Alexander Walker (born 1973) is a British conductor. He currently holds the post of music director of the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra and the Northampton Symphony Orchestra.
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Walker obtained a degree in music at Bristol University, where he studied composition privately with John Gardner and later with Raymond Walker.[1] Following the completion of post-graduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Walker studied with Ilya Musin at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He has led orchestras throughout Russia, where many of his concerts have been broadcast nationally on television and radio. Walker served as principal guest conductor of the Voronezh State Symphony Orchestra from 1994 to 2004.[2]
In the UK Walker has conducted concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). He has also conducted the City of London Sinfonia, New Queens Hall Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Walker has also worked with many orchestras in Poland, Romania, the Balkans, Czech Republic, Finland, Turkey, Finland, and Denmark. Walker is an experienced opera conductor, who has worked for a number of companies including Opera North, Grange Park Opera, English Touring Opera, the Oundle International Festival, and the Chelsea Opera.[3] Writing of a production at the Chelsea Opera of Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, composer and critic Robert Hugill wrote that "under Alexander Walker's dynamic leadership both chorus and orchestra gave a tremendous performance of this neglected opera." [4]
In 2011, he conducted The Turn of the Screw, for the Istanbul State Opera, the first time an opera by Benjamin Britten has ever been staged in Turkey.[3] That year he also conducted the first ever production of Prophet and Loss by Julian Grant. Walker has also won recognition for his interpretations of lesser-known operas by Leoš Janáček, Moniuszko, and Shostakovich.[5]
He has worked extensively in Eastern and Central Europe and Scandinavia. Orchestras he has conducted have included the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra in Bucharest, the Prague Philharmonia, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Belgrade Strings.[2]
A champion of important music lost as a consequence of the political cataclysms of the twentieth century, Walker completed in 2011 a recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Polish-German composer Ignatz Waghalter’s Violin Concerto in A Major and Rhapsodie für Violine. The soloist is Irmina Trynkos. The expected release date of the CD by Naxos Records will be in the spring of 2012.[6]