Percy Turnbull, born near Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1902, had his earliest musical training as a cathedral chorister. At the RCM in the 1920s Turnbull studied with Vaughan Williams, Holst and John Ireland. Turnbull was a highlyaccomplished pianist and spent much of his life earning his living as an accompanist, performer and teacher. His understandng of the instrument, and his extremely wide knowledge of the piano repertoire, led him to produce highlyvaried and colourful output. His interests were almost entirely for miniature forms: suites, preludes, studies, variations and character pieces. All of these pieces, be they athletically virtuoso or deftly simple, show a flairforthe idiom and, perhaps more importantly, they lend an historically significant and stylistically interesting perspective to the literature of twentieth-century British piano music.
