- published: 05 Jun 2008
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Richard Sidney Hickox CBE (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.
Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family. After attending the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe from 1959 to 1966, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1966 to 1967, then was an organ scholar at Queens' College, Cambridge from 1967 to 1970.
In 1967, while his father was Vicar of Wooburn, Buckinghamshire, Richard founded the Wooburn Festival and eventually became its President. The Festival is ongoing and features music, drama and the visual arts. Richard also founded the Wooburn Singers and continued as conductor until succeeded by Stephen Jackson. Hickox founded the City of London Sinfonia in 1971, remaining music director until his death, and also founded the Richard Hickox Singers and Orchestra in the same year. The Richard Hickox Singers feature in Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, released in 1985. He was the director of music at the St. Endellion Music Festival from 1972 to 2008. In 1972 at the age of only 24 he was appointed Martin Neary's successor as organist and master of music at St. Margaret's, Westminster (the church of the Houses of Parliament), subsequently adding the directorships of the London Symphony Chorus (1976) and Bradford Festival Choral Society (1978). From 1982 to 1990, he served as Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia. He was Associate Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1985 until his death. He was also Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus from 1976 to 1991, with whom he premiered The Three Kings by Peter Maxwell Davies in 1995. He also premiered A Dance on the Hill in 2005, by the same composer. His repertoire included over 100 first performances.
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. The first of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches (1901) is well known in the English-speaking world.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture – such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida.
Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard opera repertoire a century and a half after their composition.
Verdi was born the son of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi and Luigia Uttini in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The baptismal register, on 11 October lists him as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The next day, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin as Joseph Fortuninus Franciscus. The day after that (Tuesday), Verdi's father took his newborn the three miles to Busseto, where the baby was recorded as Joseph Fortunin François; the clerk wrote in French. "So it happened that for the civil and temporal world Verdi was born a Frenchman."
Vaughan Williams: Richard Hickox on "The Pilgrim's Progress"
Camina Burana - BBC Proms 1994
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, opera in three acts, Z. 626 | Richard Hickox
Vaughan Williams: Richard Hickox on the composer
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Serenade to Music - Northern Sinfonia - Richard Hickox
Edward Elgar - The Banner of St George - Richard Hickox
Henry Purcell - Dido and Aeneas - Richard Hickox (HD 1080p)
Hector Berlioz - Les nuits d'ete (Janet Baker with Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia)
JOHN IRELAND: Elegy - City of London Sinfonia - Richard Hickox
Handel: “Alcina - highlights” (Arleen Auger & Richard Hickox, 1985)
Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem - London Symphony Orcherstra, Richard Hickox (Audio video)
Frank Bridge - Serenade H. 23 (Richard Hickox)
Percy Grainger - English Dance (Richard Hickox)
Richard Strauss op 88 no 1, Das Bächlein Heather Harper; Richard Hickox, London Symphony Orchestra