Albert Coates (musician)

Born in Saint Petersburg, where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses.

He was a success in England conducting Wagner at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1914, and in 1919 was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

[3] Nikisch appointed Coates répétiteur at the Leipzig opera, and he made his debut as a conductor in 1904 with Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann.

Reviewing his first performance in the post, The Times praised him warmly, along with the younger Adrian Boult and Geoffrey Toye, in an article on "The Conductor's Art".

Reporting the appointment, The Times wrote, "There can scarcely be a musician in this country with so wide and cosmopolitan an experience of operatic performance.

[3] In January 1926, he gave the first stage performance outside Russia of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Invisible City of Kitezh, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

[4] After his contract with the LSO expired in 1922, Coates held no more permanent conductorships in the UK, although he directed the Leeds music festivals of 1922 and 1925.

[12] On 13 November 1936 the BBC broadcast the world's first televised opera: scenes from Coates's Pickwick, directed by Rosing, were shown in advance of the work's premiere.

[3] Coates and Rosing launched a season of the British Music Drama Opera Company at Covent Garden the following week.

[3] He guest conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and worked briefly in Hollywood, making cameo appearances in two 1944 MGM films, Two Girls and a Sailor and Song of Russia.

[4] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says of him "Although he was important to the fortunes of the London Symphony Orchestra immediately after the First World War, his contribution to British musical life was ephemeral.

"[2] In its obituary of Coates, The Times wrote that his compositions "fell between the two stools of national character and international sympathy, with a resulting ambiguity of achievement.

[26] His concert works included a piano concerto and a symphonic poem The Eagle, dedicated to the memory of his former teacher Nikisch, which was performed in Leeds in 1925.

[7] At a memorial concert held at the Wigmore Hall on 1 July 1959 the Piano Concerto was performed by the Anglo-French pianist Frank Laffitte with a section of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Later in life, Coates married South African mezzo soprano Vera de Villiers, née Johanna Veronique Waterston Graaf.