The Guardian’s long-serving and much admired classical music critic Andrew Clements died on Sunday aged 75 after a period of illness.

Clements joined the Guardian arts team in August 1993, succeeding Edward Greenfield as the paper’s chief music critic. His appointment was clinched by a personal recommendation to the editor from the late Alfred Brendel, who argued for Clements to get the job on account of his deep understanding of contemporary music. For the next 32 years, Clements ranged across all fields of classical music in his writing for the Guardian, and often beyond.

An outstanding and distinctive critical voice, his deep knowledge and love of music was evident in everything he wrote. He was hugely respected by his fellow critics and the value of his very hard-won five-star reviews was inestimable. While ill health prevented him reviewing live events since March 2025, his last CD review was published on 2 January.

Clements’ musical interests were transformed while still at school as a young flautist when he encountered a work by Pierre Boulez that opened the door to his lifelong engagement with, and encyclopaedic knowledge of, contemporary music. For decades afterwards he could remember almost every concert he ever attended. In all fields of music, he was unafraid to ruffle feathers, happy to stick to his well-formed convictions, and refusing to follow more conservative or orthodox views.

Before joining the Guardian, Clements was music critic of the New Statesman and editor of Musical Times. He wrote for the Financial Times between 1979 and 1993. He began his career working for Faber music publishers and the Open University after a degree in theoretical physics from Cambridge University.

His championing of composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Hans Abrahamsen, Oliver Knussen and Mark-Anthony Turnage helped to ensure their work was taken seriously by other critics and by musical managements. Solo piano music was also one of Clements’ greatest loves; in one of the last pieces he wrote, he said of the late Romanian musician Radu Lupu: “no pianist I have heard in more than 50 years of recital going has given me more consistent pleasure or a greater sense of wonder.”

Outside music, birds, butterflies and orchids were an abiding passion – woe betide an opera designer who got a bird wrong.

The sometimes gruff exterior he presented belied a kind and warm nature. He was supportive and generous with his colleagues, quick with praise, patient with questions and penetrating with his insights. Above all, he was always happy to laugh at himself.

Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, said: “Andrew Clements wrote about classical music with the utmost passion and precision. His reviews for the Guardian drew on a lifetime of discerning listening and, as well as being illuminating, were always a joy to read.”