In April 2012, UK radio listeners voted Richard Harvey's Concerto Antico into the Classic FM Hall of Fame for the first time.

Born in Enfield, Middlesex,[1] Harvey became involved in music, learning the recorder when he was four years old, switching first to percussion and later playing clarinet in the British Youth Symphony Orchestra.

[2] By the time he graduated from London's Royal College of Music in 1972, he was accomplished on the recorder, flute, krumhorn, and other mediaeval and Renaissance-era instruments, as well as the mandolin and various keyboards.

When Gryphon wound down in the late 1970s, he became a session musician, playing on Kate Bush's Lionheart, Gerry Rafferty's Night Owl, Sweet's Level Headed and Gordon Giltrap's Fear of the Dark and The Peacock Party, among others.

Notable works include 1979's Martian Chronicles ending titles, the horror film House of the Long Shadows (1983), 1984's wistful Shroud for a Nightingale theme, hauntingly set in the Dorian mode, used subsequently in all the PD James detective series (and subsequently re-used for the subsequent follow up series), the action sequel The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985), British films such as The Assam Garden (1985), Steaming (1985), Defence of the Realm (1986) and Half Moon Street (1986), Alan Bleasdale's G.B.H in 1991, which he co-wrote with Elvis Costello[1] (and which won them, jointly, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award), Luther (2003) and, more recently, in 2006, Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code and Gabriel Range's Death of a President.