No Ordinary Joe
13th July 2011
Joseph Horovitz is the subject of a BBC Radio 4 programme on 26 July about his life in music. Now eighty-five, he looks back on his long career in an interview with fellow Music Sales composer, Debbie Wiseman, which includes excerpts from his works ranging from the award-winning Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo to his String Quartet No 5.
Horovitz's story begins with his escape to England as a boy when the Nazis entered Vienna in 1938. He read Music at Oxford while giving musical appreciation lectures to the Forces, and then studied composition with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music where he has taught composition since 1961, and his international awards include the Nino Rota Prize of Italy and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Arts First Class, as well as two “Ivors” and the Cobbett Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians for chamber music.
Last month a five-hour programme of music by Horovitz was broadcast on KUSC, the Los Angeles classical music radio station.
“Composer Joseph Horovitz: No Ordinary Joe” – BBC Radio 4 on 26 July, repeated 31 July
