Martin Eastick, Composer in 19th-Century Piano Style, Dies at 69

The English composer Martin Eastick died last night from cancer. He was 69.

Eastick built his reputation on piano composition in the 19th-century style and became a noted collector of piano music. His expertise in the Romantic repertoire made him an adviser to Hyperion's series of 'Romantic Piano Concertos', one of the label's long-running projects devoted to recovering forgotten works of the period.

His own music has not gone unrecorded. The pianist Ian Hobson has recorded a first album devoted to Eastick's compositions for Toccata Classics. The label will release the album in November, giving listeners a documented account of a compositional voice that spent decades in close contact with the 19th-century piano tradition.

Eastick's dual role — writing in an older idiom while collecting and championing its historical sources — placed him among a small group of musicians working to keep the Romantic piano concerto and its surrounding literature in circulation. His advisory work with Hyperion connected that scholarship to a wide recorded catalogue.

The November release on Toccata Classics will now serve as a posthumous introduction for many listeners to Eastick's own output, arriving weeks after his death.