Richard Henry Walthew

Richard Henry Walthew, also known as Richard H. Walthew (4 November 1872 – 14 November 1951) was an English composer and pianist.

Richard Henry Walthew was born in Islington in Middlesex, the only son of Richard Frederick Walthew and his wife, Emily the daughter of Charles Jeffreys Esq. He was a pupil of Hubert Parry for four years at the Royal College of Music (1890–1894). He taught the opera class at the Guildhall School of Music and from 1907 was Professor of Music at The Queen's College, Oxford.[1]

Walthew 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 lectures were published by Boosey and Co. in 1909. In the article on Walthew in Cobbett's Cyclopaedic Survey of Chamber Music (1929), Thomas Dunhill recorded his admiration for the refined, lyrical and unostentatious style of Walthew's writing, the suitability of his compositions for amateur performance, his special aptitude for writing for the piano and his energetic devotion to chamber music.

Walthew's early works were larger scale choral and orchestral pieces such as the Clarinet and Piano Concertos[2] and the Aladdin overture (1899). His "somewhat Gilbertian" one act operetta was composed in 1900 and received many performances, including a revival in the early 1930s with the BBC Theatre Orchestra conducted by John Ansell.[3]

But it was with chamber music that he made the greatest impression. His String Quartet in E major, his Mosaic in Ten Pieces for clarinet and piano, and his Trio in C minor for clarinet, violin and piano were all played at a South Place concert on Sunday 25 November 1900.[4] The Mosaic pieces were later taken up by Lionel Tertis, swapping clarinet for viola, and in 1943 Walthew provided an orchestrated version for Tertis, intended for (but in the end not played at) the 1943 Proms. (This version was recorded by Dutton Epoch in 2016.)[5] His most successful chamber work was the Phantasy Quintet for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Musicians, dedicated to Walter Cobbett and published by Stainer and Bell in 1912. This was later revived by the composer at the marathon one thousandth South Place Sunday Concert in February 1927.[6] Among his educational piano works, the short piece "Sun and Shade" was chosen as one of ten test pieces for the Daily Express national piano playing competition in 1928, and recorded as a demonstration by William Murdoch.[7][8] The Prelude and Fugue (1945), originally written for strings, later transcribed for two clarinets and bassoon, has been reissued in recent times and recorded by The Trio Pleyel.[9]

Walthew died, aged 79, in East Preston, West Sussex. His son Richard Sidney Walthew also played the clarinet at many South Place concerts and went on to become principal clarinet of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in the 1930s, as well as principal clarinet of the BBC Midland Orchestra.[10] His grandson John Walthew is also a clarinettist.[11]