Composer: Alun Hoddinott

Read more about Alun Hoddinott

Welsh composer and academic. Born in Bargoed, Glamorganshire, in 1929, he studied at University College, Cardiff, and privately with Arthur Benjamin in London. During the 1950s he was on the staff of Cardiff College of Music and Drama, but in 1959 he returned to University College, serving as Professor of Music from 1967-86, while directing the Cardiff Festival of 20th-Century Music between 1966 and 1989. Vastly prolific, he emerged as a kind of romantic constructivist, combining a penchant for dark textures and brooding harmonies out of Rawsthorne with Bartokian arch-forms and palindromes, though his move into opera from 1970 helped to broaden his stylistic range and lighten his palette.

NMC releases on which this composer appears:

NMC D057 Spectrum Thalia Myers, piano

NMC D062 Themes & Variations BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Jac van Steen, conductor