Piano trio movement: "in memoriam G.B."



G.B. was Geoffrey Buckley, my piano teacher from university days, and my friend since. A tremendous virtuoso, he gave many concerts during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s in Weymouth and Dorchester. He performed in the Mozart bicentennial year all the late concertos with my Quidlibet Sinfonia, at the rate of about one each month! Over the years we did many more concertos, including Rachmaninov no.2, and Beethoven no's 1, 4 and 5.

I penned this movement to be played at Geoffrey's funeral at Llantilio Crossenny, but it was too difficult to perform on a single quick rehearsal. This performance is by Peter Oakes, Russell Dawson and Sally Stell, recorded in my absence at the Thomas Hardye School - there is a bit of a hum/buzz on the recording that I cannot remove, despite my best efforts. There was a second performance of the music - this time as part of one of the Trio's lunchtime recitals in the Museum. In one of those unfortunate set of circumstances I was uninformed of this concert - each member of the Trio assumed that I knew about it - so whilst my trio was premiered by them in the Museum I was at home eating a sandwich. By chance I checked my e-mail at around 1.20 to find one from the hospital radio team asking if I minded them recording the concert. Although I made my way as fast as possible to the remainder of the concert, my piece had already been performed, so [for the second time] events conspired to prevent me from hearing the music live.... this time in a bizarre set of circumstances.