Our latest release in the series of the music of Sir Donald Francis is of his piano trio, Op.27 performed by the London Piano Trio, the sonata Eroica for solo violin, Op.29 played by soloist Robert Atchison, and the enchanting piano quartet, Op.12 with the Ormesby Ensemble. Sir Donald Francis Tovey, born on the 17th of July 1875, was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer and pianist. He is best known for his Essays in Musical Analysis, some of which were broadcast on the BBC. He was a highly respected concert pianist and played piano with the Joachim Quartet in a 1905 performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet. There is also a celebrated acoustic recording of Beethoven’s 10th Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 96 played by the violinist Adila Fachiri, with Tovey at the keyboard, made for the National Gramophonic Society during the early 1920s. He gained some moderate fame as a composer, having his works performed in Berlin and Vienna as well as London. He performed his own piano concerto under the conductorship of Henry Wood in 1903 and under Hans Richter in 1906. During this period he also contributed heavily to the music articles in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, writing a large portion of the content on music of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1914 he began to teach music at the University of Edinburgh and there he founded the Reid Orchestra. Tovey’s most productive period as a composer was from his time as an undergraduate at Balliol College through his career as a concert pianist until he became Reid professor of Music at Edinburgh University in 1914. Tovey made several editions of other composers’ music and in 1931 produced a completion of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge. Tovey was knighted in 1935. He died in 1940 in Edinburgh. Further Tovey recordings of his works for solo cello, double cello and cello and piano as well as his piano quintet will shortly be released on Guild Music.