Christopher Palmer

Admirers of the late Christopher Palmer will be grateful to you for the obituary notice in April (page 13). It would have been difficult to have covered more aspects of his musical life than was done in so short an article, but lovers of George Dyson's music will feel disappointment at the omission of any reference to Mr Palmer's advocacy of that unjustly neglected composer's music. His two books on Dyson and his many sleeve- and booklet-notes (to which you so justly refer) which accompanied Dyson discs bear witness to his enthusiasm for the man and the music.

Dyson's Violin Concerto was recorded last November and is due for imminent release by Chandos. It was a very great pity that Palmer was too ill to attend the recording sessions, and more so that he was unable to hear a performance on disc of a work which he championed at every opportunity.

Alan Russell

Ashtead, Surrey ... more

I was very sad to hear of the death of Christopher Palmer. It is because I feel so strongly about his work that I feel compelled to write this letter.

His notes on record sleeves were always well researched and eloquently written. His book called The Composer in Hollywood (Marion Boyars: 1990) is also a testament to his love of the music of the cinema. In particular his championing of the music of Sir William Walton and MiklOs

ROzsa is a testimony to the passion he felt for an era that has regrettably passed.

I know of no other writer, musician, broadcaster and arranger who is cast in the same mould as he was. The wonderful arrangements of Walton's music, the three Shakespeare Scenarios, Henry V, Richard III and Hamlet, also the suites Christopher Columbus, A Wartime

Sketchbook, Major Barbara, not to mention a truly superb orchestral arrangement of a fourmovement suite culled from Walton's Troilus and Cressida.

I did in fact actually meet Christopher Palmer on the occasion of the first broadcast performance of the suite from Troilus and Cressida. It was at a pre-Prom lecture given at Imperial College. He was with Lady Walton. After the lecture the audience had the opportunity of casual conversation. I rather tactlessly asked Palmer if MiklOs ROzsa was still alive and composing: you must remember that Lady Walton was standing next to Palmer, engaged in another conversation. Palmer exercised wonderful diplomacy by drawing comparisons between Walton and ROzsa and thereby steered the conversation back to Walton.

It is true that Palmer loved the music of many composers, particularly of this century. I feel that if it weren't for his devoted efforts much wonderful music would never have been recorded. It is my opinion that he stood for a kind of romanticism that is now regarded perhaps as decadent.

D. J. Avey

Chatham, Kent