Gervase De Peyer

Gervase de Peyer entered the digital realm without hesitation once the Internet arrived, even though his performing career already spanned nearly fifty years. Skilled at drawing attention to his own achievements, he created an elaborate personal site asserting that he was "the world's most recorded clarinetist." His actual catalog of recordings proves both enormous in scope and varied in content, earning acclaim that extends well past any online self-promotion. Few classical libraries could be considered complete without at least some of his discs, and the body of work he produced with the Melos Ensemble for EMI from 1960 to 1973 might by itself furnish the foundation for such a library.

Born into a family of musicians with Swiss roots, he maintained an unbroken focus on the clarinet except during the two years of British national service he completed in 1944 and 1945. Toward the end of the 1940s he began professional engagements with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Beecham and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan, Guido Cantelli, and Otto Klemperer. He served as principal clarinetist for the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Chamber Orchestra, and the London Mozart Players, performing music by Finzi, Busoni, Nielsen, Seiber, Weber, and Mozart. In 1949 the Arts Council of Great Britain underwrote a series of national solo tours that strengthened the conditions for forming the Melos Ensemble, a group of roughly a dozen musicians that included pianist Viola Tunnard and specialized in the repertoire for larger chamber ensembles, much of which had been overlooked. The ensemble forged close ties with leading composers of the period, Benjamin Britten foremost among them, while pursuing a wide range of other projects as well.

When the London Symphony Orchestra’s music director appointed him principal clarinetist in 1956, the position endured for seventeen years and established de Peyer’s stature across Britain and Europe. He introduced Francis Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata to London audiences in 1964. Paul Hindemith and Aaron Copland each selected him as soloist for tours on which they conducted their own clarinet concertos. He continued to travel widely with the standard concerto repertoire and, alongside the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Pierre Boulez, recorded Debussy’s Rhapsody for saxophone and orchestra for Columbia Records. As a founding member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, he performed across the United States and appeared repeatedly on the Live from Lincoln Center television broadcasts.

Working in direct partnership with composers, de Peyer has introduced numerous new works, among them concertos by Arnold Cooke, Berthold Goldschmidt, Joseph Horovitz, Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias, and Edwin Roxburgh, as well as Thea Musgrave’s Peripatetic Concerto, whose solo part requires the clarinetist to move between different sections of the orchestra. In 1992 he established the Melos Sinfonia of Washington, an ensemble that continues the artistic approach of the earlier Melos group.