Julian Anderson in conversation

The British composer, 50 years old in 2017, had a new work, Incantesimi, premiered at the 2016 BBC Proms by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, a clear sign of the composer’s status in the musical world. Alexandra Coghlan, in The Independent, wrote that ‘The effect is of a benign phantasmagoria – gorgeously and compellingly strange’. The audience, as so often with Anderson’s music, responded with real warmth; and that’s increasingly the case. He writes music that challenges but also seduces.