Herbert Menges

Herbert Menges OBE (27 August 1902 – 20 February 1972) was an English conductor and composer, who wrote incidental music to all of Shakespeare’s plays.

Life and career

Siegfried Frederick Herbert Menges was born in Hove on 27 August 1902. His father was German and his mother British.^[1] His elder sister was the violinist Isolde Menges.^[2] Herbert appeared in public as a violinist at the age of four. He later abandoned the violin for the piano, and he studied at the Royal College of Music under Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.^[1] Other teachers included Mathilde Verne and Arthur De Greef.^[3]

Menges's mother founded the Brighton Symphony Players. Although it did not adopt that name until 1958,^[4] the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra dates its genesis to a concert given by the Brighton Symphony Players on 18 May 1925^[4] in the Hove Town Hall, conducted by Herbert Menges.^[5] He remained the orchestra's musical director for the remaining 47 years of his life, and conducted the orchestra 326 times.^[5] He conducted the premieres of a number of works by contemporary English composers.^[3]

In 1931 he became musical director of the Old Vic Theatre, in which capacity he wrote (or arranged from composers such as Henry Purcell^[6]) incidental music for all the plays of William Shakespeare, and numerous plays by other writers.^[1] Notable among these was his music for a 1949 production of Love's Labour's Lost.^[7] He was associated with the productions of John Gielgud from 1933 onwards. His assistant there for three years was John Cook. He remained with the Old Vic until 1950.^[8]

He also became musical director of the Royalty Theatre in London. In 1931 he founded the London Rehearsal Orchestra, whose purpose was to help young musicians learn difficult pieces.^[5]

In 1951 he wrote the music for the Laurence Olivier-Vivien Leigh Broadway production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.^[9] That same year, Malcolm Arnold dedicated his A Sussex Overture, Op. 31, to Herbert Menges and the Brighton Philharmonic Society.^[10]

He had conducting engagements with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Sadler's Wells Theatre Orchestra. He became Director of Music at the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1962.^[3]

Herbert Menges was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1963.^[3] He died on 20 February 1972, in London, aged 69.^[11]

His name now appears as tribute on some Brighton and Hove buses.^[5]

Many of his letters and scores are held at McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.^[8][12]

His son, born 1940, is the Academy Award winning cinematographer Chris Menges.^[13]

Recordings

Herbert Menges made a number of recordings, almost all of which were of concertante works:

• Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concertos No. 1-5, Philharmonia Orchestra, Solomon^[5][14][15]
• Johannes Brahms, Violin Concerto in D, London Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Szigeti^[16]
• Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor, Moura Lympany^[17]
• Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Philharmonia Orchestra, Solomon
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 23 and 24, Philharmonia Orchestra, Solomon^[18][19]
• Sergei Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Philharmonia Orchestra, Shura Cherkassky^[20]
• Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1, London Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Szigeti^[21]
• Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Shura Cherkassky^[22]
• Alan Rawsthorne, Piano Concerto No. 1, Philharmonia Orchestra, Moura Lympany^[23]
• Edmund Rubbra, Piano Concerto in G, Op. 55, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jacques Abram^[24]
• Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Philharmonia Orchestra, Solomon
• Dmitri Shostakovich, Piano Concerto No. 1 (for piano, trumpet and strings), Philharmonia Orchestra, Shura Cherkassky^[20]
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, London Symphony Orchestra, Byron Janis^[25]
• Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Tortelier.
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Wasps, overture, London Symphony Orchestra^[26]
• Herbert Menges: Suite of incidental Music to the play 'Richard of Bordeaux' (1932) performed by Instrumental Septet conducted Menges with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (soprano) (Side 1 only). Decca K 727

See also

• Internet Broadway Database

References