Alexander Goehr was born in Berlin and is the son of the conductor Walter Goehr.

Goehr studied composition with Olivier Messiaen. The music scene of Paris made a great impression on him and he became good friends with Pierre Boulez and was heavily involved in the serialist avant-garde movement of the early 1960s.

Alexander Goehr is Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University.

“Unburdened by ideology and technical schemata, Goehr’s works fly free of their conceptualisation with the energy of pure artistic discovery. What he most values in his technical devices is an ability to throw up felicities of part-writing or reiterative rhythm which may be cultivated for their independent strangeness and beauty. Such trouvailles lend his music a very personal flavour even as they unlock the fragrance of the past.” Paul Driver

Goehr’s orchestral evocation of Goya’s terrifying painting, Colossos, is coupled with the premiere recording of his early cantata The Deluge, inspired by Eisenstein’s notes for a film based on a writing by Leonardo da Vinci (the film was never completed). The neo-classical Little Symphony uses the chordal structure of Mussorgsky’s ‘Catacombs’ from Pictures at an Exhibition as a harmonic backbone and is performed by the Dutch chamber orchestra, ASKO Ensemble.