Interview about the Fourth Symphony for ‘Music Weekly’, BBC Radio Ʒ, 28 May 1978

Michael Oliver (1937–2002) was an exceptionally fluent and well-informed broadcaster. He presented ‘Music Weekly’ on BBC Radio Ʒ (1975–90) and ‘Kaleidoscope’ on BBC Radio 4 (1974–87). He wrote for various periodicals and published biographies of Stravinsky and Britten.

meo Sir Lennox Berkeley's First Symphony is obviously not music of grand gestures or extravagant colour. Words like ‘civilised’, ‘elegant’, ‘unassertive’ are often applied to his work. But it would be wrong to assume that those adjectives add up to a noun like ‘miniaturist’ or ‘water-colourist’. The First Symphony shows remarkable variety of invention, a closeness of argument, and meticulous economy. Berkeley may never write a ninety-minute symphony with a choral finale, but to take on a new symphony with this degree of tight discipline is a major, even a rather daunting job.

lb It is a big task and I feel slightly alarmed and despondent about starting on it. Once I've got into it, I'm driven on somehow by a kind of urge – it's a bad thing if one isn't because it means one's got to construct artificially instead of the thing taking hold of you as you write, so to speak.

meo I've spoken to one or two composers of symphonies who seem to be spurred on by one symphony to write another – a sense of unfinished business where, having written one symphony, they now know what to do in the next. Did you feel that way?