Sir Colin Rex Davis,
CH,
CBE (born 25 September 1927) is an English
conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are
Mozart,
Berlioz,
Elgar,
Sibelius,
Stravinsky and
Tippett.
He studied as a clarinettist, but was intent on becoming a conductor. After struggles as a freelance conductor from 1949 to 1957, he gained a series of appointments with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has been associated with the London Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years, including over ten years as its principal conductor. He has also held the musical directorships of Sadler's Wells Opera and the Royal Opera House, where he was principal conductor for over fifteen years. His guest conductorships include the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Dresden Staatskapelle, among many others.
As a teacher, Davis holds posts at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Carl Maria von Weber High School of Music in Dresden. He made his first gramophone recordings in 1958, and his discography built up in the succeeding five decades is extensive, with a large number of studio recordings for Philips Records and a growing catalogue of live recordings for the London Symphony Orchestra's own label.
Biography
Early years
Davis was born in
Weybridge,
Surrey, the youngest of three sons among seven siblings, to Reginald George and Lillian Davis. The family was musical, and Davis was exposed to music from his early years. He recalled, "I can still see
Sargent conducting the first concert I ever attended. I can still hear
Melchior in the final scene of
Siegfried – an old
78 playing on my father's gramophone. … I can also remember the moment I decided to make music my life. I was 13 or 14 at the time and the performance was of
Beethoven's Eighth. Doors were suddenly opened. I became totally involved, even obsessed by music, although I was frightfully enclosed by my likes and dislikes. Today I'm game for anything."
, where Davis studied]]
Davis was educated at Christ's Hospital and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston. As a clarinettist he was overshadowed by his fellow-student Gervase de Peyer, but he had in any case already set his mind to conducting. He was, however, not eligible for the conducting class at the college, because he could not play the piano.
His ambitions to conduct were further disrupted by compulsory military service, which was in force in Britain at that time. After leaving the college, Davis served as a clarinettist in the band of the Household Cavalry. Stationed at Windsor he had continual opportunities to attend concerts in London under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter. After completing his military service, he launched himself in 1949 into what he later described as the "freelance wilderness", where he remained until 1957. What seemed at first to be a full-time conducting appointment, for the Original Ballet Russe in 1952, came to an abrupt end after three months, when the company collapsed. In between sparse conducting engagements, Davis worked as a coach and lecturer, including spells at the Cambridge University Musical Society and the Bryanston Summer School, where a performance of L'enfance du Christ awakened his love of Berlioz's music.
BBC and Sadler's Wells
His first breakthrough came in 1957, when at his third attempt he secured the post of assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra (now the
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). The chief conductor of the orchestra generally chose to conduct the standard repertoire pieces himself, leaving Davis with modern works and non-standard repertoire works including those of Berlioz. By 1959 he had developed to the extent that, after a concert of
Stravinsky and
Mozart with the
London Mozart Players, the chief music critic of
The Observer,
Peter Heyworth, wrote, "Mr Davis conducted two works in a manner that showed that he is not only outstanding among our younger conductors, but probably the best we have produced since Sir Thomas Beecham, his senior by forty-eight years."
, scene of one of Davis's early breakthroughs]]
Davis first found wide acclaim when he stood in for an ill Otto Klemperer in a performance of Don Giovanni, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959. A year later, Beecham invited him to collaborate with him in preparing The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne. Beecham was taken ill, and Davis conducted the opera. After the Don Giovanni, The Times wrote, "A superb conductor of Mozart declared himself last night at the Festival Hall…. Mr Davis emerged as a conductor ripe for greatness." Neville Cardus in The Guardian was less enthusiastic but nevertheless considered that Davis "had his triumphs" in the performance. After The Magic Flute, The Times called Davis "master of Mozart's idiom, style and significance", although Heyworth in The Observer was disappointed by his tempi, judging them to be too slow.
In 1960 Davis made his début at the Proms in a programme of Britten, Schumann, Mozart and Berlioz. In the same year, he was appointed chief conductor of Sadler's Wells Opera, and in 1961 he was made musical director of the company, with whom he built up a large repertoire of operas, conducting in London and on tour. 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)." 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. In his early years, Davis was known as something of a firebrand with a short fuse in rehearsals, and his departure from Sadler's Wells in 1965 was not without acrimony. At first, so far as the public was concerned, his tenure was overshadowed, at least during the orchestra's most conspicuous concert seasons, the Proms, by the memory of Sir Malcolm Sargent, who had been an immensely popular figure as chief conductor of the Proms until 1966. Sargent had been "a suave father figure" to the promenaders, and it took some time for the much younger Davis to be accepted. The BBC's Controller of Music, William Glock, was a long-standing admirer of Davis, and encouraged him to put on adventurous programmes, with a new emphasis on modern music, both at the Proms and throughout the rest of the orchestra's annual schedule.
Covent Garden
In 1970,
Sir David Webster, who ran the
Royal Opera and the
Royal Ballet companies at
Covent Garden, invited Davis to succeed
Georg Solti as principal conductor of the opera. 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.
Davis's 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 1971, and his conducting of Wagner's Ring was at first compared unfavourably with that of his predecessor. With later stage directors at Covent Garden, Davis preferred to work with those who respected the libretto: "I have a hankering for producers who don't feel jealous of composers for being better than they are, and want to impose their, often admittedly clever, ideas on the work in hand." Davis hoped that Goetz 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."
During his Covent Garden tenure, Davis was also principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1975 and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1984. Davis's Tannhäuser was "highly successful". He debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, in 1969, the Vienna State Opera in 1986 and the Bavarian State Opera in 1994. He was offered but declined the chief conductorships of the Cleveland Orchestra in succession to Maazel and the New York Philharmonic in succession to Zubin Mehta. As a principal guest conductor he was associated with the Dresden Staatskapelle, which appointed him honorary conductor (Ehrendirigent) in 1990, the first in the orchestra's 460-year-history. In 1997 he conducted the LSO's first residency at Lincoln Center in New York City. 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.
During his time with the LSO, both as principal conductor and later as president, Davis has conducted series and cycles of the music of Sibelius, Berlioz, Bruckner, Mozart, Elgar, Beethoven, and Brahms, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians wrote, "He conducted a Sibelius cycle in 1992 and a concert performance of Les Troyens the following year, both of which have become the stuff of legend. More recently he has added grand performances of Bruckner, Richard Strauss and Elgar, the première of Tippett's last major work, The Rose Lake (1995), and a Berlioz cycle begun with Benvenuto Cellini in 1999 and crowned by an incandescent Les Troyens in December 2000, all confirming his partnership with the LSO as one of the most important of its time." and holds the International Chair of Orchestral Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, principal of the academy, wrote of Davis, "As the Academy's International Chair of Conducting over 25 years, Sir Colin has helmed six opera productions and over sixty concerts, classes and chamber music projects. Such extraordinary generosity from a major international conductor is surely unique. He has inspired a whole generation here, as did Henry Wood and John Barbirolli before him."
Recordings
Davis's discography is extensive. He made his first records in 1958 for the World Record Club: three Mozart symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with
Leon Goossens. 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 January 2010, were both still available on CD. For
EMI he made both operatic and orchestral recordings, the former with Sadler's Wells forces, including excerpts from
Carmen and a complete
Oedipus Rex, and the latter including
Harold in Italy with
Yehudi Menuhin, and what remains one of his best-known recordings, a 1961 Beethoven
Seventh Symphony.
Philips and RCA
In the 1960s, Davis signed as an exclusive artist for
Philips Records, with whom he made an extensive range of recordings in the symphonic repertoire and a large number of operatic recordings, including the major Mozart operas; operas by Tippett, Britten, Verdi and Puccini; and a comprehensive survey of the operas of Berlioz, culminating in an award-winning first recording of the complete
Les Troyens issued in May 1970. 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. They also recorded works by
Debussy,
Grieg,
Schubert,
Schumann, and
Tchaikovsky.
Other Philips recordings included a 1966 recording of Messiah that was regarded as revelatory at the time of its issue for its departure from the large-scale Victorian-style performances that had been customary before then; a 1982 set of Haydn's twelve London Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra "distinguished by performances of tremendous style and authority, and a sense of rhythmic impetus that is most exhilarating"; and a 1995 Beethoven symphony cycle with the Dresden Staatskapelle, of which The Gramophone wrote, "There has not been a Beethoven cycle like this since Klemperer's heyday." For RCA, Davis recorded complete symphony cycles of Sibelius (with the LSO), Brahms (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, 1989–98), and Schubert (Dresden Staatskapelle, 1996).
LSO Live
Davis's terms as chief conductor, and latterly president, of the LSO have coincided with the orchestra's decision to launch its own record label, issuing live recordings (patched where necessary with takes from rehearsals) at budget prices. Davis's 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. 4-5 (2011); a third
Sibelius symphony cycle (2002–2008);
Smetana's
Má vlast (2005);
Tippett's
A Child of our Time (2007),
Verdi's
Falstaff (2004),
Requiem (2009), and
Otello (2010); and
Walton's
First Symphony (2005).
Awards
Davis was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1965
New Year Honours. He was
knighted in the 1980 New Year Honours and appointed
Companion of Honour in the 2001
Queen's Birthday Honours. He was awarded the
Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal in 1995, and has numerous international awards, including Commendatore of the Republic of Italy, 1976; Commander's Cross,
Order of Merit (Germany), 1987; Commandeur, l'
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1990; Commander,
Order of the Lion (Finland), 1992;
Order of Merit (Bavaria), 1993; Officier,
Légion d'Honneur (France), 1999 (Chevalier, 1982); Order of Maximilian (Bavaria), 2000.
Male Artist of the Year in the
Classical Brit Awards 2008, One of his 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."
Notes
References
Blyth, Alan. Colin Davis, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1972
Cox, David. The Henry Wood Proms. BBC, London, 1980. ISBN 0-563-17697-0
Haltrecht, Montague.The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House, Collins, London, 1975 ISBN 0-00-211163-2
Morrison, Richard. Orchestra – The LSO: A Century of Triumph and Turbulence, Faber and Faber, London, 2004. ISBN 0-571-21584-X
Orga, Ateş. The Proms, Book Club Associates, 1975
Further reading
External links
Category:1927 births
Category:Academics of the Royal Academy of Music
Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge
Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music
Category:BBC Symphony Orchestra
Category:Christ's Hospital Old Blues
Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Category:English conductors (music)
Category:Music directors (opera)
Category:Living people
Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Category:Members of the Bavarian Order of Merit
Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Category:Knights Bachelor
Category:Recipients of the Commendatore of the Republic of Italy
Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Category:Recipients of the Order of the Lion of Finland
Category:Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
Category:Recipients of the Order of Maximilian
Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists
Category:Grammy Award winners
Category:People from Weybridge
Category:London Symphony Orchestra principal conductors
