Elgar Howarth (born 4 November 1935) is an English conductor, composer and trumpeter.
Elgar Howarth (born 4 November 1935) is an English conductor, composer and trumpeter.
Howarth was born at Cannock, Staffordshire. He was educated in the 1950s at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music (the predecessor of the Royal Northern College of Music), where his fellow students included the composers Harrison Birtwistle, David Ellis, Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies and the pianist John Ogdon. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group dedicated to the performance of new music. [1]
He has worked with all leading British orchestras, as well as many orchestras worldwide. He played the opening bars of Tippett's King Priam at its Coventry premiere in 1962, (conducting the whole work years later for English National Opera). [2] He has conducted many operas, and premiered György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm in 1978 and four operas by Harrison Birtwistle: The Mask of Orpheus at English National Opera (1986), Yan Tan Tethera for Opera Factory (1986), Gawain at the Royal Opera House in London (1991) and The Second Mrs Kong at Glyndebourne (1994). [3] He was Principal Guest Conductor of Opera North from 1985 to 1988, and Music Advisor to the company from 2002 to 2004.
As a composer and former trumpet player, he writes mainly for brass instruments. Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger has premiered several of his works on cornet, including his Cornet Concerto, Canto, and Capriccio. He has written arrangements such as The Carnival of Venice Variations for brass ensemble [4] and Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition arranged for Philip Jones Brass Ensemble (Howarth himself participated in this group as a player and conductor). Composer Roy Newsome remarks that "Howarth's masterly rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1979) dwarfed all previous transcriptions." [5]
He was brought up in a brass band family and has maintained his interest in the art form. Howarth has made a huge contribution to the modern repertoire of brass band music. Many of his works are recorded, most notably by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band [6] and the Eikanger-Bjørsvik band. He also was one of the trumpeters who performed with The Beatles on the song "Magical Mystery Tour".
A number of personal copies of works he has conducted (some including annotations) are catalogued [7] at the University of East Anglia's School of Music. [8]
In December 2003, he was revealed to have rejected a CBE. [9]
Sir Harrison Birtwistle was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time (1972) and the operas The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991), and The Minotaur (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". He received many international awards and honorary degrees.
Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost.
In Britain, a brass band is a musical ensemble comprising a standardized range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 19th century, with a vibrant tradition of competition based around communities and local industry, with colliery bands being particularly notable. The Stalybridge Old Band, for example, first performed in 1815 and is still in existence, although it did not become a brass band until the 1840s.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.
Brassed Off is a 1996 British comedy-drama film written and directed by Mark Herman and starring Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor.
The Grimethorpe Colliery Band is a brass band, based in Grimethorpe, South Yorkshire, England. It was formed in 1917, as a leisure activity for the workers at the colliery, by members of the disbanded Cudworth Colliery Band. Along with the Black Dyke Mills Band, the band became the first to perform at the Proms. Grimethorpe Band achieved fame after appearing in the film Brassed Off.
Ian Bousfield is an English musician who has held positions as Principal Trombone with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra. Also a pedagogue, Bousfield is an instructor in the music division at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, Switzerland.
Ulf Håkan Hardenberger is a Swedish trumpeter, conductor, and professor at the Malmö Academy of Music.
Arthur William Wills OBE was an English musician, composer and professor, born in Coventry. He was director of music at Ely Cathedral from 1958 to 1990 and also held a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1992. He toured extensively as a recitalist in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. He also broadcast, appeared on television and made many recordings, both as a soloist and with Ely Cathedral Choir.
Harry Mortimer was an English composer and conductor who specialised in brass band music, one of the foremost cornet players of his era.
James Gourlay is a Scottish conductor and tubist.
Roger Webster is an English cornetist and psychologist. He has been acclaimed as one of the world's best ever cornetists. He also teaches performance at the Royal Northern College of Music as well as giving lectures on psychology. Webster has played with some of the world's best brass bands.
Sergeant Charles Leggett was a Brighton-born cornetist who became known as "The World's Finest Cornet Soloist," and who was the favorite cornet soloist of King Edward VII.
Frank Renton is a British musician, conductor and broadcaster, and former host of Listen to the Band on BBC Radio 2.
New Music Manchester refers to a group of English composers and performers who studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music and Manchester University in the 1950s. The Manchester School is principally identified with the composers Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, and together with the pianist John Ogdon and the conductor and trumpeter Elgar Howarth they formed the group New Music Manchester. Others associated with the group include David Ellis and Rodney Friend. Its members played a significant role in reshaping the landscape of British music in the later 20th century.
Peter Bassano is an English conductor.
Nigel Clarke is a British composer and musician. He is a former head of composition and contemporary music at the London College of Music and Media.
Robert Bernat was an American composer and the founder, artistic director, and conductorof the River City Brass Band in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His musical influences included his mentor, Aaron Copland, as well as other American composers including Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, and John Philip Sousa.
Howard Dunster Snell was born in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, England.
James Shepherd was an English cornet player from Northumbria, described as one of the world's most respected players of the instrument, having won the Championship Soloist of Great Britain Prize in three consecutive years (1962-4). He was principal cornet of Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band from 1960 to 1963, then the Black Dyke Band from 1963 to 1973, before forming a brass ensemble, James Shepherd Versatile Brass, which he led until 1989. He was also principal cornet of the Virtuosi Brass Band, a recording ensemble assembled by Eric Ball.
During the 1970s there was a spate of transcriptions of Tudor music, mainly by Elgar Howarth. However, Howarth's masterly rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1979) dwarfed all previous transcriptions.
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