Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Arthur Collingwood CBE (14 March 1887 – 19 December 1982) was an English conductor, composer and record producer.

Collingwood was born in London and attended Westminster Choir School, beginning his musical career as a choirboy at Westminster Abbey from 1897-1902. Around 1903 he attended High Wycombe Royal Grammar School. Appointed organist at St Thomas's Hospital and then at All Saints, Gospel Oak, he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Exeter College, Oxford (1907–1911).

In the autumn of 1911 he went to Russia and enrolled at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory where he studied under Alexander Glazunov, Maximilian Steinberg and Nikolai Tcherepnin. After graduating Collingwood returned to England in 1918 to begin military service but went back to Russia and worked for some years as assistant conductor to Albert Coates at the Saint Petersburg Opera. He also conducted at the Mariinsky Theatre. He also served as interpreter for Winston Churchill's expedition in support of White Russian forces in Northern Russia (1918-1919). His two piano sonatas, which show the influence of Alexander Scriabin, were published in Saint Petersburg.

In England, he built his reputation at first as a composer: his Symphonic Poem (1918) was presented by the Royal College of Music; he himself conducted its professional premiere at the Queen's Hall in 1922, and the work was later published. In 1920 Lilian Baylis appointed Collingwood as the chorus master for her opera company at the Old Vic in London. Despite the poor conditions he preserved and made a significant contribution to the improved musical standards at the company. He conducted opera at the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells Theatre, becoming principal conductor at Sadler's Wells in 1931. His steady hand did much to establish Sadler's Wells as a viable alternative to Covent Garden. He gave early British performances of operas by Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. His own first opera, Macbeth, was presented there under his own direction on 12 April 1934, with Joan Cross singing Lady Macbeth. Music from the opera had already been played in the Queen's Hall on 10 November 1927 and it would be revived in Hammersmith in 1970. A recording of excerpts from Collingwood conducting Lohengrin during his Sadler's Wells years survives, with Henry Wendon in the title role, plus Joan Cross and Constance Willis, offering an example his work at the time.

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