Words on Music

Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ practise notebooks, pianist Stephen Hough’s account of tackling Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, the voice of Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny in the words of Scottish poet Don Paterson, and E. M. Forster’s evocation of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in Howard’s End: just some of the texts we’ll hear on tonight’s celebration of writing about music.

Ian’s joined by four Radio 3 presenters to discuss the challenges of all sorts of music writing, from concert reviews to programme notes, memoirs, poetry, fiction, and scripts for radio. His guests are Essential Classics Georgia Mann who pored over Oasis reviews in the N.M.E. in her teens, Hannah French from The Early Music Show who once read a biography of Pablo Casals in a day, Composer of the Week’s Kate Molleson who started out writing concert reviews at University in Montreal, and Corey Mwamba who presents Freeness and immersed himself in jazz books at Southampton library whilst doing his A-Levels.

Producer: Ruth Thomson