Composer Of The Week

Donald Macleod surveys the life and music of the elusive French composer, Edouard Lalo Even if you know the name, it's possible you might not be able to place the French composer Edouard Lalo date-wise. He was born in Lille in 1823. Berlioz was his senior in age by some twenty years, Saint-Saëns twelve years his junior. Lalo has a direct contemporary in the shape of César Franck, another composer who preferred to stay out of the limelight. As a musician, Lalo cut an independent path, preferring to complete his music studies privately rather than following the accepted route of attending the Paris Conservatoire.Lalo had a retiring nature, a man who appears to have preferred the quiet life. That doesn't mean he wasn't sociable. He seems to have been generally well liked. He lived in Paris from the age of sixteen and mixed with and knew all the leading musical personalities of the day. Aside from the Symphonie espagnole, he wrote several operas, a ballet, a symphony, a whole number of orchestral and chamber work