There can have been few composers of unmistakable greatness who achieved recognition so late in life as Roberto Gerhard. In the issue of The Score magazine which commemorated Gerhard's 60th birthday in 1956, the editor, William Glock, could write: ‘His works have been almost entirely ignored, with the result that 20th-century music has been robbed of the impact of one of its most vital representatives. The catalogue of his works shows that only four, comparatively minor, works of Roberto Gerhard have ever been printed. What it does not show, however, is the fact that many first performances have also been the last; and that, as far as England is concerned, only two or three of his major works have ever been heard in public’ Today, if Gerhard's true stature has still to be appreciated he can no longer be described as a neglected composer. Yet even now he is known almost exclusively for the music he wrote during his final decade. For in the 1960's, as if stimulated by his belated acclaim, the composer enjoyed a flood of creative activity, producing an extended series of works all of which display an extraordinarily unflagging energy and invention. Like a few great composers before him (one thinks particularly of Janáčcek, whose late music shows a similar exuberance), Gerhard wrote his most youthful music when already well past the age of sixty.