With his mother at the piano

Donald Macleod begins this week of programmes about Percy Grainger by tracing the composer's ambivalent relationship with his primary musical instrument, the piano, and the ever-present influence of his mother.

Percy Grainger had a conflicted relationship with the piano. It was the instrument through which he learned music, taught by his mother to begin with. Through the piano he gained access to a wider world. But he had a love-hate relationship with it, boasting that from the age of fifteen he had never written a work for solo piano….and yet across his huge output of works there’s hardly one that he didn’t end up arranging for the piano. His highly successful career as a performer was something he was equally ambivalent about at times.

Any close view of Percy Grainger and the piano will find the shadow of his mother, Rose Grainger, looming across it. She was a domineering, controlling presence for the first 40 year of his life, and her death - and the dramatic manner of it - marked a crucial watershed in his… unpredictable life.

It was Rose who directed him towards the piano and then towards composing.

Mowgli's Song Against People
Penelope Thwaites, piano
John Lavender, piano

Molly on the Shore
Percy Grainger, piano

Walking Tune
BBC Philharmonic
Richard Hickox, conductor

Tribute to Foster
Monteverdi Choir
English Country Gardiner Orchestra
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

Marching Song of Democracy
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor

Hill-Song 1 and 2
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Geoffrey Simon, conductor

Producer: Martin Williams