Steve Elcock
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Steve Elcock (born 1957) is an Anglo-French composer residing in France, whose style has been placed by critics in the context of composers such as Sibelius, Honegger, Walton and Arnold. Elcock himself states that he was particularly inspired by the music of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson. Elcock is self-taught as a composer. In recent years, his works, which include ten symphonies and a variety of orchestral and chamber pieces, have begun to be performed publicly; a number of them have now been recorded.
Elcock was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in 1957. He began to compose at the age of 15, and although he received violin lessons at school, he is self-taught as a composer.[1] He gained a place to study music at Oxford University in 1975 but left after only a few weeks and instead began training as a teacher of French. During this time he met his future wife, Annick.[2] In 1981, he moved with Annick to France where he worked in language services. Some of his early compositions were played by the local amateur symphony orchestra which he conducted there.[3]
In 2009 his orchestral piece Hammering (op. 15) was performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra with the conductor James MacMillan at a studio concert in Manchester, which was later broadcast. This was the first occasion when a work of Elcock was performed by a professional ensemble.[4] In 2013, Elcock forwarded copies of his scores of his Symphonies 3 and 4 and his symphonic poem Wreck to Martin Anderson, head of the Toccata Classics record company, who expressed his enthusiasm and made it known to others in the world of music. As a consequence Elcock's first string quartet The Girl from Marseille was performed at the 2014 'Indian Summer in Levoča' festival in Levoča, Slovakia, and his second quartet The Cage of Opprobrium, dedicated to the town, was premiered there in 2015.[5]
In 2017 Toccata began to issue recordings of Elcock's works, beginning with a disc of orchestral works including his Symphony no. 3.[6] In the same year, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra broadcast his Choses renversées par le temps ou la destruction.[7] Elcock's Symphony no. 8 was premiered at the 2021 Three Choirs Festival[8] and later recorded by Nimbus Records, together with his Violin Concerto.[9] In 2024 his Piano Quintet op. 34 was premiered at the Elgar Festival, Worcester, as was his Concerto Grosso op. 12.[10][11]
Elcock is presently Composer in Residence for the English Symphony Orchestra.[12]
