Donald Macleod explores the life and works of composers. Broadcast daily from Monday to Friday on BBC Radio 3.
Johan Svendsen (1840-1911)
A century after his death Johan Svendsen still finds himself in the shadow of his compatriot Edvard Grieg, yet in his native Norway he's rightly regarded as of equal important in rescuing the country's musical tradition from near oblivion.
Donald Macleod sets out to rescue Svendsen from his obscurity and paints a portrait of a multi-talented individual. Svendsen excelled not only as composer but also as conductor, in fact in the last 29 years of his life it was his podium activities which saw him lionised first in Oslo, then in Copenhagen after one of the opera world's most controversial transfer deals.