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, with conductor Rory Macdonald, will record a CD of my orchestral music, in the New Auditorium of the RSNO Centre at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
The chosen works are the Violin Concerto: Islandscape, with soloist Tai Murray; the Flute Concerto: Ailein Duinn: Lament for Dark-Haired Allan, with RSNO principal flautist Katherine Bryan; Byzantium for orchestra; and Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, with Claire Booth (soprano) and Michael Mofidian (bass-baritone).
The recordings will appear on the RSNO’s own CD label, due to release its first recordings in the autumn of 2026.
(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 soloist was Tai Murray (photo above), with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård.
To hear the recording of the performance, please click on the Listen menu above.
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.
(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 drawn from my substantial archive, 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 composing or writing activities, please contact me at malcolmhayes@btinternet.com.
Glasgow, Scotland
June 2026