Wartime Pianist Remembered

The New Zealand-born pianist Colin Horsley, who was among the last links to the era of British music-making dominated by Sir Henry Wood, has died on the Isle of Man. He was 92. “From his birthplace of Wanganui, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music aged 18,” Jeremy Nicholas writes for Gramophone magazine. “His teachers included the Busoni pupil Herbert Fryer, Angus Morrison, Tobias Matthay and Irene Scharrer. The least flamboyant of virtuosi, Horsley’s qualities were routinely described as ‘refined’, ‘nuanced’, ‘sensitive’, ‘polished’ and, occasionally, ‘reticent’. The 1950s and ‘60s were his heyday. A disc of his early solo recordings, including 78s of Liszt, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski and Prokofiev, is shortly to be released on the New Zealand Atoll label.” In the Guardian, Peter Dickinson writes: “Horsley’s recordings show that he had an impeccable finger technique and complete command of Berkeley’s invariably pianistic but sometimes taxing passage-work. In the concert hall Horsley clocked up some 90 performances of the Preludes. He was a visiting professor at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (1964-80) and at the Royal College of Music (1965-90). He was appointed OBE in 1963.”

Colin Horsley: April 23 1920 – July 28 2012