[1] Maina Gielgud, Artistic Director of Australian Ballet, stated that "He [Lanchbery] is not only the finest conductor for dance of his generation and probably well beyond".
[2][1] He was educated at Alleyn's School,[2] where he formed a collaborative partnership with Peter Stanley Lyons[5] who was later a famous chorister, and with Kenneth Spring who was the founder of the National Youth Theatre and whose composer mother encouraged Lanchbery's musical talent.
However, working with choreographer Celia Franca, Lanchbery wrote The Eve of St Agnes (the story was based on John Keats' poem of the same name), one of the first commissioned ballets to be shown on BBC television.
Lanchbery also orchestrated The House of Birds (La Casa de los Pájaros) in 1955, with original music by Federico Mompou.
The pastiche score for Ashton's La fille mal gardée included music by Donizetti, Martini, Rossini, and Peter-Ludwig Hertel, as well as material composed by Lanchbery himself.
[2] The music for the famous Clog Dance, originally by Hertel, was used for many years as a theme tune for Home This Afternoon on BBC radio.
In addition to the revenue from his recordings, Lanchbery had his income supplemented by the copyright he earned from his orchestral arrangements, which were used by ballet companies all over the world.
Lanchbery was the first to convert operas into ballets (The Tales of Hoffmann, The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus),[1] and he also wrote music for some British films of the 1950s, including Deadly Nightshade (1953) and Colonel March Investigates (1955).
He was involved in The Turning Point (1977), starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Browne, and his score for Evil Under the Sun (1982) was based on songs by Cole Porter, a memorable rendition of "You're The Top" by Diana Rigg.
This required Nureyev to call upon Lanchbery to fix the passages of the score that were missing, but always staying true to Minkus's original intentions.
[9] In addition to London, Australia, and Sweden, Lanchbery was a guest conductor at many of the world's leading opera houses, including Paris, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Houston.