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Donald Macleod follows Doreen Carwithen's wartime experiences as a young music student in the capital city.

Doreen Carwithen is one of only a handful of female British composers who worked in the film industry in the 1940s and 1950s. Dramas, mysteries, horror flicks, documentaries, the thirty-plus films she scored form a substantial part of her musical legacy.

Carwithen first came to critical attention in the concert hall, with the catchily titled ODTAA, One damn thing after another, in 1947. Predictably, newspaper headlines made much of her gender and her youth. She was just 24. It seemed as if a bright future lay ahead, yet, at the beginning of the 1960s, Carwithen would stop writing music, a situation which perhaps in part explains why her music dropped off the radar for many years. To mark the centenary of her birth, Donald Macleod brings to light the little-known yet fascinating story of this 20th-century British composer.

Leah Broad, whose new biography of Carwithen is due out next year joins Donald Macleod to discuss Carwithen's progress at the Royal Academy of Music. Her theory teacher was the composer William Alwyn and their meeting went on to become one of the defining relationships of her life.

Violin sonata
Vivace (excerpt)
Fenella Humphreys, violin
Nathan Williamson, piano

3 songs to texts by Walter de la Mare
No 1: Noon
No 2: Echo
No 3: The Ride-by Nights
Alessandro Fisher, tenor
JongSun Woo, piano

Piano sonatina
Daniel Grimwood, piano

Violin sonata
Fenella Humphreys, violin
Nathan Williamson, piano

ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another)
London Symphony Orchestra
Richard Hickox, conductor

Producer: Johannah Smith