Falling Tree Productions

Tonight on BBC Radio 3, our current series of Afterwords concludes with a look at the trumpet player, composer and conductor Elgar - Gary - Howarth. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v8f7

One of the five musicians who constituted the 'Manchester School' in the 1950s (composers Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and Peter Maxwell Davies, together with pianist John Ogdon), Elgar - or, universally, Gary - Howarth was a distinguished trumpet player with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, notably, the Philip Jones Ensemble before becoming a hugely respected conductor, composer and arranger.

Musical colleagues together with his son Patrick reflect on Gary's humble origins and international achievements, interwoven with extracts from the BBC Sound Archive. With Gillian Moore, formerly of the London Sinfonietta, trumpet player Paul Archibald, trombonist David Purser, oboe player Melinda Maxwell, conductor and broadcaster Frank Renton and former Musical Director of Grimethorpe Colliery Band Garry Cutt.

Producer by Alan Hall

"The first time I saw Franz Liszt, I was about seven years old, and already accustomed to seeing the spirits of the so-called dead..." - Rosemary Brown

Afterwords continues tonight on BBC Radio 3 with an exploration of the work of Rosemary Brown, an English musician and spirit medium who said her pieces were dictated to her by dead composers like Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v1w9

Entering the spotlight in the late 1960s, Brown's work was analysed by musicologists and composers, discussed by priests and talk show hosts. It opened up discussions of the afterlife, on the nature of composition itself and on musical performance as a type of conceptual art.

In this archive-led documentary, we dive into some of the recordings from the time and hear new interviews with the composer Neil Luck, pianist Siwan Rhys, radio presenter and journalist Kate Molleson, The Spectator Arts Editor and Director of the London Contemporary Music Festival, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and the radio producer Daniel Snowman who interviewed Rosemary Brown in 1969.

Image credit: Louis-Maxime-Dubois

Produced by Eleanor McDowall
Mixed by Mike Woolley

Afterwords, our series which tells the stories of musicians with the help of the archive interviews they left behind, returns to BBC Radio 3 tonight. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002tmjb

Richard Rodney Bennett, who would have celebrated his 90th birthday in March 2026, has been described as the 'complete musician'. Born into a highly musical family - his mother had studied with Gustav Holst - he was already writing film scores while a teenage student at the Royal Academy of Music. He went on to study with Boulez, perform as a jazz pianist and singer and to receive three Academy Award nominations for his film music.

He was also a lively interviewee, as revealed in the BBC Sound Archive. Here, his words interweave with new observations from jazz singing partner Claire Martin, pianist and film expert Neil Brand, biographer Anthony Meredith and musical collaborator Scott Dunn.

Photo credit: Sven Arnstein

Produced by Alan Hall