Stoke on Trent

What does it mean to be located in a landscape or use place as a stimulus for composition? Writer, musician and broadcaster Kate Kennedy goes walking with present-day composers in the places that were important to their 20th-century predecessors. They explore how countryside, coasts and cityscapes become part of someone's life, and how years of living with them gradually find their way into music and the influences that continue to shape their own music today.

Kate is in Stoke-on-Trent with the composer Tim Watts, following a route that the young Havergal Brian would have known so well. Brian is mainly remembered today for his vast Gothic Symphony, one of the largest symphonies ever written. As a teenager, he was an admired organist at St James's Church in Longton, growing up in this heartland of the Staffordshire Potteries. He then travelled out, every Sunday, to play at a second church on the edge of the Cheshire countryside. Brian's early life seems to have been divided between two very different landscapes, which appear to explain the many sound worlds and discombobulating changes that are the hallmarks of his celebrated symphony.

Presented by Dr Kate Kennedy
Produced by Adrian Washbourne
Mixed by Julian Mayers
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
A YadaYada Production for BBC Radio 3