Colin Davis

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For the former Formula One driver, see Colin Davis (driver)

Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE (b. September 25, 1927), is a British conductor. He was born in Weybridge, Surrey, UK. Davis studied the clarinet at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was barred from taking conducting lessons owing to his lack of ability at the piano. Nonetheless, he formed and often served as conductor of the Kalmar Orchestra with fellow students.

In 1952, Davis worked at the Royal Festival Hall, and in the late 1950s conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He first found wide acclaim when he stood in for an ill Otto Klemperer in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959. A year later, he stood in for Thomas Beecham in similar circumstances in Mozart's The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne .

In the 1960s he worked at Sadler's Wells Opera[1] and the London Symphony Orchestra. He also served as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1971 he succeeded Georg Solti as principal conductor at the Royal Opera House, where he had given occasional performances before, remaining there until 1986. He became noted for championing the operas of Michael Tippett, giving the premieres of his works The Knot Garden (1970), and The Ice Break (1977). In 1977 he became the first English conductor to appear at the Bayreuth Festival (dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner) where he conducted Tannhäuser.

Davis was Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1984. He subsequently was Chief Conductor at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 1993. In 1991, Davis was named 'Conductor Laureate' (Ehrendirigent) of the Staatskapelle Dresden, the first conductor in the orchestra's history to hold that title. In 1995, Davis began his tenure as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). From 1998-2003, he was Principal Guest Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Davis concluded his tenure as the LSO's Principal Conductor on 31 December 2006, and became President of the LSO on 1 January 2007.

Davis has developed from the enthusiastic, impulsive firebrand of his early years into a mature master; yet he remains as passionate and involved in his work as ever. He is essentially a visionary and an inspirational conductor, and has often managed to bring those characteristics into the recording studio. His extensive discography ranges from thrilling accounts of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (with the RPO) and Oedipus rex (with Sadler’s Wells), both from 1961, through much Mozart and Berlioz (Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito, Benvenuto Cellini, Roméo et Juliette and Les Troyens are especially notable) to his pioneering Tippett, his impassioned Sibelius and his powerfully individual readings of Britten’s Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw.

Aside from his championing of Tippett and his interpretations of Mozart, Davis is particularly closely associated with the music of Hector Berlioz, giving many performances of his operas and orchestral works and conducting the first complete set of his works on disc (recorded by Philips), Benjamin Britten, and Jean Sibelius.[2][3] He has recorded all of the major works of Berlioz and many of the works of Tippett, as well as the complete piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt with Claudio Arrau.

The following is a list of his recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Philips:

Davis received a knighthood in 1980. He is also International Chair of Orchestral Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

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[edit] Personal life

His father, Reginald, was a soldier during World War I. His mother, Lillian, played the piano. He had two brothers, Norman and Howard and four sisters. Howard worked as a clerk at the Bank of England, and died in World War II. Norman became a teacher of classics and died in the 1960s. Yvonne is retired from teaching. Colin Davis attended Christ's Hospital in Sussex before studying clarinet in London

In 1949, Davis married the soprano April Cantelo. They had two children, Suzanne and Christopher. Their marriage ended in 1964, and in that same year, Davis married the young Iranian woman who had been the family au pair, Ashraf “Shamsi” Naini. To satisfy both the Iranian and British authorities, the couple were married three times, once in Iran and twice in the UK, in the Iranian Embassy as well as in a regular UK civil ceremony. They have five children, Kurosh (b. 1966), Farhad (b. 1967), Kavus (b. 1968), Sheida (b. 1977), and Yalda (born 1979).[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Best Since Beecham?", Time, 25 July 1960. Retrieved on 2007-07-21. 
  2. ^ Andrew Clements. "The Trojans, Proms 47 & 48", The Guardian, 27 Aug 2003. Retrieved on 2007-04-18. 
  3. ^ Anthony Tommasini. "For Sibelius, A Free Flow With Clarity", New York Times, 27 Apr 2002. Retrieved on 2007-04-18. 
  4. ^ John O'Mahony. "Calm after the storm", The Guardian, 21 Sep 2002. Retrieved on 2007-04-18. 

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Colin Davis at Allmusic

Preceded by
Georg Solti		 Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
1971–1987		 Succeeded by
Bernard Haitink
Preceded by
Rafael Kubelík		 Chief Conductor, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
1983–1993		 Succeeded by
Lorin Maazel
v • d • e
BBC Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductors

Adrian Boult (1930) · Malcolm Sargent (1950) · Rudolf Schwarz (1957) · Antal Doráti (1962) · Colin Davis (1967) · Pierre Boulez (1971) · Rudolf Kempe (1976) · Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1978) · John Pritchard (1982) · Andrew Davis (1989) · Leonard Slatkin (2000) · Jiří Bělohlávek (2006)
v • d • e
London Symphony Orchestra Principal Conductors

Hans Richter (1904) · Edward Elgar (1911) · Arthur Nikisch (1912) · Thomas Beecham (1915) · Albert Coates (1919) · Willem Mengelberg (1930) · Hamilton Harty (1932) · Josef Krips (1951) · Pierre Monteux (1960) · István Kertész (1965) · André Previn (1968) · Claudio Abbado (1979) · Michael Tilson Thomas (1987) · Colin Davis (1995) · Valery Gergiev (2007)