage

Errollyn Wallen

James MacMillan

Oliver Knussen

Johannes Brahms

Robert Schumann

Igor Stravinsky

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Franz Joseph Haydn

Leonard Bernstein

Sergei Prokofiev

Andrew Motion

Anna Meredith

OwlTail

Donald Macleod in conversation with composer Alexander Goehr at his home near Cambridge

Alexander Goehr - Part 2

Alexander Goehr - Part 1

Sara Mohr-Pietsch visits Alexander Goehr's cottage in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Sandy, as he's known, guides Sara around his composing room, from an old writing desk fashioned out of a square piano, to Chinese bells and pictures of Schoenberg among the objects filling the walls.

With the composer and academic, Alexander Goehr, I admit, things didn’t get off to a good start. Unfortunately, due to personal worries, I hadn’t slept the previous night.  At 4 a.m. I gave up, got up and went to work, feeling fed up and unshaven, still dressed in the tea shirt and tracksuit bottoms I’d had on all night. And so it was that at 8 O’clock I got a call from reception to say that my guest had arrived. What guest, I wondered, as, grumpily, I looked through my appointments diary. My ‘guest’ I discovered, was a man of great distinction and I found him dressed impeccably in a formal suit. He was aghast at my appearance and intoned pointedly, “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know who I’m meant to be talking to and I don’t know what I’m meant to be talking about!’ It was not promising - but this interview was all about turning things round, and I think we just about succeeded.

With the composer and academic, Alexander Goehr, I admit, things didn’t get off to a good start. Unfortunately, due to personal worries, I hadn’t slept the previous night.  At 4 a.m. I gave up, got up and went to work, feeling fed up and unshaven, still dressed in the tea shirt and tracksuit bottoms I’d had on all night. <br><br>And so it was that at 8 O’clock I got a call from reception to say that my guest had arrived. What guest, I wondered, as, grumpily, I looked through my appointments diary. My ‘guest’ I discovered, was a man of great distinction and I found him dressed impeccably in a formal suit. He was aghast at my appearance and intoned pointedly, “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know who I’m meant to be talking to and I don’t know what I’m meant to be talking about!’ It was not promising - but this interview was all about turning things round, and I think we just about succeeded.

Alexander Goehr 葛赫