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Harry Partch was one of the most distinctive and influential American composers of the mid-twentieth century, an inventor of a new musical scale and builder of his own unique instruments . Tom profiles the "hobo" composer with the help of S. Andrew Granade whose recent study focuses on Partch the person alongside the cultural icon he represented and Bob Gilmore who wrote the 1998 biography of the composer. We also hear from two musicians who have first-hand experience of playing Partch’s music - the percussionist Jared Soldiviero from Newband (recent custodians of Partch’s original instrument collection) and Helen Bledsoe of ensemble musikFabrik, who have developed a complete set of reconstructions for performances of Partch’s music, including Delusion of the Fury at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

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Tom Service talks to the Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Biret was born in Ankara in 1941, and studied at the Paris Conservatoire under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger, graduating at the age of fifteen with three first prizes. She was a pupil of Alfred Cortot and a disciple of Wilhelm Kempff, and her repertoire ranges from Brahms to Boulez, with one of her recent projects being to record the complete piano concertos of Hindemith. Naxos are in the process of releasing box-sets containing over 100 recordings Idil Biret has made since 1959, and Tom talks to her about this legacy, about her approach to performing such a wide range of repertoire, and her ambitious plans for the future.ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

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The British Council and PRS Music Foundation have chosen five UK musicians to spend time in China, writing new music and building new international relationships. The six-week residencies are designed to enable British musicians to explore new musical territory, reach new audiences and write new material in the context of a changing international market. This week composer Anna Meredith sends her third and final audio postcard from Hangzhou where she has been involved in a project to create an audio tour of the city with, and for, local people. We hear Anna’s music written for an art and flower shop, a secret garden, and the trees which line the famous West Lake.

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Tom talks to Chris Walton about his latest book Lies and Epiphanies which looks at the inspiration of five composers from Wagner to Berg, and unpicks the stories they told about their music, from the vision on his sickbed which Wagner claimed inspired the opening of the Ring Cycle, to the finale of Mahler's second symphony, which was supposedly born of a "lightning bolt" of inspiration at the funeral of Hans von Bulow. Alban Berg's violin concerto was purportedly his direct response to the tragic early death of Alma Mahler's daughter, but Chris tells Tom about the web of political, social and sexual relationships which are much more likely to provide the backdrop for Berg’s work.

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