The composer Robin Stevens died on 16th February 2026, after a long struggle with cancer. An initial diagnosis (2023) was of a potentially treatable cancer of the colon, but it later spread to the aortic artery and thence to the brain. Fortified by a very strong Christian faith, in his last years, when he knew his days were numbered, Robin completed as many new works as he could, and arranged for the publication of many of his orchestral and chamber works. Forsyths in Manchester will publish much of his orchestral and chamber music, Bandmaster his music for brass instruments, and June Emerson Music his music for woodwind (excluding recorder).
His own instruments were the cello and the guitar, and in his youth he played the Elgar Cello Concerto at Dartington. For the cello he wrote a solo Sonata and a solo Suite, a Sonata Romantica for solo cello, and a half hour long Concerto, this last having just been recorded by Alice Neary with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann, for the Toccata Classics label. Other concertos were for the Viola and for the Bassoon (a favourite instrument of Robin’s). His penultimate work, also recorded on the Toccata label, was the 2025 tone poem Into the Deep, dedicated to Paul Mann, which was originally intended as a movement of a symphony, which sadly he did not have the strength to complete. His very last piece, written this year, was A Time to be Sad, written in memory of my late wife Margaret.
Robin was particularly adept at writing memorable pastiche, and works in this genre include the Balmoral Suite, for recorder and string orchestra, comprising portraits of members of the Royal family, including our present King, the late Prince Philip, and Catherine the Princess of Wales (they all are/were aware!)
On the biographical front, Robin was born in Newport, Gwent, in 1958, and was particularly close to his late mother Gillian Butterworth, a piano graduate of the Royal Manchester College of Music, and an inheritance from her estate provided the financial assistance for his sheaf of last recordings, as she would have wished.
Robin’s first degree was at Manchester University, combined with an undergraduate course on cello at the RNCM. This was followed by a postgraduate MA course under John Joubert at Birmingham University. Following that he took a post as music director and Pastoral Worker at a church in York, where he wrote much church music. Following that he went to Breton Hall for a PGCE qualification, and thence to a comprehensive school in Halifax, following which he contracted an extended bout of post viral fatigue.
In 2007, recovered, he studied at Manchester University for a Ph.D, under Philip Grange and Kevin Malone, after which he able to devote himself full time to composition, which flowed out at an ever increasing rate.
As his cancer progressed I urged him to write his life story, which now appears on his website, as there are no surviving close relatives apart from a disabled sister in care.
His work list extends to the princely number of 179 (and a good few he might have forgotten about!)
Written by John Turner
Photography courtesy of Robin Stevens’ website