Brian Easdale

[Recorddude]

I hope everyone here has watched the beautiful movie "The Red Shoes" and heard the score by the British composer Brian Easdale.
I am trying to find the score and parts for his Concerto Lirico for piano and orchestra, which was performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1955 and not since. In anticipation of setting up a future performance and recording I have googled myself silly with no luck so far.

I have even tried searching for his grandchildren to see if they had the music but have not been successful either.
Any help you folks (particularly those in England) can provide would be greatly appreciated.

BTW his great niece, the author Celia Robertson wrote about the life of Brian's sister in a fascinating book called "Who's Sophie". I have not had much success yet in getting in contact with her to see if she can help find this music.

[Gareth Vaughan]

A visit to the Music Portal "Zinfonia" reveals a "Piano Concerto" by Brian Easdale supposedly published by Novello, but the entry has tbc by it, which means it is not confirmed. Novello do not list it on their website, but this does not necessarily mean it doesn't exist. Some years ago Associated Music Publishers told me a quantity of Easdale's music had been located and was in the process of being catalogued [my experience of music publishers is such that it would not surprise me if (a) this information was incorrect, or (b) it might take about 20 years for the "cataloguing" to take place!] Using Zinfonia, however, I have put in a request for the performance material (which goes via Wise Music Group) and will await further information. Fingers crossed.

[Recorddude]

Thanks Gareth:

I did see a reference to the concerto lirico being at Novello but couldn't find it on their website. They had a couple of other Easdale pieces. Also there is some confusion about a rather famous arrangement he made of Britten's piano concerto for two pianos.

 A couple of years ago, before the pandemic, I started looking and had some information that the family was squabbling over the rights to his music. It made me wonder whether they had the manuscripts.

Thanks for looking into it I didn't know about Zinfonia--good to know.

Fingers are crossed.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Zinfonia is an absolutely essential portal for obtaining performance materials for hire across a whole spectrum of music publishers. You need to set up an account but it doesn't cost anything to do so. Interesting about the family squabbles - I wonder if they have any of his manuscripts and are sitting on them...