Stephen Johnson is a critic and writer for BBC Music Magazine, with work also published in The Independent, The Guardian and Gramophone. He is a regular contributor on BBC Radio 3, 4 and the World Service, and has presented programmes and documentaries on Bruckner, Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams. He has also written books on music, including Bruckner Remembered (Faber, 1999), The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910 (Faber, 2020) and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (Notting Hill Editions, 2020). Johnson's musical life began as a cellist at school in Manchester, before he went on to study composition under Alexander Goehr at Leeds University and subsequently undertaking postgraduate study at Manchester University, focusing on Shostakovich's String Quartets.
