Albinoni, Rose and Friends

From one of the oldest, and most loved, oboe concertos to one of the newest, with a world premiere from Gregory Rose in celebration of his 75^th birthday. Both performed by renowned oboist George Caird, a long-standing friend of Rose, the evening will also feature two works for string orchestra. Janáček’s Idyll Suite, previously recorded for Chandos by the Jupiter Orchestra, will be performed alongside Tchaikovsky’s heartfelt Serenade for Strings.

‘Throughout, Gregory Rose directed with the authority and dedication that make his concerts regularly among the liveliest and most original…’ The Independent

About the artists

Gregory Rose

Gregory Rose celebrates his 75^th birthday on 18 April.  Brought up in Bampton, he was a violin pupil of the legendary Frances Kitching and studied Music at Magdalen College Oxford in the 1960s, as an Academical clerk under his father, Bernard Rose. He returned to live in Oxford several years ago.

As a conductor he is particularly noted for his performances of the romantic and contemporary repertoires, having conducted over a thousand premieres of orchestral, choral and ensemble works throughout Europe and the Far East. Orchestras include the Finnish Radio Symphony, St Petersburg Symphony, London Philharmonic, Polish National Radio Symphony and the Royal Scottish National orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestras of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Eire, the BBC Concert Orchestra, his own Jupiter Orchestra & Singers, and the amplified vocal ensemble Singcircle. Choirs include the Groupe Vocal de France, the Nederland Kamerkoor, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Latvian Radio Choir and the BBC Singers.

Gregory has worked closely with composers such as Stockhausen, Cage, Steve Reich, Lachenmann and Birtwistle. For the Almeida Festival, he directed “Cage at 70” in 1982, and “Reich at 50” in 1986.  He has directed over fifty performances of Stockhausen’s Stimmung, including performing with the composer himself, as well as making an award-winning CD of the work in 1980, shortly after directing a performance at the BBC Promenade concerts.  He collaborated on the premiere recording of John Cage’s Song Books on the Sub Rosa label and has conducted orchestral arrangements for Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, and Madness.

In the field of opera and music theatre he has conducted performances of operas by Bizet, Scott Joplin, Igor Stravinsky, Samuel Barber, Virgil Thomson, Berthold Goldschmidt, Nino Rota, Poulenc, Gian Carlo Menotti, Malcolm Williamson, Toshio Hosokawa and Edward Jessen, and music-theatre works by Prokofiev, Luciano Berio, Peter Maxwell Davies, Jonathan Harvey and Karlheinz Stockhausen.  He has participated in festivals throughout Europe, including two BBC Proms concerts with Singcircle.  He has recorded for many international television and radio stations, and has made highly acclaimed recordings for Chandos, Hyperion, Wergo, Continuum, October Music, Toccata Classics, Dacapo and Naxos. He has been a staff conductor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance since 1996.

Gregory Rose is a prolific composer, with well over a hundred orchestral, instrumental, and choral pieces and arrangements to his name. This includes over twenty masses, and his Missa Sancta Pauli Apostoli won the Liturgical category of the 2006 British Composer Awards. His music-theatre piece Danse macabre, was described as “…an absorbing musical masterpiece” and was released on a much-acclaimed CD in 2015.  He has been composer-in-residence at Texas Wesleyan University and the Southwestern Oklahoma State University in the USA.  The main publisher of Gregory’s scores is Verlag Neue Musik (Berlin). Other publishers include OUP, Boosey & Hawkes, Novello and Colla Voce Music.

Two further CDs of his compositions have been released – selected choral music and selected orchestral works. Future premieres include the song cycles Sigiri Mirror Wall  (baritone and piano), The Air We Breathe for Julia Hollander and Peter McMullin, Penguins in Love (mezzo-soprano and piano), and Surrexit pastor bonus (unaccompanied choir).  The new Oboe Concerto is dedicated to George Caird.

George Caird

George studied the oboe with Janet Craxton and Evelyn Barbirolli at the Royal Academy of Music, with Helmut Winschermann at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie, and privately with Neil Black.  He gained an MA in music at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating to pursue a freelance career as an oboist.  He worked with many of London’s major orchestras including the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, City of London Sinfonia and was a member of The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields from 1983 to 1993. George has also been a member of a number of ensembles, notably as a founder-member of The Albion Ensemble, Vega Wind Quintet and Caird Oboe Quartet.

In addition to many orchestral recordings, he has recorded CDs of solo and chamber music repertoire including ‘An English Renaissance’ of quintets and quartets for oboe and strings, and Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid as part of his published study on that work. Among the works written for him are Paul Patterson’s Duologue, John Gardner’s Second Oboe Sonata, Andrew Downes’ sonata, In the Gardens of Burdwan, John Mayer’s Abhut Sangit and in chamber music, Elizabeth Maconchy’s Wind Quintet, Paul Patterson’s Comedy for Winds and Jim Parker’s Mississippi Five. In April 2023, George will premiere the Oboe Concerto by Gregory Rose.

George  joined the Royal Academy of Music as professor of oboe in 1984, became Head of Woodwind in 1987 and Head of Orchestral Studies in 1989. In September 1993, he was appointed Principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, a post that he held until August 2010.  From 2011 – 2016, George was Artistic Director of the Classical Music Academy, Codarts Rotterdam, from 2017 – 2018, interim Principal of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and from 2020 – 2021, interim Principal of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. George continues to perform both as oboist and conductor, to teach the oboe at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, is President of the Barbirolli International Oboe Competition, President of the Bromsgrove International Music Competition, a Trustee of the National Children’s Orchestra and a Trustee of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. In December 2022, George was appointed as a Governor of the Royal Society of Musicians.