Prima Facie Records

Piano Music (PFCD007) £12.50/£17.50

By Anthony Gilbert

Little Piano Pieces (1971-3)
Elegy for piano (1961)
Papillon Postcards (2005)
Sonata No. 1 (1961-2)
Sonata No.2 for piano 4h (1966-7)
Piano Sonata No 3 (2001)*

About this album

"I cannot claim to be a pianist now, my keyboard studies having been chiefly for the purpose of composing. The piano is nevertheless one of my three favourite instruments, one for which I tend to write music responding to sudden powerful artistic or natural experiences. All these works are responses of that order: Sonata 2, for instance, was engendered by a remarkable concert given by Sitar player Ustad Vilayat Khan in London, after which I was able to spend much of the night talking to him about the techniques of Hindustani classical music, an experience which opened my mental windows onto a whole new musical landscape. The Little Piano Pieces grew out of a hearing of some of Milhaud’s chamber music: pieces could be played separately or simultaneously. This seemed a sufficiently wild and liberating idea for me to try the same when commissioned by John Manduell to write a piano quintet for the ensemble in residence at Lancaster University, where I was Granada Fellow. The musicians then were the Sartori Quartet led by the late Christopher Rowland and pianist Jan Cap, who gave numerous performances of the work, separately and together. My gratitude to Richard Casey and Ian Buckle for courageously initiating this recording project, of such deeply personal works, can never be sufficiently expressed."
Anthony Gilbert

Review

"Gilbert (1934) is a composer of striking inventiveness and probity... and this compilation of his works for solo and four-hand piano makes an arresting sequence. Casey plays... with outstanding flair and obvious sympathy."
Sunday Times 02/12/12

Credits

Piano music performed by Richard Casey and Ian Buckle
Recorded at RNCM, 21 / 22 December 2009
*Recorded at Peel Hall, Salford, 21 August 2010

The producers are grateful for grants from The RVW Trust and The Holst Foundation

ANTHONY GILBERT (1934-2023) was born in London in 1934. Initially working as clerk-translator and interpreter, he first studied piano at Trinity College of Music under Denis Holloway, then took up serious composition in his early twenties, studying first with Mátyás Seiber, then with Anthony Milner and Alexander Goehr at Morley College, London, and later with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. He first attracted public attention in the 1960s with a series of brilliant virtuoso works for small ensembles, performed in the international festivals.

Throughout his professional life, Gilbert was closely involved in the promotion of performances of new music, with several long periods on the committees of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, the ICA Music Section, the British and Sydney Sections of the ISCM and the New Music Panel of North West Arts. He was Founder Member, Chairman and Artistic Director of New Music Forum, Manchester, and Founder and Artistic Director of AKANTHOS, the new music ensemble of the RNCM.