Alistair Hinton

Career and works

Hinton began studying music at the age of 12; with the advice of Benjamin Britten, he studied at the Royal College of Music, where Humphrey Searle was among his teachers. Although he began composing at an early age, he later destroyed most of his pre-1985 output.

Hinton's Op. 1 was a piano sonata (1962), now partly lost. His other compositions include sonatas, variations and other works for piano, a violin concerto (dedicated to Jane Manning), songs (amongst them settings of Rabindranath Tagore, Hinton's Opp. 9 and 12), works for the organ, a string quintet (for two violins, viola, cello, double-bass and soprano, and lasting for 2 hrs 45 mins in performance), and a Sinfonietta. They include homages to Karol Szymanowski (Szymanowski-Etiud, Op. 32, for 18 wind instruments), Richard Strauss (Passeggiata Straussiana, for euphonium and piano, Op. 39), and Charles-Valentin Alkan in the Piano Sonata no. 5, which has a substantial passage marked "Alkanique". The latter influenced Marc-André Hamelin in composing his own Étude no. 4.

Amongst those who have performed and recorded Hinton's works are Donna Amato, Jonathan Powell, Yonty Solomon and Kevin Bowyer. Information on his works, together with a listing and discography, may be found at http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/hinton/scores.php .

Sorabji

In 1969 Hinton came across a copy of the four-hour Opus clavicembalisticum of the reclusive composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988), which greatly impressed him. In 1976 he persuaded the composer to relax the ban he had placed on unauthorised performance of his music in the 1930s. Hinton subsequently founded the Sorabji Archive, which publishes Sorabji's writings and compositions and maintains a collection of his manuscripts and archival materials; he remains its curator. Hinton contributed two chapters to the 1992 book, Sorabji: A Critical Celebration. He was the dedicatee of eight works by Sorabji, and was the sole heir of his oeuvre.