In memoriam: Peter Pettinger

Musical Times, Winter 1998

Peter Pettinger will be remembered for a variety of achievements by those who knew him: as a founder member of the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cover, in 1972; as a jazz enthusiast whose lifelong interest led him to write a biography of one of his favourite musicians and greatest influences, the pianist Bill Evans (see p.47); as an accompanist to violinists Sandor Vegh and Nigel Kennedy, and to cellists Steven Isserlis and Julian Lloyd-Webber; and as gifted tutor and coach for young musicians of many nationalities at the ISM, the Royal Academy of Music, Toho University in Tokyo, the Dartington Summer School of Music and, in recent years, at the University of Cambridge.

A keen pianist since the age of seven, Pettinger at first wished to emulate the piano playing of his father, a railway draughtsman who designed rails and never gave a concert in his life, but who daily sight-read the classical repertoire for pleasure. An early education at the King's School Peterborough was followed by training at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied the piano with Vivian Langrish and composition with Hugh Wood.

Pettinger the composer took second place to Pettinger the teacher and performer. Yet like jazz, the experience of writing music remained an essential element of his musicality He composed and performed for television, notably for BBC TV's long-running Jackanory and Playschool series. Eminently versatile, he also wrote incidental music for a National Theatre production of Arthur Miller's The American clock.

His heart, however, remained in 'duo partnership' - he eschewed the term accompaniment - and the source of his pleasure in duo partnership lay in his joy in sight-reading. 'I could never see the point of playing a piece twice when there were two dozen others in the volume, beckoning enticingly over the page like the sirens of old,' he claimed. His preference was to be on the inside of the music, more involved in 'the deep golden vistas of harmony than the surface glitter of double octaves (quite apart from my inability to play them...).' The laudable nature of this last statement is unquestionable. The matter for parentheses, however, seems unlikely

Peter Pettinger: born Peterborough, 1945; died Peterborough, 23 August 1998.