Felix Swinstead

Felix Gerald Swinstead (born June 25, 1880 in London , † August 14, 1959 in Southwold ) was an English pianist , composer and music teacher .

Swinstead won a Sterndale-Bennett Fellowship and a Thalberg Fellowship and studied piano with Tobias Matthay and composition with Frederick Corder at the Royal Academy of Music . He later worked here as a professor of piano.

In addition to Great Britain, he has performed as a pianist in Canada, South Africa, Australia and the West Indies. He composed around 200 mostly small piano pieces, many of them as practice pieces for piano students. In some cases he put the pieces together in collections such as Album Leaves , Fancies Grave and Gay and Idylls . In addition, more demanding pieces were created, which he performed at his concerts.

Swinstead also composed a sonata and several smaller pieces for violin and piano, a Romance for cello and piano and the song cycle Sing-Song . His only known orchestral works are a Scarlatti Suite based on the harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (also for piano and string orchestra and for two pianos) and the piece Red Gauntlet , which was performed on the occasion of his death by the orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music under the direction of Ernest Reed . Another concert piece is preserved in the manuscript.