Colin Davis

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Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE (born 25 September 1927 in Weybridge, Surrey) is an English conductor.

Contents 1 Career 2 Recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Philips 3 Awards 4 Personal life 5 Portrait bust 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Career

Davis studied the clarinet at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was barred from taking conducting lessons owing to his lack of ability at the piano. Nonetheless, he formed and often served as conductor of the Kalmar Orchestra with fellow students.

In 1952, Davis worked at the Royal Festival Hall, and in the late 1950s conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He first found wide acclaim when he stood in for an ill Otto Klemperer in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959. A year later, he stood in for Sir Thomas Beecham in similar circumstances in Mozart's The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne.

In the 1960s he worked at Sadler's Wells Opera^[1] and the London Symphony Orchestra. He also served as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1971 he succeeded Georg Solti as principal conductor at the Royal Opera House, where he had given occasional performances before, remaining there until 1986. He became noted for championing the operas of Michael Tippett, giving the premieres of his works The Knot Garden (1970), and The Ice Break (1977). In 1977 he became the first English conductor to appear at the Bayreuth Festival (dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner) where he conducted Tannhäuser.

Davis was Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1984. He subsequently was Chief Conductor at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 1993. In 1991, Davis was named 'Conductor Laureate' (Ehrendirigent) of the Staatskapelle Dresden, the first conductor in the orchestra's history to hold that title. In 1995, Davis began his tenure as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). From 1998-2003, he was Principal Guest Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Davis concluded his tenure as the LSO's Principal Conductor on 31 December 2006, and became President of the LSO on 1 January 2007. Maestro Davis is also International Chair of Orchestral Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, London, ^[2] and president of the Landesgymnasium für Musik "Carl Maria von Weber" in Dresden^[3]

Davis has developed from the enthusiastic, impulsive firebrand of his early years into a mature master; yet he remains as passionate and involved in his work as ever. He is essentially a visionary and an inspirational conductor, and has often managed to bring those characteristics into the recording studio. His extensive discography ranges from thrilling accounts of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (with the RPO) and Stravinsky's Oedipus rex (with Sadler’s Wells), both from 1961, through much Mozart and Berlioz (Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Berlioz's Les Troyens and Benvenuto Cellini, are especially notable) to his pioneering Tippett, his impassioned Sibelius and his powerfully individual readings of Britten’s Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw.

Aside from his championing of Tippett and his interpretations of Mozart, Davis is particularly closely associated with the music of Hector Berlioz, giving many performances of his operas and orchestral works and conducting the first complete set of his works on disc (recorded by Philips), Benjamin Britten, and Jean Sibelius.^[4][5] He has recorded all of the major works of Berlioz and many of the works of Tippett, as well as the complete piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt with Claudio Arrau.

[edit] Recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Philips

• Claude Debussy: La Mer (1982)
• Claude Debussy: Three Nocturnes with the women of the Tangelwood Festival Chorus (1982)
• Edvard Grieg: Piano Concerto, with Claudio Arrau (1980)
• Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer's Night Dream - incidental music (1975)
• Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 (1975)
• Franz Schubert: Rosamunde - incidental music (1982)
• Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8 (1980)
• Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto, with Claudio Arrau (1980)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 3 (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 4 (1975)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 6 (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 (1975)
• Jean Sibelius: En Saga (1980)
• Jean Sibelius: Finlandia (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Karelia Suite (1979)
• Jean Sibelius: Pohjola’s Daughter (1979)
• Jean Sibelius: Swan of Tuonela( 1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Tapiola (1976)
• Jean Sibelius: Valse triste (1980)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1, with Claudio Arrau (1979)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture with the Tangelwood Festival Chorus (1980)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Overture (1979)

[edit] Awards

Davis was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1965 New Year Honours,^[6] knighted in the 1980 New Year Honours,^[7][8] and appointed Companion of Honour in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours.^[9] Pipe Smoker of the Year in 1996.^{[citation needed]} Male Artist of the Year by the Classical Brit Awards 2008.^{[citation needed]} His recording of Verdi's Falstaff has won the Grammy Award for Best Opera at the 48th annual Grammy Awards.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Personal life

His father, Reginald, was a soldier during World War I. His mother, Lillian, played the piano. He had two brothers, Norman and Howard, and four sisters. Howard worked as a clerk at the Bank of England, and died in World War II. Norman became a teacher of classics and died in the 1960s. Yvonne is retired from teaching. Colin Davis attended Christ's Hospital in Sussex before studying clarinet in London

In 1949, Davis married the soprano April Cantelo. They had two children, Suzanne and Christopher. Their marriage ended in 1964, and in that same year, Davis met his second wife at an Iranian diplomatic party in London. To satisfy both the Iranian and British authorities, the couple were married three times, once in Iran and twice in the UK, in the Iranian Embassy as well as in a regular UK civil ceremony; they have five children.^[10]

[edit] Portrait bust

Colin Davis agreed to let sculptor Alan Thornhill work on a portrait^[11] in clay while he was conducting rehearsals.^[12] The correspondence file relating to the Davis bust is held in the archive^[13] of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Richard Morrison (2007-09-21). "Monarch of all he’s survived". The Times. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2497713.ece. Retrieved 2007-09-22. 

[edit] External links

Colin Davis at Allmusic

Cultural offices
Preceded by Alexander Gibson	Music Director, Sadler's Wells 1961–1965	Succeeded by Bryan Balkwill and Mario Bernardi
Preceded by Georg Solti	Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1971–1987	Succeeded by Bernard Haitink
Preceded by Rafael Kubelík	Chief Conductor, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 1983–1993	Succeeded by Lorin Maazel

v • d • e BBC Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductors Adrian Boult (1930) · Malcolm Sargent (1950) · Rudolf Schwarz (1957) · Antal Doráti (1962) · Colin Davis (1967) · Pierre Boulez (1971) · Rudolf Kempe (1976) · Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1978) · John Pritchard (1982) · Andrew Davis (1989) · Leonard Slatkin (2000) · Jiří Bělohlávek (2006)

v • d • e Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductors Eugen Jochum (1949) · Rafael Kubelík (1961) · Sir Colin Davis (1983) · Lorin Maazel (1993) · Mariss Jansons (2003)

v • d • e London Symphony Orchestra Principal Conductors Hans Richter (1904) · Edward Elgar (1911) · Arthur Nikisch (1912) · Thomas Beecham (1915) · Albert Coates (1919) · Willem Mengelberg (1930) · Hamilton Harty (1932) · Josef Krips (1951) · Pierre Monteux (1960) · István Kertész (1965) · André Previn (1968) · Claudio Abbado (1979) · Michael Tilson Thomas (1987) · Colin Davis (1995) · Valery Gergiev (2007)