Donald Macleod explores the early life and work of Viennese-born composer Hans Gal. Although he learned very little music at school, Gal was encouraged in his vocation by his aunt Jenny. By the time of WW1, when he was in his early 20s, he had made a promising start as a composer: he'd completed an opera and a symphony - which won him the Austrian State Prize for Composition. But Gal was a very self-critical young man, with a seriousness of purpose, and he allowed very little of these early works to be published. And, as Hans Gal expert Kenneth Woods explains, he didn't allow his service in the war to stem the flow of his compositions. Show less