Prelude & Fugue

The English composer and pianist Richard Henry Walthew was a pupil of Parrys for four years at the Royal College of Music. He had a natural affinity for chamber music and a long association with the South Place Sunday Concert series for which he wrote programme notes. He conducted the orchestra there and it was also where much of his chamber music was played. He also gave a series of lectures on the history and development of chamber music there; these were published by Boosey and Co. in 1909. He played at many of these concerts as did his son the clarinettist, Richard Sidney Walthew. In the article on Walthew in Cobbetts Cyclopaedic Survey of Chamber Music (1929), Thomas Dunhill recorded his admiration for the refined, lyrical and unostentatious style of Walthews writing, the suitability of his compositions for amateur performance, his special aptitude for writing for the piano and his energetic devotion to chamber music.