One of New Zealand's most widely respected composers, David Farquhar was born in 1928 and attended Victoria University, Cambridge University, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied with Benjamin Frankel. He has written symphonic works, opera, theater music (most notably for a production of Christopher Fry's Ring Around the Moon, a translation of the play by Jean Anouilh), an award-winning piano concerto, and chamber music. His Symphony of 1959 is perhaps his best-known work. It was a short work made up of lean but strong lines of slowly developing musical material in the traditional three-movement form. Clarity of orchestration and purity of tonal structure are earmarks of this composer's elegant and intelligent style. The Symphony was recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eric Lawson, on a Peerless/Oryz LP released in the mid-'60s (Oryx 1900).