Originally posted by french frank
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The answer is indeed Goffredo Petrassi.
He wrote 8 Concertos for orchestra; Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, and Elliott Carter wrote one each.
Amongst his pupils were Peter Maxwell Davies, an enfant terrible born in Salford (which was in Lancashire in those days), and Kenneth Leighton, who was a chorister in Wakefield Cathedral. PMD of course moved to Orkney, and KL became Professor of Music at Edinburgh.
One of his compositions is Quattro inni sacri (Four sacred hymns), a title remarkably similar to Quattro pezzi sacri (Four sacred pieces), the name given to a collection of compositions by Verdi, a fellow Italian.
His music is worth investigating if you don’t know it (imho of course, but I remember that jlw was a fan too). I have a box set of all the concertos for orchestra (numbers 1, 2, 7, and 8 being played by the BBCSO), but it seems no longer available. The Quattro inni sacri appear on a Naxos release and a Chandos one.
Probably Aunt Daisy has the unenviable task of letting us form a Q behind him.
(It doesn't seem that long since we had quire!)
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