Walter Leigh - * Overture, Agincourt • Concertino for Harpsichord • Music for String Orchestra • A Midsummer Night's Dream Suite • The Frogs • * Jolly Roger Overture

Trevor Pinnock, harpsichord
London Philharmonic Orchestra
* New Philharmonia Orchestra
Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor

Label: Lyrita
Copyright: 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England
Catalogue number: SRCD.289
UPC/EAN: 5020926028921
Format: CD
Analogue / Digital recording: ADD
Number of discs: 1
Total playing time: 51.33
Price: £ 14.99 (+ postage & packing)

Track 1: Recorded at Walthamstow, 31 August 1975
Tracks 2 - 19: Recorded at Kingsway Hall, 8 March 1980, Producer: Andrew Cornall, Engineer: Kenneth Wilkinson, John Pellowe
Track 20: Recorded at Walthamstow, 29 August 1975

Walter Leigh, born in 1905 and killed in action near Tobruk in 1942, was a craftsman-composer of a sort commoner in the 18th than in the 20th century. Almost all his music was written for immediate use. Like Haydn, he would not have dreamed of fulfilling a commission without ascertaining the probable capabilities of his performers. He could plug in to any number of different idioms according to the needs of the occasion. He seems to have been little concerned with self-expression, or the desire to write his own biography in music. His own character emerges by the way as we listen to the music, though his versatility and powers of adaptation were so great that it is not easy to guess who the real Walter Leigh was, or where, but for his tragically early death, his remarkable talents might have taken him.