Alex Lindsay

Alex Sylvester Lindsay (born May 28, 1919 in Invercargill , † December 5, 1974 in Okiwi Bay , Rai Valley, Marlborough) was a New Zealand violinist , orchestra conductor and music teacher .

Life

Alex Lindsay was the third of four children of the businessman Sydney Alexander Lindsay and his wife Ethel Frances, b. Cavanagh. He inherited his enthusiasm for sport from his father, and he owed his mother's love for theater, cinema and, above all, music. He was able to live out both at Southland Boys' High School. Lindsay received his first violin lessons at the age of nine from WJ Ferguson , who was one of the leading violinists in the Southland region at the time.

In 1937, at the age of 17, he left New Zealand to study violin at the Royal College of Music in London . a. at WH Reed and Albert Sammons . To complete his education, he led the theater orchestra in Stratford-upon-Avon for 6 months and took on a small role as band leader in the English film "Danny Boy" from 1941. In the same year he got a job with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham , where he played the second violin. In 1942 he married Kathleen Mary Wenlock Jones in Little Malvern / Worcestershire, whom he had met at the Royal College of Music. Only three years later he was drafted into the Royal Navy, in 1945 he moved to the Royal New Zealand Navy and returned to New Zealand.

In New Zealand in July 1946 he became one of the founding members of the "National Orchestra", today's New Zealand Symphony Orchestra , where he quickly rose to "sub-leader". Against the background of his London experience, Lindsay was shocked by the low musical and technical level of the orchestra and its director, so that he gave up his position after just one year. Following the example of the Boyd Neel Orchestra , which he had met on their tour in 1947, he taught and founded his own orchestra in 1948, the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra , with which Lindsay mainly played contemporary music. The orchestra existed until 1973. In 1963 Lindsay took a break, returned to Europe for a few years, studied conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum and took part in the violin classes of André Gertler and Max Rostal . He was also a sought-after musician, played with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields , took part in an international tour of the London Symphony Orchestra and became first violinist second violin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra , and soon held the same position with the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 1967, Lindsay finally returned to New Zealand, where he married his former student Angela Alison Connal after divorcing his first wife in December 1969 in Christchurch . His own string orchestra, which had since been renamed the "Lindsay String Orchestra of Wellington", had given very successful concerts in his absence, and Lindsay also conducted the gala concert for the orchestra's 20th anniversary on July 3, 1968, but he had meanwhile lost interest in a pure string orchestra and turned to symphonic music - in 1973 the orchestra disbanded. Lindsay has been concertmaster of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation New Zealand Symphony Orchestra since 1967 , where he conveyed the technical and musical standards that he had met in London, mainly to young musicians. After a very successful tour of Australia with the orchestra that he led in October 1974, Lindsay died unexpectedly in December of a brain tumor .

Discography (selection)

Recordings with the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra under the direction of Alex Lindsay:

• David Farquhar: Ring Round the Moon: Dance Suite for small orchestra
• Ashley Heenan: a square dance for strings
• Douglas Lilburn : Landfall in Unknown Seas for string orchestra and narrator
• Larry Pruden: Dances of Brittany, for String Orchestra
• John Ritchie : Concertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra (Soloist: Frank Gurr), recording. 1962

Web links

• Adrienne Simpson : Lindsay, Alex Sylvester . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography , Volume V, 2000 . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand , October 30, 2012, accessed October 11, 2016 . 
• About Alex Lindsay . New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO),accessed October 11, 2016.