“They are a labour of love,” says Gonville & Caius College Fellow Professor Robin Holloway, referring to his many arrangements and orchestrations of music from the past, ranging from Bach, via Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, to include Franck, Fauré, Debussy, and sing-cycles by Janáček and Britten.

“When I am blocked or go dry writing my own original pieces, I find liberation, relief, sustenance, in turning to ventures like these. They keep the sap flowing,” he says.

As shown in a new CD – Brahms by Arrangement – on which The BBC Symphony Orchestra has recorded three interconnected works: Schumann's lovely Canons (originally for pedal-piano); Brahms’s early Variations (for piano-duet) on a Schumann theme; and, the major item, transforming Brahms’s problematic Piano Quintet into the Symphony that Robin is convinced it is trying to be.

This is their first appearance on disc. The Canons (2011) have been broadcast before; the Symphony (2008) has been performed in Norway, Sweden, and Finland (not always satisfactorily – one conductor insisted that the exuberant horn-parts be curbed – they are restored in all their glory on this new record); the Variations (2016) make their first appearance.

When not transforming other composers’ music or trying to write his own (or merely looking out of the window) Robin has completed a book, Music’s Empire, a personal view, aimed at the lover of music who wants to know a little more; completely unacademic, a kind of Open Sesame to the treasures of Western music from c.600 to the present day. Quite a saga: it came out at some 600,000 words!

Robin has recently, at the publisher's urging, managed to cut it down by about half.

“It’s like taking hammer and chisel to a finished sculpture,” he says. “But it had to be done, and has been.”

Read a review of Brahms By Arrangement Vol Two: Orchestrations by Robin Holloway in The Guardian: Brahms By Arrangement Vol Two: Orchestrations by Robin Holloway review – dialogue with the past brings present benefits | Classical music | The Guardian