- Gareth Walters
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Gareth Walters (born 1928) is a well-established contemporary composer who was born in Swansea, Wales, and completed his early education there. As a schoolboy, he began to compose, and he received early encouragement from the famous English composer, conductor and pianist, Benjamin Britten, who was a frequent guest at his family home. The English composer's visits were related to his preparations for the first recording of A Ceremony of Carols, for which Walters's father had suggested a local boys’ choir in Morriston.
In 1949, Gareth Walters entered the Royal Academy of Music, and after three years he was awarded a Royal College of Music scholarship to the Conservatoire National in Paris, where he continued his studies with Jean Rivier and Olivier Messiaen in the early 1950s, inheriting a formal elegance that has been a characteristic of his music ever since. Walters then travelled to Italy to study at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. While on his second period of study there in 1954, he received the offer of a teaching post in the Junior Exhibitioner section of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Gareth Walters returned to England to join the teaching staff of the Royal Academy of Music, and, two years later, he was appointed as a Producer in the Music Department of the BBC in London. He held both appointments for much of his professional life until 1988. Since then, as well as composition, his activities have included extended periods of examining (for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) and organising various concert series, including the annual Gower Festival in South Wales.
Gareth Walters' Divertimento for String Orchestra was his first work to appear on record, in 1970, although he had composed it in 1960. Played by the English Chamber Orchestra, and conducted by David Atherton, the piece has subsequently been recorded on three other occasions: in 2002 by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia for ASV, in 2003 by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for CBC, and most recently in 2007 by the Orquestra de Cambra Terrassa in Barcelona. Other works that have been recorded are Sinfonia Breve (1964), Elegy – a poem for string orchestra (1969), Overture: Primavera (1962), Gwent Suite (1959), Little Suite for Harp (recorded on a ‘Classics for Pleasure’ LP and re-issued on CD in 1998), Capriccio for guitar (1980), Two Harpsichord Suites and Two Elizabethan Suites (both of the latter appearing on a KPM LP in 1969).
List of Works
- Divertimento for String Orchestra
- Berceuse for harp
- Cân y galon (Song of the Heart), for soprano and string quartet
- Crown Imperial
- Overture: Primavera
- Iona
- Little Suite for Flute and Harp
- Poésies du soir (Poems of the Evening) for mezzo soprano and chamber ensemble
- Violin Sonata
- Two Harpsichord Suites (Music for the Court, and Court Dances)
- Two Elizabethan Suites
References
External links
Categories:- 1928 births
- Welsh composers
- Living people
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