The story of controversial German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s visit to Huddersfield will be told this week.

And it promises to be a “warts and all” trip down Memory Lane.

Poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan will relive the visit, which took place in 1988, on Radio Four on Thursday.

The avant-garde composer staged a performance in Huddersfield Town Hall when he was a guest composer for the prestigious Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Contributors to the show include writer and broadcaster Robert Worby, and McMillan says the story, on at 11.30am on November 19, is less about Stockhausen, and more about Huddersfield.

McMillan finds out what happened when the composer’s visit to the Festival nearly ended in disaster.

Poet Ian McMillan

A Radio 4 spokesman said: “This super star of the avant garde, who featured on the front cover of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album, had been shocking audiences since the 1950’s with his dazzling compositions.

“He was lured to the quiet West Riding mill town for its 10th anniversary festival, because the South Bank in London couldn’t provide the rehearsal time and a suitable venue for his composition, Sternklang or ‘Star Sound’.

“The Festival Director Richard Steinitz had promised him the cavernous Huddersfield Town Hall for the performance, which was turned into an indoor park for the occasion, complete with Christmas trees and artificial turf.

“But while setting up for a concert in the Hall, part of the ceiling fell onto Stockhausen’s mixing desk and narrowly missed injuring the great man himself”.

Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen rehearsing in Cannon Hill Park

The spokesman added: “During his visit Stockhausen developed a taste for the local curry house, bought ear plugs to get to sleep in the railway hotel and invited local people to get ready for ‘visitors from outer-space’.

“His reputation had gone before him, and he didn’t disappoint those who were lucky enough to be there”.

Steinitz, Technical Manager Steve Taylor, musician Peter Britton who trained the student performers, and Jim Pywell who was a music student at the Polytechnic at the time, all feature in Thuirsday’s show.