Leaper studied horn and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music and for eight years was co-principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra. [1] He was Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria from 1994 until 2001, [2] when he became conductor of the RTVE Symphony Orchestra in Madrid until 2010. [3] [4]
He has made many recordings for the Naxos Records label. [5] He has conducted all four major London orchestras, the Moscow, Vienna and Prague Symphony Orchestras in addition to many other radio, philharmonic and symphony orchestras around the world. [6]
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH was a British conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an English orchestra, founded in 1893 and originally based in Bournemouth. With a remit to serve the South and South West of England, the BSO is administratively based in the adjacent town of Poole, since 1979. The orchestra is resident at Lighthouse in Poole, with other major concert series given at Portsmouth Guildhall, the Great Hall of Exeter University and Bristol Beacon. Shorter series are also given in Bournemouth and Basingstoke.
Dennis Brain was a British horn player. From a musical family – his father and grandfather were horn players – he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force, playing in its band and orchestra. After the war, he was the principal horn of the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, and played in chamber ensembles.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades.
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg, where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses. He was a success in England conducting Wagner at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1914, and in 1919 was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Marin Alsop is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2020.
Vernon George "Tod" Handley was a British conductor, known in particular for his support of British composers.
Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
Okko Tapani Kamu is a Finnish orchestral conductor and violinist.
David Russell Hulme is a Welsh conductor and musicologist. He is an emeritus reader and the former director of music at Aberystwyth University and is known for his research and publications on the music of Arthur Sullivan, the composer of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. He is also an authority on the music of Edward German.
JoAnn Falletta is an American conductor.
José Serebrier is a Uruguayan conductor and composer. He is one of the most recorded conductors of his generation.
Kirill Karabits is a Ukrainian conductor.
David Alan Miller is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American symphony orchestra conductor, and since 1992, music director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Miller served as assistant and associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1987–92 and music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1982-88. He is currently also Artistic Advisor to both the Sarasota Orchestra and to The Little Orchestra Society in New York City.
Béla Drahos is a Hungarian conductor and flautist.
Jean-Jacques Kantorow is a French violinist and conductor.
Jack Gallagher is an American composer and college professor. His compositions include orchestral, chamber, piano and choral works. He has written two symphonies, which have both been recorded.
Theodore Kuchar is an American and Ukrainian conductor of classical music and a violist.
Sebastian Weigle is a German conductor and horn player. He is currently principal conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.