In his heyday, from the late Forties to around the start of William Glock's regime at the Third Programme (afterwards Radio Three), Hans Keller's vehement presence was a force for the good in English musical life. He represented at a high level old-style modern values - not exactly cosmopolitan (an important reservation to which I shall return) but emphatically not insular. In general he ground a Freudian axe, and his angle on his own specifically musical repertoire - the Austro-German sonata-tradition from Haydn to Brahms, with opera in the back seat, and lieder almost out of sight - was fervently Schoenbergian.

LRB 3 August 1995 | PDF Download