Kathleen Riddick

Last updated

Kathleen Riddick (17 July 1907 - 5 February 1973) was a British musician, one of the first women in Britain to establish herself in the male-dominated profession of conducting. To do so at a time when it was "considered impossible" for a woman to become a conductor [1] Riddick was initially obliged to found her own ensembles to lead. They included the Surrey Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932 (of which she was the conductor for 40 years), the London Women's String Orchestra (later the Riddick Orchestra) in 1938, and The London Opera Group Orchestra which was led by Miriam Morley. But she also appeared as guest conductor of BBC orchestras and the London Symphony Orchestra. [2]

Contents

Education and early career

She was born at Epsom in Surrey into a musical family: both her parents were professional musicians and her father was the conductor of an amateur orchestra in Epsom. At the age of 10 she began studying cello at the Guildhall School of Music with Arnold Trowell (1887-1966), also taking composition courses. Her first professional engagements were as cellist for the Serre Trio (with Daphne Serre, piano, and Queenie Dyer, violin), which made regular BBC broadcasts in the early 1930s. [3] In 1932 she also founded the Surrey String Players in Leatherhead, recruiting local amateurs. [4] Later in the 1930s, Riddick gained a recommendation from Robert Jaffrey Forbes, principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music, to study conducting with Nikolai Malko in Salzburg. [5]

Orchestras

In 1945 the Surrey String Players became the semi-professional Surrey Philharmonic Orchestra. By May 1951 it had gained enough prestige to premiere Gordon Jacob's Horn Concerto at the Wigmore Hall with soloist Dennis Brain and Jacob himself conducting. [6] This was followed on 29 October 1951 with a concert at the recently opened Royal Festival Hall, including the premiere of Stanley Bate's Introduction and Allegro, op 24, a work dedicated to Kathleen Riddick. [7] She remained conductor of the Surrey Philharmonic for forty years until 1972, a year before her death. It is still playing today, conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald, a student of Norman Del Mar. [8]

Concurrently, Riddick founded a second, fully professional ensemble, the London Women's String Orchestra, which performed for the first time on 25 May 1938 at the Aeolian Hall, to very positive reviews. The programme included the challenging Music for Strings by Arthur Bliss. J A Westrup commented that "Riddick proved her worth by getting good results without any fuss or display. The absolute certainty of the ensemble was a sufficient tribute to her work at rehearsal". [9] The orchestra engaged with contemporary composers, taking on UK and world premieres of music by Stanley Bate, Henk Badings, Arnold Cooke, Paul Hindemith, Bohuslav Martinů, Alan Ridout and others. The name was changed to the Riddick String Orchestra in 1944. It performed in regular concerts and BBC radio broadcasts from then until the early 1960s, sometimes under the baton of guest conductors. [10]

Other conducting engagements included guest appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Bedford, 26 November 1943), [11] the BBC Northern and BBC Scottish orchestras, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra. [12]

Personal life and legacy

In 1934 Kathleen Riddick married the musician George Bixley (1905-1995) and they lived at 1 Fountain Cottages, The Street, Ashtead in Surrey. Their daughter, Susan Bixley, was born in 1944 and is still involved with the Surrey Philharmonic Orchestra today. [8] Kathleen Riddick was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 for services to music.

Along with a very few predecessors (such as Rosabel Watson, Florence Ashton Marshall, Gwynne Kimpton and Ethel Leginska) [13] and her near contemporaries Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Iris Lemare and Kathleen Merritt, [14] Riddick was one of the pioneers who opened up the world of conducting to women musicians in Britain. She inspired Ruth Gipps to begin her own conducting career. [15] Like Riddick, all of these conductors also had to found their own orchestras in order to build up their reputations. (Nadia Boulanger was an exception: visiting from France in 1936, she became the first woman to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra). [16]

Selected premiere performances

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violin Concerto (Sibelius)</span> Concerto in three movements by Jean Sibelius

The Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 of Jean Sibelius, originally composed in 1904 and revised in 1905, is the only concerto by Sibelius. It is symphonic in scope and included an extended cadenza for the soloist that takes on the role of the development section in the first movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paavo Berglund</span> Finnish conductor and violinist

Paavo Allan Engelbert Berglund was a Finnish conductor and violinist.

Peter Racine Fricker was an English composer, among the first to establish his career entirely after the Second World War. He lived in the US for the last thirty years of his life. Fricker wrote over 160 works in all the main genres excepting opera. He was a descendant of the French playwright Racine.

Ruth Dorothy Louisa ("Wid") Gipps was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos and many chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered in London on March 19, 1896, by the English cellist Leo Stern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns)</span>

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns was composed in 1868 and is probably Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concerto. It was dedicated to Madame A. de Villers. At the première on 13 May the composer was the soloist and Anton Rubinstein conducted the orchestra. Saint-Saëns wrote the concerto in three weeks and had very little time to prepare for the première; consequently, the piece was not initially successful. The capricious changes in style provoked Zygmunt Stojowski to quip that it "begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach."

Ralph Vaughan Williams dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to Arnold Bax.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 of Béla Bartók is a musical composition for piano and orchestra. The work, which was composed between 1930 and 1931, is notorious for being one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. Playing time is 26–29 minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Brosa</span> Spanish violinist (1894–1979)

Antonio Brosa was a Spanish violinist, mostly active in the UK.

Stanley Bate was an English composer and pianist.

The Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra, Op. 77 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in 1962. It is in three movements:

  1. Allegro risoluto
  2. Andantino
  3. Vivace – Presto

Ross Pople is a New Zealand-born British conductor. He is the principal conductor of the London Festival Orchestra. He has worked with Yehudi Menuhin, Clifford Curzon, David Oistrakh, Kentner, George Malcolm, Sir Adrian Boult, Rudolf Kempe, Benjamin Britten, Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Michael Tippett, Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, George Benjamin, John Casken, Edwin Roxburgh, Luciano Berio, John Tavener, Malcolm Arnold, Pierre Boulez as well as many other major orchestras, choirs and soloists.

Martin Yates is a British conductor. After attending Kimbolton School, he studied at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music, London, where his teachers included Bernard Keeffe (conducting), Richard Arnell (composition), Ian Lake, Jakob Kaletsky and Alan Rowlands (piano), and Douglas Moore and John Burden.

Charles William Eric Fogg was an English composer, conductor and BBC broadcaster. His early works were influenced by Igor Stravinsky, though his later pieces owe more to Granville Bantock and Richard Strauss and even William Walton. Much of his music has been lost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Power</span>

Lawrence Power is a British violist, born 1977, noted both for solo performances and for chamber music with the Nash Ensemble and Leopold String Trio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alissa Firsova</span> Russian composer

Alissa Firsova is a Russian-British classical composer, pianist and conductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chamber Symphony No. 1 (Schoenberg)</span>

The Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 is a composition by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Peter Gregory Rose is a conductor, composer, arranger, and music director. He has conducted orchestral, choral and ensemble premieres throughout Europe and the Far East.

Stanley Herbert Wilson was a British composer and music teacher.

Eva Kathleen Merritt was a British conductor who led her own orchestra from the 1920s into the 1970s. She was best known as a pioneering woman conductor, and for her local music-making in Petersfield, Hampshire.

References

  1. ↑ Hartley, Cathy. A Historical Dictionary of British Women (2013), p 372
  2. ↑ Obituary, The Musical Times, April 1973, p 415
  3. ↑ Radio Times, Issue 574, 30 September 1934, p 45
  4. ↑ The Times, 6 June 1933, p 15
  5. ↑ Musik und Gender im Internet, Hamburg (in German)
  6. ↑ 'London Concerts' in The Musical Times, July, 1951, p 324
  7. ↑ Note: The Times obituary initially cited Riddick as "the first woman to conduct in the Royal Festival Hall". But it later ran a correction when Marjorie Jaco wrote in to say that she had conducted the choir of the Church of the Holy Cross, Crediton in the finals of the National Music Festival on June 22, 1951. The Times, 3 March 1933, p 16
  8. 1 2 Surrey Philharmonic Orchestra website
  9. ↑ The Daily Telegraph, 26 May 1938, p 12
  10. ↑ Radio Times, Issue 1095, 24 September 1944, p 17
  11. ↑ Palmer, Russell. British Music (1948), p 203
  12. ↑ Obituary, The Times, 10 February 1973, p 18
  13. ↑ Bromley Symphony Orchestra
  14. ↑ Petersfield Orchestra
  15. ↑ Ruth Gipps interviewed on BBC Radio Woman's Hour, March 1989, excepted in Composer of the Week, 11 March 2021, 2.40 minutes in
  16. ↑ Brooks, Jeanice. 'Telling the Story of Nadia Boulanger's Conducting Career', in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 92-116

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.