London, Royal Academy of Music: Stephen Dodgson at 80

Stephen Dodgson (born in London, 1924) is not so much a neglected composer as a quintessentially English one, with a quizzical sense of humour, who has never really courted a mass audience. He is often described as ‘a performer's composer’, responding to commissions from colleagues and prominent artists connected with the Royal College of Music, where he taught harmony to, among others, guitarist John Williams back in the 1950s. His connexion also with Julian Bream led to his lifelong love-affair with the guitar, despite the fact that Dodgson never played the instrument himself. His resulting two Guitar Concertos (1959 and 1972) gained instant international recognition. At Dodgson's 80th Birthday celebration concert at the Royal Academy of Music on 29 February, Head of Guitar Studies Michael Lewin said in his introduction that: ‘no single composer who is a non-guitarist has contributed in such a major way to the guitar repertoire, and in such varied genres’.