Pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi’s recordings of works by Dorothy Howell are a cornerstone of this week’s BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week series.

Hiroaki Takenouchi features widely in the latest edition of BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, which tells the story of British composer Dorothy Howell. Presenter Donald McLeod is joined by Dr. Leah Broad, with whom Hiroaki collaborated earlier this year, and whose book ‘Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Music World’ won the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Storytelling Award.

A champion of lesser-known British composers, Hiroaki has previously recorded solo piano works by William Sterndale Bennett and Alexander Campbell Mackenzie for Composer of the Week, and was subsequently invited to record works by Dorothy Howell especially for this edition of the programme.

The first episode in this focus on Dorothy Howell,  ‘The English Strauss’, opens with Hiroaki’s recording with pianist Simon Callaghan of Howells’ Spindrift, from their recent album ‘Danza Gaya‘, and includes his performance of her 1920 piece Boat Song for piano, which can be heard beginning at 32.42 – listen to the programme by following this link.

Hiroaki may also be heard performing on the fourth episode, ‘Traveller’ which explores Howell’s work of the 1930s. A further track from ‘Danza Gaya’, Howell’s Mazurka for two pianos, opens the programme, and Hiroaki’s recordings of Puppydog’s Tales and the composer’s Preludes no. 1 in F minor, no. 2 in C and no. 3 in A flat will be heard later in the broadcast. This episode will air on Thursday 10th October at 4pm and will be available to listen to live and for 28 days following its broadcast via this link.