Susan Bradshaw (

Monmouth Monmouth ( , ; cy, Trefynwy meaning "town on the Monnow") is a town and community in Wales. It is situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. Monmouth is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. ...

, 8 September 1931 – London, 30 January 2005) was a British pianist, teacher, writer, and composer. She was mainly associated with

contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...

, and especially with the work of

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mo ...

, several of whose writings she translated. As a critic and musicologist she contributed to a number of magazines and journals over several decades; the titles included ''

Contact Contact may refer to: Interaction Physical interaction * Contact (geology), a common geological feature * Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye * Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects * C ...

'', ''

Music and Musicians Hansom Books was a British publisher founded in 1950 by Philip Dosse to produce the magazine ''Dance and Dancers''. Magazines in a similar format were then founded to cover other arts, so forming the Seven Arts Group. The other titles were ''Art ...

'', ''

Tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...

'' and ''

The Musical Times ''The Musical Times'' is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom and currently the oldest such journal still being published in the country. It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainzer ...

''.

Life

Bradshaw attended the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke ...

from 1949, studying piano with

Harold Craxton Thomas Harold Hunt Craxton (30 April 188530 March 1971) was an English pianist, teacher and composer. Born in London, and growing up in Devizes, Craxton began studying piano with Tobias Matthay and Cuthbert Whitemore in 1907, and made a name for ...

and composition with

Howard Ferguson George Howard Ferguson, PC (June 18, 1870 – February 21, 1946) was the ninth premier of Ontario, from 1923 to 1930. He was a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1905 to 1930 who represented the eastern provinci ...

and

Mátyás Seiber Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartó ...

. There she met

Cornelius Cardew Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, ...

, a fellow student, with whom she performed in Bartók's

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion The Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz. 110, BB 115, is a musical piece written by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók in 1937. The sonata was premiered by Bartók and his second wife, Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, with the percussionists Fritz Sch ...

. She attended Darmstadt three times, 1956-1958 and in the last year performed there Richard Rodney Bennett's ''Music for two pianos'' with the composer. A recording survives of the performance. Around the same period she studied with

in Paris. Susan Bradshaw was one of the two musicians (the other being

Hans Keller Hans (Heinrich) Keller (11 March 19196 November 1985) was an Austrian-born British musician and writer, who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being a commentator on such disparate fields as psychoana ...

) involved in the famous '

Piotr Zak Piotr (or Pjotr) Zak is the name of a fictional Polish composer whose alleged composition ''Mobile for Tape and Percussion'' was broadcast twice on the BBC Third Programme on 5 June 1961 in a performance supposedly played by "Claude Tessier" and " ...

' hoax in 1961.

Legacy

After her death, The Susan Bradshaw Composers' Fund was established by the Royal Philharmonic Society with donations from friends and family, led by composer Brian Elias. The purpose of the fund is to support composers (of any age) and young musicians wishing to perform works by living composers. At present the fund is used to support a commission for one of the winners of the RPS Composition Prize. Her papers are housed at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

Discography

*Mabillon Trio ''Avant-Garde''. Music by Boulez and others. Delta, 1962 *"Dorothy Dorow - A Short Recital of English Songs", Dorothy Dorow, Soprano, Susan Bradshaw, piano. Featuring songs by Bliss, Holst, Britten, Walter Leigh, Bax, recorded June 1963, LP: Jupiter Recordings, JEP OC33. *English choral works, John Alldis Choir, conducted by John Alldis, with Richard Rodney Bennett, piano LP: Argo ZRG 5426, 1965 *Anthony Payne, ''Paean'' for solo piano, LP: BBC Enterprises, 1977, CD: NMC D159. *Saint-Saens, ''Carnival of the Animals'', Vesuvius Ensemble, Poulenc, ''Babar the Elephant'', Susan Bradshaw, solo piano, EMI BRNA 502 1977 *Gustav Holst, The Planets, for two pianos, Richard Rodney Bennett, Susan Bradshaw, LP: Delos DEL-25442 (1981), CD: FACET 8002 (1987) *Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire, with Jane Manning, Vesuvius Ensemble.

Writings

*"The Music of Elisabeth Lutyens", The Musical Times, Vol. 112, No. 1541 (Jul., 1971), pp. 653+655-656 *"The Twentieth Century", in ''Keyboard Music'', ed. Denis Matthews, Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972, *"New Music - Shostakovich's 15th Symphony - Anthony Payne and his ‘Paean’", Tempo 100 (Spring 1972), pp. 36-45 *"Whatever Happened to Chamber Music?", Tempo 123 (December 1977), pp. 7–9, DOI
Whatever Happened to Chamber Music?
*"Symphony No.2/Metamorphoses—The Compositional Background" n Roberto Gerhard Tempo 139 (December 1981), pp. 28–32 DOI
Symphony No.2/Metamorphoses—The Compositional Background
*"Cornelius Cardew (1936 – 1981)", Tempo 140 (March 1982), p. 22 *"The Music of Edison Denisov", Tempo 151 (December 1984), 2-9. doi:10.1017/S0040298200058940 *"The instrumental and vocal music", in ''Pierre Boulez - A Symposium'', ed. William Glock, London: Eulenberg, 1986, pp. 127–230, *"All Fingers and Thumbs. Can We 'Interpret' Contemporary Music, or Do We Just Perform It?", The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1811 (Jan., 1994), pp. 20–24 *"A Performer's Responsibility", in ''Composition - performance - reception: studies in the creative process in music'', edited by Wyndham Thomas, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, pp. 53–65, *"Piano music: recital repertoire and chamber music", in Amanda Bayley (ed), ''The Cambridge Companion to Bartók'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2001, pp. 104–117, DOI
Piano music: recital repertoire and chamber music
* * *

Translations

*Boulez, Pierre. 1971. ''Boulez on Music Today'', translated by Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett. London: Faber. . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. . * Jameux, Dominique. 1991. ''Pierre Boulez'', translated by Susan Bradshaw. London: Faber. . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. .

References

External links

Obituary of Edison Denisov written by Susan BradshawSusan Bradshaw's obituary in ''The Guardian''Susan Bradshaw's obituary in ''The Times''
: 'About Susan Bradshaw' (Royal Philharmonic Society website)]
The Susan Bradshaw Composers' Fund
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bradshaw, Susan British classical pianists British women pianists British women composers Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music 1931 births 2005 deaths French–English translators 20th-century translators 20th-century British pianists 20th-century British musicians 20th-century women pianists