Geoffrey presses the right keys

92 year old OB Geoffrey Allen writes from Australia, where he emigrated to in the 1950s following his time at Brentwood then Oxford University, with the news that all 18 of his piano sonatas are soon to be recorded and issued on 2-CD sets.

Geoffrey has had a great deal of influence in the Australian music world since retiring in 1992, when he founded The Keys Press, which functioned to promote and publish Australian music. A very accomplished composer, his sonatas stretch from the first, composed in 1959  and later revised, to number 17 completed in April of this year plus a rhapsodic piece from 2003 titled ‘Rhapzonata’.

The recordings will take place at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester later this month, with Murray McLachlan, one of Britain’s most brilliant and busy pianists on the ivories.

The two sets will be released in the first half of 2020 on the Métier label.