Apologies for bumping this thread more than a decade since anyone last posted in it, I can confirm that the score of my second piano sonata, despite the appalling condition of the only available copy of its ms. (a badly faded photocopy of the original which, as I mentioned, was stolen long ago and has never been seen since), has recently been typeset and the work is due to receive its complete première in Århus, Denmark on 28 October this year; I estimate that the entire work plays for around 65 minutes.

Even more remarkably, the editor who typeset that score has even more recently prepared an equally splendid typeset edition of the ms of my string quintet (which is the topic of this thread), a mammoth task given its 170 minute duration.

Most of my scores have now been typeset and information about them will be found at http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/hinton/biography.php and other pages that can be linked to from there, as well as by writing to sorabji.archive@gmail.com .

Roberto, please! I know that he settled in Cambridge for his final years but he was Catalan!

Agreed. On this basis, we'll be in danger of having "Richard Bennett" or "Peter Davies" next!...

I have only just seen this, hence the delayed response for which all due apologies.

There is also Sean Vaughn Owen's oral biography which is likewise available at www.sorabji-archive.co.uk free of charge and, much earlier than either, Paul Rapoport's Sorabji: A Critical Celebration. There is other information on the website, of course.

Should you need further information, please do not hesitate to contact The Sorabji Archive at sorabji.archive@gmail.com .

A woefully underrated composer. Toccata Classics are recording all of his piano concertos.

Should one suppose that, as no recent symphonies have been mentioned, English composers who still contribute to the medium no longer write "Second-Tier" examples?...

My attention has just been drawn to the following post on the Sorabji Archive website's forum today:

The new edition of International Piano contains a very nice review of Alistair's op.49, reviewed by Murray McLachlan. I am on a train right now, but will try to type it all now on my phone.... I will have to edit it later to put in accents etc....

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Alistair Hinton is a prolific composer perhaps best known for his advocacy of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji's fascinating, complex and often beautiful music (see www.sorabji-archive.co.uk). The title of this exquisite but challenging miniature by Hinton may refer to Gabriel Fauré's famous song, but in fact the piece is a musical commentary on another song - the fifth from Rachmaninov's Six Romances Op 58 [sic]. What we have here is far from the literal, carefully crafted Earl Wild transcription. In contrast, Hinton uses the Rachmaninov as a starting point for extraordinary colours, polyrhythms, filigree textures and exotic pitch formations that perhaps owe more to the florid writing of certain scores by Godowsky and Sorabji than to Fauré and Rachmaninov.

Using a three-stave layout, this 64-bar miniature is not for the fainthearted - the challenges are considerable. Indeed, in places it seems as though two performers would be needed to cope with the demands (the climax, which briefly reaches triple fortissimo in bar 42, is especially challenging). The vast majority of the piece is sketched at a sub-piano dynamic level, with lots of tactile-friendly albeit virtuosic double-note writing in 16th and 32nd notes. But the broad melodic line remains intact throughout, providing a musical thread for both listener and performer alike. This is a notable contribution to the repertoire in the tradition of Busoni, Godowsky and Ronald Stevenson. Fascinating, ravishing and innovatively pianistic writing for connoisseurs to savour.
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Naturally, I'm delighted to see this. Perhaps the reviewer might play it! It will receive its UK première next month in Oxford at the hands of Jonathan Powell.

Founded only some 18 months ago in Japan, Muse Press publishes piano music, mainly transcriptions, some of them recent, in both paper and .pdf format; these should be of interest to pianist members here and everyone interested in piano repertoire, whom I commend to visit
https://muse-press.com/en/
https://muse-press.com/en/product-category/sheet-music/
https://muse-press.com/en/product-category/pdf-musici-en/

What a fantastic programme!

Talented in different ways. Svetlanov was a fine pianist and recorded the Medtner violin and piano sonatas whose parts are anything but "accompaniments"; he also gave one of the finest performances of Elgar's Second Symphony that it's ever been my good fortune to hear.

Yes, a very sad loss indeed; there seemed to be little or no repertoire to which he couldn't bring new insights. A remerkable conductor in every way!

There's no arguing with you estimation of David Matthews here, although it does seem as though England now has a clutch of composers keeping the symphony alive; a quick browse of the excellent Toccata Classics label will, for example, reveal some by composers such as Rodney Newton, Steve Elcock and David Hackbridge Johnson, the last of whom has actually written more symphonies that David Matthews has yet done!

One might perhaps be forgiven for concluding from this strange statement that St. Matthew was either the CEO of the UK financial services regulator or its Chancellor of the Exchequer or its head of Department of Work and Pensions. In all seriousness, though, as the phrase sounds as though it means the very opposite of what it ought to mean, either something vital has been lost in translation of St. Matthew was the head of the aforementioned regulator's Register team. If Bach had ever pondered this, it's a wonder that He nevertheless went ahead and wrote the St. Matthew Passion (although, like tens of millions of other people, I'm very glad indeed that he did!)...

But I digress...

There's also the (until recently) very much unsung English composer of several piano concertos Roger Sacheverell Coke (pronounced "Cook") which undoubtedly fit the bill here.

While on the subject of English composers, another whose one all too rarely performed piano concerto is not without Rachmaninoff influence (although perhaps rather more notably that of Shostakovich and of Prokofiev) was a pianist who knew all of those Russian concertos intimately - John Ogdon; as far as I know, Peter Donohoe's the only pianist other than the composer to have performed it but he's not played it for years; this is quite a shame, as it's one of John's more successful works and would, I believe, be quite a wow with audiences.

One of his finest works, without doubt, although there's much that's well worth exploring in his richly varied output. His muscal gifts in general terms were likewise varied and he retained an engaging genuine modesty about his achievements. Being a jazz pianist and (later also) singer, a writer of symphonies, short choral pieces and piano music for young pianists, a distinguished movie composer and Boulez's first (and indeed possibly only) private student must have taken quite some doing, yet he seemed to take it all in his stride as though those are the kind of thing that you do as a musician. As a young pianist, he played for Jane Manning's BBC audition. He was never patronising about his movie work although he was at times at pains to point out that that was one department and concert work was another; he'd call the form "journalism"!There's a wonderfuil story about him when he used, on visits to London in later life, play the occasional Pizza Express Dean Street gig with jazz singers Marian Montgomery and (later) Claire Martin; he'd just finished a session with one of them and sat down for some supper when he heard a waiter saying "good evening, Sir Richard - lovely to see you again!), whereupon RRB turned around to see who it was (possibly wondering if it might be Richard Attenborough)...