Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in March are:
27 February – 3 March Strozzi
6-10 March Johanna Müller-Hermann
13-17 March Purcell
20-24 March Bizet
27-31 March Rachmaninov
Dorothy Howell shot to fame on a sweltering September night in 1919. It was her first ever orchestral premiere, at no less an event than the London Proms. Under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, her symphonic poem Lamia was the success of the season. It was so phenomenally popular that a repeat performance had to be hastily scheduled, and the London press hounded Howell for photographs and interviews. This was, as Wood later wrote, ‘exceptional for a British composer’s work – for a woman, a triumph’.
It’s easy to see why captured the audience’s imagination. It’s a sumptuous Romantic piece based on a Keats poem regarded that when Joseph Holbrooke published his guide to contemporary British composers, Howell was one of only three
