Composer and pianist with a host of TV, film and theatre credits
Robert Lockhart, who has died aged 52 after a heart attack, was a musician to the tips of his nimble – and invariably heavily nicotine-stained – fingers. A piano virtuoso, he retired from concert performance early in his career to concentrate on composition, and became both an eclectic and effective composer for theatre, film and television, as well as creating freestanding works for ensembles ranging from the string quartet to the brass band.
An unashamedly "pre-sampling" composer, Lockhart savoured working with musicians above all else, and his flair for arranging and conducting in the studio ensured him a steady stream of commissions which, although often requiring only workmanlike undertones, his often deeply personal music frequently managed to soar high above.
His film credits were extensive, but particularly notable were his work on John Schlesinger's Cold Comfort Farm (1995), and his long association with the director Terence Davies, for whom he worked as musical director on the films Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The Long Day Closes (1992) and The Neon Bible (1995). Davies's meditative and elegiac films about a Liverpool working-class family were appealing to Lockhart, who was born and brought up in Wigan and never quite adjusted to what he viewed as the terminal effeteness of the south-east. Other film credits included Andrew Grieve's On the Black Hill (1988) and the thriller Vicious Circles (1997).
Lockhart had some respect for his own film work, but he tended to regard his composing for television as fairly inconsequential, though the music was of high quality. As well as bread-and-butter stuff such as the Inspector Lynley Mysteries (BBC), Lockhart's music for the 1994 series Between the Lines (also BBC) was nominated for a Bafta. He wrote for the successful Granada series Grafters (1998), and also for two Emmy award-winning original dramas, The Bullion Boys (1993) and Simon Gray's Unnatural Pursuits (1992).
Lockhart was a bon and latterly a mal vivant whose long and turbulent relationship with alcohol cannot be avoided in any discussion of his life. He was a witty and charming man, one of those "connectors" who join together many different social milieus. An obsessive birdwatcher, backgammon player and follower of his beloved Wigan rugby league team, he took dishabille to the level of an art form, while displaying an anti-materialism that verged on contempt. But if there was a party, and there was a piano, Lockhart would be at the keyboard, while draped across it would usually be some smitten female – to be "Lockharted" in this way was a phenomenon well enough known to have become a verb.
Lockhart's father, John, was a bakery manager and a talented pianist and singer. His mother, Pat, was a hairdresser. He was educated at Wigan grammar school, where he showed early promise as a pianist, although rather than the rigours of practice he preferred playing "snookuteo", a combination of snooker and table football, and "sitdown darts", where you throw from the dinner table. He won an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1979 with a double first in music. He next went to the Royal College of Music, where he studied piano and composition. In 1981 he was chosen as one of the Greater London Arts Association's young musicians of the year.
Over the following five years Lockhart built a considerable reputation as a concert pianist, giving regular recitals at venues such as the Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room, as well as live broadcasts for Radio 3. He once vouchsafed to me that he found the tension of live performance very difficult – in all matters musical his standards were exacting – and that he attributed the genesis of his heavy drinking to these stressful years.
Fortunately, he quickly developed another strand to his career – composing for the theatre. From 1986 to 1989 he was a musical director at the National Theatre, and he went on to compose music for several West End and Broadway productions, among them Sir Peter Hall's 1989 production of The Merchant of Venice, with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock. He also composed for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Lockhart was a difficult composer to pin down; precise and yet wistful – inclined to the melodically Gallic rather than the tonally Germanic and a fierce anti-Mozartian. He had a great aptitude for teaching – I once saw him explain the principles of musical notation to an eight-year-old in about 20 minutes – but a corresponding impatience with his own procrastination.
After many travails, including coma induced by alcoholic poisoning, Lockhart stopped drinking. Two years ago, he fell ill with cancer and subsequently had extensive surgery on his mouth and jaw. He had always viewed alcohol as intrinsic to his creative process, but he continued to write when sober, and after he was diagnosed with cancer. He wrote incidental music to accompany Lionboy and My Dear I Just Wanted to Tell You – both books by his girlfriend, the novelist Louisa Young – and in the last years of his life completed a string quartet in memory of her father, Wayland Young (Lord Kennet), which was performed at his memorial service in 2009 by the Brindisi Quartet. Lockhart's setting of EE Cummings's poem I Carry Your Heart will be sung at his own funeral by the soprano Susan Bullock.
He is survived by Louisa and his son, Joe, from his marriage to Lisa O'Kelly, which ended in divorce.
• Robert Lockhart, pianist and composer, born 26 March 1959; died 23 January 2012