<<  -- 5 --  Carolyn Nott    A HERMIT AT HEART

At eighty, Gerard shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, his creative impulse is stronger than ever. New works include Gaudiana, a substantial set of Symphonic Studies for large orchestra and a tribute to the extraordinary architecture of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, Spain; a Trio for Clarinet Cello and Piano to be premièred at the Tucson Festival in March 2004; and Six Songs of William Blake, written to a commission from the Rawsthorne Society. For the latter work, he used some of the same poems and musical material from a discarded earlier song-cycle to poems of William Blake, which he wrote in 1955 for Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten.

As I write, Gerard is finishing a String Quartet to be premièred in 2004 by the Chilingirian Quartet. It is actually his third work in the genre, but the first two have been withdrawn by Gerard along with many of his other early works. There is an interesting history attached to his first String Quartet, written in 1943 when he was still in the RAF. It was dedicated to HM Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who lived in exile in England during the Second World War, and the work was first performed in the presence of Her Majesty in London by the Hirsch String Quartet, who played it subsequently at many of their concerts. Gerard's Second String Quartet, written in 1946, was a ten-minute piece, composed in response to competition guidelines that required it to be a prelude to Bartok's Third String Quartet. It was performed by both the Dutch Sweelinck Quartet and the Hungarian Quartet before Gerard withdrew the work and subsequently used some of its material for his chamber orchestral work Variants in 1970.

Still very much to the fore at eighty is Gerard's sense of fun, along with his capacity to enjoy life, whether it's his love of reading, good food, travel, exploring new things, and our animals. He enjoys listening to music by younger composers and believes it is now their turn to be given vital opportunities. Today, mercifully free of former preoccupations with prevailing musical fashions, Gerard seems to be at his prime, confident in his style, and ready to go on composing new music for at least twenty more years.