Photo credit: Anthony Lydekker
Welcome to my website
Here you’ll find information about my composing, and also about my writing on classical music. For lists of works by me, performances, recordings, reviews, and ongoing projects, please click on the menu tabs above.
For all enquiries, please contact me at malcolmhayes@btinternet.com.
Composing
Clare Hammond – Photo credit: Philip Gatward
(1) In June 2026 the Royal Scottish National Orchestra will record a CD of several of my orchestral works, as part of the orchestra’s studio recording operation in the New Auditorium at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The chosen works are the Violin Concerto (Islandscape); the Flute Concerto (Ailein Duinn: Lament for Dark-Haired Allan); Byzantium for orchestra; and Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for soprano, baritone and orchestra. Further information will appear here in due course, as final arrangements for the recording take shape.
(2) In April 2018, in her recital in the Eastgate Theatre and Arts Centre in Peebles, Clare Hammond (photo: right) gave the world première of From the Purgatorio of Dante for solo piano. Further performances followed at Oban, Milngavie, Ardrishaig, Perth Concert Hall, and Musselburgh.
To hear a recording of Clare’s performance in Perth Concert Hall, please click on the Listen menu above.
Clare’s website:
Photo: Gaby Merz
(3) My Violin Concerto: Islandscape, a BBC commission for the Proms, was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in August 2016.
‘Malcolm Hayes’s Violin Concerto…was easily the most impressive new work in the [Proms] season, clearly rooted in the English pastoral tradition, but steering it in a strikingly different direction.’ (Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 12 September 2016)
The wonderful soloist was Tai Murray (photo: right), with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård.
To hear the recording of the performance, please go to:
(The above recording is now behind a paywall. The recording will also appear shortly on the ‘Listen’ menu above.)
Programme note (proof copy): Violin Concerto note (Photo credit: http://www.johnbrockliss.com/portfolio/album/shoreline)
Further press and online reviews:
For more reviews of the premiere, please go to the Composing page above, and click on the Performance reviews submenu.
About Tai Murray:
https://ikonarts-editionpeters.com/artists/instrumentalists-conductors/tai-murray/
And a quick self-portrait in words by Tai herself:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/aug/08/facing-the-music-tai-murray-violinist
(4) In the premiere of my orchestral work Byzantium, Garry Walker conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios. To hear the Radio 3 recording, please click on the Listen menu above.
To read Paul Conway’s review in Tempo magazine (Cambridge University Press), and Richard Whitehouse’s in Classical Source, please go to the Composing menu above, and click on the Performance Reviews submenu.
(5) A beautifully sung recording of my Corpus Christi carol setting has been made by the Oxford Schola Cantorum, conducted by James Burton. To hear this, please click on the Listen menu above.
Corpus Christi is published in the Faber New Choral Works series. The link to the Faber Music website page is:
https://www.fabermusic.com/shop/list?query=Corpus%20Christi
To hear this and other works by me, please click on the Listen menu. Further information is on the Composing menu.
Writing
If you’re interested in classical music programme notes or features written to order, this is where to start looking. Please click on the Writing menu above.
My biography of Liszt – in the format of a double CD set, plus a handsomely printed booklet containing the full 55,000-word text – is published by Naxos:
To read reviews of this by Paul Driver (Sunday Times) and Ian Lace (MusicWeb International), please go to the Writing menu above, and click on the Book Reviews submenu.
For details and to purchase a copy online, please go to:
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.558214-15
or:
http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Naxos/8558214-15#
For all enquiries about my writing or composing activities, please contact me at malcolmhayes@btinternet.com.
Glasgow, Scotland
September 2025