Honor Sheppard | |
---|---|
![]() Sheppard from a 1959 newspaper article | |
Born | Elizabeth Honor Sheppard 23 December 1931 Leeds, United Kingdom |
Died | May 29, 2021 89) Cheshire, United Kingdom | (aged
Education | Royal Manchester College of Music |
Occupations | Classical soprano in |
Spouses | John Lawrenson (m. 1959)Robert Elliott (m. 1965) |
Children | 2 |
Honor Sheppard (23 December 1931 - 29 May 2021) was a classical soprano best known for singing oratorios and the Baroque repertoire. She was the longest serving soprano of the Deller Consort. She took part in the first professional performance of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. [1]
Elizabeth Honor Sheppard was born in Leeds to George Sheppard, organist at St Stephen's Church, Kirkstall and Winifred May Tonkin, an accompanist. She had one sibling. She began studying music at the age of six and attended Leeds Girls' High School. [2]
In 1952, while singing Bach's Christmas Oratorio at a church in Leeds, she was 'discovered' by Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra's conductor Maurice Miles. [3] He encouraged her to apply to the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM), where she studied singing with Elsie Thurston, full time for five years and subsequently part time. [4]
She married singer John Lawrenson in 1959. After their marriage ended, she married fellow RMCM student and harpsichordist Robert Elliott in 1965. They had two children and lived at The Firs, Altrincham (which had previously been owned by conductor Hans Richter). [5] She earned both teaching and performing diplomas from RMCM [6] in her third year, and in her fourth year (1956) she won the Curtis Gold Medal for Singing. [7]
By 1959, Sheppard was on the staff at RMCM. [8] Among others, she taught Tessa Bonner, Lynne Dawson and Sasha Johnson Manning. [9]
In March 1953, she sang the role of 'off-stage voice' in a live BBC radio broadcast of Ralph Vaughan Williams's new work Sinfonia Antarctica at Huddersfield Town Hall, which had been premiered in January. This was Sheppard's first broadcast. [10]
She sang with The Hallé, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, Aldeburgh Festival and Leeds Festival. [11] She would also perform recitals as a "celebrity couple" with her first husband John Lawrenson. [12]
She joined the Deller Consort in 1961, eventually becoming its longest serving soprano. [13] Of her career with the group she said, "There was a period when I could have established myself as a concert singer. The fact that I stayed to work constantly with Alfred speaks for itself. I am very much drawn to the music we [she and Alfred Deller] both loved." [14]
In 1967 she appeared as the soloist in a world premiere of Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 4 "Das Siegeslied" (1932–33). It was broadcast by the BBC and included the Halifax Choral Society, the Leeds Philharmonic Choir, the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, all conducted by Maurice Handford. [15] She gave the first performance of Alexander Goehr's Psalm IV Op. 38a in July 1976 at the City of London Festival. [16]
A selection of recordings include:
Year | Album | Ensemble | Conductor |
---|---|---|---|
1956 | Il ballo delle ingrate: Lamento d'Arianna | London Chamber Players | Alfred Deller |
1964 | Handel: Alexander's Feast | Oriana Concert Choir and Orchestra | Alfred Deller |
1966 | Havergal Brian: Symphony No. 1in D Minor | BBC Symphony Orchestra | Adrian Boult |
1970 | William Croft Vocal and Instrumental Chamber Music | Marjorie Lavers, Robert Elliott | |
1971 | Purcell and his Contemporaries | with Robert Elliott, harpsichord | |
1972 | Handel from Halifax | Halifax Choral Society | Donald Hunt |
1974 | Thomas Arne: Songs and Sonatas | with Robert Elliott, harpsichord | |
Airs baroques, airs anglais | Alfred Deller | ||
1975 | Songs and Sonatas | Royal Northern College of Music | |
1977 | Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony | BBC Symphony Orchestra | Adrian Boult |
1979 | Ode for the birthday of Queen Anne | Oriana Concert Orchestra and Choir | Alfred Deller |
William Havergal Brian was a prominent 20th-century English composer, librettist, and church organist.
Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer of contemporary classical music and conductor. Among the most influential British composers of his generation, his relatively few compositions are "rooted in 20th-century modernism, [but] beholden to no school but his own"
Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
Peter Alexander Goehr was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, George Benjamin and Robin Holloway.
Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors.
Margaret Balfour was an English classical contralto of the 1920s and 1930s. She is best remembered as the angel in Elgar's own recorded excerpts of The Dream of Gerontius (1927) and one of the 16 soloists in the original performance of Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music (1938).
Peter Donohoe CBE is an English classical pianist.
Rony Barrak is a Lebanese darbouka player and composer. He began playing the darbouka at four.
Mary Jarred was an English opera singer of the mid-twentieth century. She is sometimes classed as a mezzo-soprano and sometimes as a contralto.
Muriel Lucy Brunskill was an English contralto of the mid-twentieth century. Her career included concert, operatic and recital performance from the early 1920s until the 1950s. She worked with many of the leading musicians of her day, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Albert Coates, Felix Weingartner and Sir Henry Wood.
Marat Bisengaliev is a Kazakh violinist and conductor of both the West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra and TuranAlem Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra. He is the founding Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra of India. In addition, he is head of the Uralsk International Violin Competition. Most of the time he lives and works in the UK and India.
Geoffrey Winzer Gilbert was an English flautist, who was a leading influence on British flute-playing, introducing a more flexible style, based on French techniques, with metal instruments replacing the traditional wood. He was a prominent member of five British symphony orchestras between 1930 and 1961, and in 1948 he founded a chamber ensemble of leading wind players.
Martyn Charles Brabbins is a British conductor.
Leeds Philharmonic Chorus is a leading choir in Europe, regularly performing to professional standards with internationally renowned soloists, orchestras and conductors.
Lancelot Beresford Bryan Fairfax was an Australian conductor based in the United Kingdom, who was known for his championing of little known or neglected works.
Alexander Walker is a British conductor.
Ania Dorfmann was a Russian-American pianist and teacher, who taught at the Juilliard School in New York for many years and was the first of only a very few women pianists to play or record under Arturo Toscanini.
George Halford's Orchestra was a professional symphony orchestra based in Birmingham, England from 1897 to 1907 and an important precursor of the later City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
John Alexander Georgiadis was a British violinist and conductor. He was twice Concert Leader with the London Symphony Orchestra during the 1960s and 70s, a member of both the ensembles London Virtuosi and the Gabrieli String Quartet as well as conductor for both the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Royal Academy of Music.
Stansfield is a place in the civil parish of Todmorden, in the Calderdale district, in West Yorkshire, England, which gave its name to Stansfield Hall, Stansfield Hall Railway Station, and an electoral ward in Todmorden, Calderdale.