William Manchester

The nightmares began for William Manchester 23 years after WW II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of a battle-weary youth (himself), "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms."

It speaks to the failure of medieval Europe, writes popular historian William Manchester, that "in the year 1500, after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the continent." …

At the beginning of the twentieth century the American William Humphreys Dayas (1864-1903) was the leading professor of piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was an important figure: he studied with Liszt, was friends with Busoni and became a major pedagogue, holding teaching posts in Helsinki, Wiesbaden and Cologne before he came to Manchester in 1895. Although Dayas left only a handful of compositions, two of them are major organ sonatas - passionate, Lisztian works that have remained completely unknown until now. Dayas also arranged for organ the Thème varié for piano four hands by another forgotten American composer, Arthur H. Bird (1856-1923), a further important addition to the late-Romantic organ repertoire. Dr Jan Lehtola is one the most successful and progressive Finnish organists of his generation. He has appeared with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Lahti Symphony, Tampere Philharmonic and Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestras and the St Michael Strings.