Robert Clarence Raybould (28 June 1886 – 27 March 1972) was an English conductor, pianist and composer who conducted works ranging from musical comedy and operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan to the standard classical repertoire.

After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev admitted "past mistakes", cultural exchange became a possibility, and selected Soviet artists such as David Oistrakh began to appear in Britain.

So when Sir Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen's Music, arranged for a representative group of six British musicians, including Raybould, to tour the USSR in 1956, it was a high-profile event:[7][8] the result of painstaking negotiation and cause for intense curiosity on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Soprano Jennifer Vyvyan's diary notes the "poor food" on the British European Airways flight and the gruelling length of the journey, which left her too ill and tired on arrival to do much except sleep for the next few days.

But the Russians turned the arrival into a media event, with the composers Kabalevsky and Khatchaturian and the pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva welcoming the plane on its touchdown just before midnight.

[9] On 19 April Raybould conducted the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Gordon Jacob's oboe concerto with Leon Goossens as soloist.

[10] The group also performed in Leningrad, Kiev and Kharkov, and returned to Moscow for a farewell concert attended by Khrushchev Raybould lived at Oakdale, East-the-Water, Bideford in Devon, where he died in 1972, aged 86.