Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis CH CBE (25 September 1927 – 14 April 2013) was an English conductor, known for his association with the London Symphony Orchestra, having first conducted it in 1959.
"[3] With financial assistance from his great-uncle, Davis was educated at Christ's Hospital in Sussex[4] and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston.
Stationed at Windsor, he had continual opportunities to attend concerts in London under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter.
[13] After The Magic Flute, The Times called Davis "master of Mozart's idiom, style and significance",[14] although Heyworth in The Observer was disappointed by his tempi, judging them to be too slow.
[17] Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians wrote of this period, "He excelled in Idomeneo, The Rake's Progress and Oedipus rex, and Fidelio; his Wagner, Verdi and Puccini were less successful.
He introduced Weill's Mahagonny, and Pizzetti's Assassinio nella cattedrale to the British public and conducted the première of Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur (1965).
"[18] Together with the stage director Glen Byam Shaw, he worked to present operas in a way that gave due weight to the drama as well as the music.
[28] At about the same time, the Boston Symphony Orchestra invited him to become its musical director, but Davis felt that if Covent Garden needed him, it was his duty to take on the post.
After early successes together, including the première of Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden in December 1970, Hall left to succeed Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theatre.
[28] Davis' early months in charge at Covent Garden were marked by dissatisfaction among some of the audience, and booing was heard at a "disastrous" Nabucco in 1972.
[29] Among his successes were Berlioz's massive Les Troyens (with Jon Vickers and Anja Silja) and Benvenuto Cellini, Verdi's Falstaff, the major Mozart operas, and, as one critic put it, he "confirmed his preeminence as a Britten and Stravinsky interpreter" with productions of Peter Grimes and The Rake's Progress.
[29] In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, Davis conducted a number of modern and unfamiliar operas, including Tippett's The Knot Garden and The Ice Break (of which he is the dedicatee),[18] and Alexander Zemlinsky's The Dwarf and Eine florentinische Tragödie.
"[31] Davis hoped that Götz Friedrich, with whom he worked on Wagner's Ring cycle, would take on the role of principal producer vacated by Hall, "but it seemed that nobody wanted to commit themselves.
[35] Davis was the longest-serving principal conductor in the history of the LSO, holding the post from 1995 until 2006, after which the orchestra appointed him its President, an honour previously held only by Arthur Bliss, William Walton, Karl Böhm and Leonard Bernstein.
[37] On 21 June 2009, 50 years to the day after his first LSO performance, a special concert was given at the Barbican, at which present-day players were joined by many past members of the orchestra.
He made several records for the small independent label L'Oiseau Lyre, including a 1960 L'enfance du Christ and a 1962 Béatrice et Bénédict which, at April 2013, were both still available on CD.
[21][45] Davis's 1966 Philips recording of Handel's Messiah was regarded as revelatory at the time of its issue for its departure from the large-scale Victorian-style performances that had previously been customary.
[46] Other Philips recordings included a 1982 set of Haydn's twelve London symphonies with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra "distinguished by performances of tremendous style and authority, and a sense of rhythmic impetus that is most exhilarating";[47] and a 1995 Beethoven symphony cycle with the Dresden Staatskapelle, of which Gramophone wrote, "There has not been a Beethoven cycle like this since Klemperer's heyday.
"[48] Davis made a number of records with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Philips, including the first of his three Sibelius cycles, which remains in the CD catalogues.
Davis' recordings on the LSO Live label include Beethoven's opera Fidelio (2006), a wide range of Berlioz works, including a second recording of Les Troyens (2000), La damnation de Faust (2000), Roméo et Juliette (2000), Béatrice et Bénédict (2000), Harold en Italie (2003), and the Symphonie fantastique (2000); Britten's Peter Grimes (2004); Dvořák's Symphonies Nos.
6–9 (1999–2004); five Elgar sets: the Enigma Variations (2007) and the Introduction and Allegro for Strings (2005), the three symphonies (2001), and The Dream of Gerontius (2005); Handel's Messiah (2006); Haydn's Die Schöpfung (2007); Holst's The Planets (2002); James MacMillan's St John Passion, (2008) The World's Ransoming and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (2007); Mozart's Requiem (2007); Nielsen's Symphonies Nos.
[56] One of their children is the conductor Joseph Wolfe, who chose a different surname, because he wanted to "create some space to grow and develop my own identity as a musician".
[59] His last concert with the LSO was a performance of Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts on 26 June 2012 at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London.
