Peter Charles Arthur Wishart was born in the village of Crowborough, Sussex (also birthplace to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). He described himself as being 'of Scottish descent and English upbringing' and began his education at Bryanston School, Dorset. His undergraduate studies at Birmingham University under Victor Hely-Hutchinson led to a professorship there and subsequently to positions at Kings College London, the Birmingham School of Music (now the Birmingham Conservatoire), the Guildhall School of Music and finally a professorship at the University of Reading in 1977. His memory endures sturdily, not solely through his music and scholarship, but through the activities of his third wife, the singer Maureen Lehane Wishart. She founded an annual festival in his name, which continued for some fourteen years before developing into the highly successful Jackdaws Educational Trust in 1993, based at their idyllic home in Great Elm, Somerset.

Peter Wishart drew inspiration from a plethora of disparate and discrete sources. Hence it is important to set his output in the context of vibrant, if somewhat tumultuous times. Indeed, not all commentators on the contemporary music scene resonated with equal fervor. In 1933 Constant Lambert, in his pivotal if mildly cynical Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline, came down particularly hard on Stravinsky, whom he dismissed as 'a decorator, not an architect', labeling his Neoclassical compositions 'not so much music as renowned impersonations of music.' Furthermore, writing at the end of his life from Los Angeles in 1949, Arnold Schoenberg observed that American music was in the first instance characterised by ennui and a 'commercial racket'. But he then conceded that 'there is a great activity on the part of American composers, la Boulanger's pupils, the imitators of Stravinsky…they have taken over American musical life, lock, stock, and barrel'. Schoenberg was obliquely referencing Nadia Boulanger, a key figure in the revitalisation of renaissance and baroque performance during the first half of the century and mentor to a bewildering diversity of talent. Most notable among Boulanger's pupils were Americans Aaron Copland, Eliot Carter, Philip Glass, Virgil Thompson and Walter Piston, but also Frenchman Jean Français and Englishmen Lennox Berkeley and Peter Wishart, who both completed their studies with her in Paris.

A critic once quipped that the music of one Boulanger pupil amounted to no more than 'stale buns from the boulangerie' - be reassured; he was not referring to Peter Wishart. Nevertheless, Neoclassical procedures may be said to have flowed to Wishart via Boulanger - and of course Wishart's music needs to be heard as a corollary of its time - although an overestimation of this strand of his musical inheritance tends to damage our appreciation of the composer's freshness and vitality. Wishart's piquant harmonies, tightly argued structures and consistently innovative ideas undoubtedly place his piano pieces on a par with works by better-celebrated British post-war composers. His attention to detail is sometimes startling, yet ultimately rewarding - unlike Stravinsky there is no evidence of direct pastiche or pedantry in his enthusiasm for classical and pre-classical forms (Stravinsky, of course, aligning himself more closely to Mozart than to Bach). Nor does the composer's technical facility ever become an end in itself. While Wishart engaged with Bach, Handel and Purcell as easily as he did with Rossini, his practical skills as accompanist, conductor, continuo player and editor fed just as importantly into his musical life. Indeed, he contributed articles to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and with his wife Maureen edited three volumes of realisations of Purcell songs. Other publications include an influential textbook on harmony and Messiah Ornamented, a fascinating study in vocal ornamentation, pertinent reading for any singer preparing solo numbers from Handel's masterpiece. Wishart's appetite for literature (musical and nonmusical) knew no bounds - he was in the habit of jotting down his thoughts on the subject of poems by Robert Graves and others, and these undoubtedly fed into his compositional vocabulary. An important account of Wishart's songs, The Songs of Peter Wishart, is to be found in Aspects of British Song, ed. B.B. Daubeney, London, 1992, written by his close friend Don Roberts.

Wishart's appetite for unconventional combinations is perhaps best exemplified by his Aquarelles Quartet for saxophones and the Profane Concerto, scored for harpsichord, flute and oboe, while his consummate ease in setting the human voice is revealed in his many songs, choral works and five operas: Two in the Bush, The Captive, The Clandestine Marriage, Clytemnestra and The Lady of the Inn. The two symphonies, Concerto for Orchestra (written during the Hungarian Uprising), two violin concertos and Concerto for Violin, Woodwind and Brass demonstrate a visceral affinity for instrumental writing and a penchant for restrained grandeur.Alleluya, a new work is come on hand(on Priory, Hyperion, Helios and ASV) and two British Music Society releases sustain our interest in a composer with a striking capacity for poetry, humour, rhythmic ingenuity and flair for the unexpected. Recordings are still available of his Third Quartet (TREM102-2) and the English motet Jesu, dulcis memoria (REGCD106). The Second Symphony was performed by the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall and there have been many radio broadcasts of other works, including the first two operas. Wishart also composed incidental music for several plays, his finest being an enchanting score for the Royal Shakespeare Company's Comedy of Errors.

Wishart's Piano Concerto Op.32 of 1958 is also in need of resuscitation. It was written as a wedding present for his friend Alexander Kelly (formerly Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music, London). Kelly quotes Wishart on the matter of its origin: 'I looked the nineteenth century concerto in the face, and passed on'. The work is in three concise movements and is typical in respect of Wishart's economy of orchestration, a satisfying blend of lyricism and classical form. Kelly gave the first performance of the Concerto in Birmingham in 1958. There exists too an ambitious yet unfinished (and presumed lost) work for piano, namely a Sonata for 6 Hands composed in 1947, and also an Invention for Harpsichord Op.65 composed in 1969, documented as lasting two minutes but with no further details available at the present time. Opheis Kai Klimakes Op.35 is by far the most substantial of only three completed works for piano composed by Peter Wishart. Of the others, his Partita in F sharp Op.10 is a comparatively telescoped four-movement work; it was published by OUP in 1951, the year following its composition, although for some time it fell into disrepair. The earliest of the three works, the Sonata for Piano Duet Op.5, written in 1949, is in two movements, Prelude and Variations - an austere, yet at times emotionally steeped work.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Peter Wishart's death. It seems fitting that a rejuvenated interest in his music - both as regards the availability of scores and recordings - should coincide with this point in time. My recording of the Complete Piano Works of Peter Wishart, with Allan Schiller (made for Priory Records in 2006, PRCD881), marks but a tiny step along the path to a proper estimation of the composer's keyboard music. Earlier this year Maureen Lehane Wishart approached me with a plan to produce a new recording on Priory for release later in the year, and this looks set to contain the Aubade (a five-movement work of great variety and power for flute and string quartet), the Clarinet Trio and some songs. Mark Tanner, March 2009