Edgar Bainton

Edgar Bainton

Edgar Leslie Bainton (born February 14, 1880 in London , † December 8, 1956 in Sydney ) was a British composer , conductor , pianist and teacher .

Life

Bainton received a piano scholarship from the Royal College of Music in London at the age of 16 . His teachers were Walford Davies , Sir Charles Stanford and Charles Wood . In 1899 he won the Wilson Scholarship. In 1901 he was appointed professor of composition and piano in Newcastle upon Tyne . In 1912 he became director of the conservatory and a year later conductor of the local philharmonic orchestra. When the First World War broke out in 1914, he was in Germany for the Bayreuth Festival and was interned there until 1918.

In 1919 he was the first Briton to be invited to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam in two concerts of British music. After his return to Newcastle, he successfully continued his interrupted activities there, for which the University of Durham awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Music in 1934. In the same year he left Europe to take up the position of director of the State Conservatory of New South Wales in Sydney . He held this position until 1947.

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As a composer, Bainton was able to celebrate considerable success at times. His Symphony Before Sunrise , for choir and orchestra, with contralto-alto solo (based on three poems from Swinburne's Songs Before Sunrise ) and his Concerto-Fantasia for piano and orchestra were awarded the Carnegie Trust Prize. In addition to two operas, he wrote various symphonic, sacred and chamber music compositions and songs. After he left the United Kingdom, his works disappeared from the concert business. Only small piano pieces and songs for lessons could last. More recently people have started to rediscover their work and record it on CD.

Web links

• Helen Bainton: Bainton, Edgar Leslie (1880-1956). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography . National Center of Biography, Australian National University, accessed May 24, 2018 .