Royalton Kisch

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Alastair Royalton-Kisch (20 January 1920 - 21 March 1995),[note 1] known professionally as Royalton Kisch, was an orchestral conductor, celebrated especially on the London music scene from 1947- to 1964. He gave regular performances in the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall as well as in other venues and British towns, but he also appeared in many concerts abroad, in Italy, Greece, Palestine (in 1946), France and in Austria at the Salzburg Music Festival. He also made records on the Decca label and broadcasts on the BBC. After a progressively worsening bad back he was forced to abandon the rostrum in 1964.

Biography

Born in Marylebone, London, the son of a noted solicitor, Ernest Royalton Kisch (an early mentor of both Edward Heath[1] and Arnold Goodman[2]) and Pamela Kisch, née Hart, Alastair Royalton-Kisch was educated at Heath Mount School in Hampstead, then Wellington College and Clare College, University of Cambridge.[3] However, his university degree was interrupted by war service.

Rather than follow the family tradition in the law, Royalton Kisch, inspired by a concert given by Sir Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Wellington College, decided to become a conductor.[4] While still a pupil there, with his friend Michael Heming,[note 2] he was very active musically, playing the clarinet, conducting the school orchestra and forming a madrigal group.[5] At Cambridge University he was a student of E.J. Dent, becoming President of the University Music Society. He was only the second undergraduate ever to be allowed to conduct the Society’s Orchestra and gave notable performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, in March 1940.[6] Before WW2 he also received permission from Sir Henry Wood to attend all the rehearsals for as well as the performances of the Promenade Concerts, then held at the Queen’s Hall, London, a privilege he made use of assiduously and for which he always felt grateful.

Diverted into the war effort, he served as Signals Officer in the King's Royal Rifles (60th Rifles) from 1940–46, mostly in North Africa and Italy, ending up in Greece.[note 3] While in Italy he organised no less than 21 concerts following the allied advance, from Salerno, Naples and Rome (where he became the first ever Englishman to conduct in the Rome Opera House) to Florence, Bari, Ancona, Pesaro and Forli, before being transferred on duty to Athens.[7]

He was demobilised while in Athens with the rank of Captain, but while in the city he conducted concerts at the ancient Herodus Atticus Theatre by the Acropolis and at the Olympia Theatre in mid-to-late 1945, and again in February 1946, when he conducted the National State Orchestra in Athens in a Festival of English Music under the patronage of the Minister for Education (G. Athanasios-Novas), the British Ambassador (Sir Reginald Leeper), and the British Council, represented by Sir Steven Runciman, an early supporter.[8] These were the first concerts that many in the audience (a large proportion of which was made up of British servicemen) had heard since hostilities were declared and, like the Italian concerts before them, they were accounted an exceptional success.[9]

Back in London in October 1946, Royalton Kisch rapidly established himself as a rising star among the younger generation of conductors. Helped by various supporters, including Runciman and also Harold Holt, he regularly appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, where he made his central London debut on 30 March 1947, aged 27 (then the youngest conductor ever to appear there), and later also at the Royal Festival Hall, conducting all the major British orchestras - the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and other regional orchestras, while at the same time participating in other ensembles.[10] He was also again invited to conduct abroad, with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra (Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire) and the Pasdeloup Orchestra of Paris, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (at the Salzburg Festival, where the subsequent reviews compared him with Bruno Walter).[11]

The Albert Hall concert of 30 March 1947 (with Moura Lympany playing Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto) was deemed such an extraordinary success that he was offered a recording contract with Decca Records the following day.[12] Thereafter he became a regular feature of the London and British music scene, also broadcasting many times for the BBC with the LSO, RPO and the Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as recording for Decca with the LSO, the New Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra (see discography below). His repertory spanned the classical and romantic periods, from Haydn to Brahms in particular - the latter a special favourite - but twentieth-century music, including mainly British composers but also Stravinsky and Honegger, was within his grasp.[13] Reviewers looking back on his recordings have described his conducting as "musical, crisp and stylish"[14] and "vigorous and suitably commanding, yet at the same time lyrical and sympathetic to the soloist".[15]

After he had to abandon his conducting career, he tried to form a record company, but was squeezed out by the established labels. He then turned to art, founding the Cork Street Gallery, specialising in British and French paintings, which he continued for most of the 1970s.[16]

In his retirement, he indulged his love of good food and wine (listed by him as his recreations in 'Who's Who') and fellow-members of the Athenaeum Club, London came to know of his ability to hold forth on any topic, often with considerable humour.[17] A devoted family man, he also committed himself to charitable work: he had founded what is now the RK Charitable Trust using all the money earned from his music and he also supported research undertaken by Dr Leslie Bunt and his colleagues into the use of music therapy in psychiatry for people with schizophrenia.[18]

In 1940 he married Aline, née Hylton Stewart, the cellist daughter of Bruce Hylton-Stewart and niece of Charles Hylton Stewart. They had two daughters and a son.[19]

Discography

All the recordings were made for Decca in the Kingsway Hall, London, beginning in 1947, and produced by John Culshaw apart from the Schumann and Mendelssohn, produced by Victor Olof.[20] Some were reissued on 33rpm, and later on CD. He was also involved with two films, High Treason (1951, as conductor) and Folly to Be Wise (1953, as musical director).[21] In March 2012, Classical Recordings Quarterly Editions produced a 2-CD set entitled Homage to Royalton Kisch.

  • Bellini, Qui la Voce, from I Puritani, with Erna Sack, National Symphony Orchestra
  • Bruch, Violin Concerto, with Alfredo Campoli, New Symphony Orchestra
  • Cimarosa, Overtures to Il matrimonio segreto and Gli Orazi ed I Curiazi
  • Delibes, Bell Song (Lakme), Erna Sack, New Symphony Orchestra.
  • Gluck, Overtures to Iphigenia en Aulide and Alceste
  • Haydn, Symphony no.92 (Oxford) National Symphony Orchestra.
  • Haydn, Symphony no.99 in Eb, London Symphony Orchestra.
  • Liszt, Piano Concerto No.1 in Eb, Moura Lympany, National Symphony Orchestra.
  • Mendelssohn, Rondo Brilliante, Moura Lympany
  • Mozart, Symphony no.32 in G. major. National Symphony Orchestra.
  • Rossini, La Danza, sung by Erna Sack, with New Symphony Orchestra.
  • Schumann, Piano Concerto in A, Moura Lympany, London Symphony Orchestra.
  • Sinigaglia, Overture, "La Baruffe Chiozotte", London Symphony Orchestra.
  • Smetana, Overture, "The Bartered Bride", London Symphony Orchestra.
  • Verdi et al., "Questo' quella" from "Rigoletto" and other arias by Donizetti, Flotow and Puccini sung by Eugene Conley, New Symphony Orchestra.

References

Notes

Citations

  1. ↑ See Edward Heath, The Course of My Life. My Autobiography, 1998, and A.N. Wilson, Our Times, 2008.
  2. ↑ See Goodman's obituary in The Daily Telegraph (London), 15 May 1995, and his autobiography, Tell them I'm on my Way, 1993.
  3. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  4. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  5. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  6. ↑ See Patmore, 2012, p.28 and Sanders, 2012, p.9.
  7. ↑ Concert programmes consulted. See also Sanders, 2012, p.9.
  8. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  9. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  10. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995; Patmore, 2012, p.28.
  11. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  12. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  13. ↑ Sanders, 2012, p.9.
  14. ↑ John H. Holmes, Conductors on Record, 1982, p.337.
  15. ↑ Patmore, 2012, p.29.
  16. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  17. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  18. ↑ L. Bunt, 'Music Therapy; an art beyond words',in Music and Adult Health, London, 1994, pp.206 and 208.
  19. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 7 April 1995.
  20. ↑ Patmore, 2012, pp.29-31.
  21. ↑ High Treason was scored by his contemporary at Wellington College, John Addison. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043637/fullcredits#cast [downloaded 05/01/2013] and http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm0457121/maindetails [downloaded 30/12/2012].

Footnotes

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