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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
The Concerto for Orchestra has probably been the most performed of Roberto Gerhard's works since its triumphant première at the 1965 Cheltenham Festival. Yet it is one of the most difficult for the listener to come to terms with, owing in part to its apparent ‘athematicism’. Any thematic aspect seems at first totally subordinated to the surface play of extreme textural and colouristic invention.
1 ‘Symphony No.l, Introduction by the composer’: notes included in the sleeve insert for HMV ASD 613, the first issue in the Gulbenkian Foundation ‘Music Today’ series, released 1965.
2 Gerhard, Roberto, ‘Tonality in Twelve-Tone Music’, in The Score, No.6 1952, p.34 Google Scholar.
3 The ritornello aspect was noted as early as 1968 by John McCabe in his notes to the Argo recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Norman Del Mar (ZRG 553): ‘The form of the whole work might be seen as a gigantic rondo, in which the main ritornello “theme” is the opening wind and string flourishes…’