About
Neville Dilkes
Conductor
“A conductor of stature in large-scale works,” wrote one critic after hearing Neville Dilkes conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time. Others have described his performance as “fresh and alive in every detail”, as “having rare insight”, and as being “unashamedly expressive, much in the way Barbirolli’s used to be”.
Neville Dilkes (born 28 August 1930) is an English conductor and organist. Born in Derby, England to a musical family, piano lessons began at the age of six, and his talent was immediately evident. He became a fellow of Trinity College of Music, Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and did his National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Later he taught at Repton School before becoming Director of Music at Corby Grammar School in 1955. Whilst there he brought together a number of musicians from the Midlands and formed the Kettering Symphony Orchestra in 1958.
In 1961 he formed Opera da Camera, a chamber opera group which gave it’s first performance at Harpole Hall in Northamptonshire. The Midland Sinfonia orchestra was formed the same year in November and later renamed the English Sinfonia. In 1963 he attended the Netherlands Radio International Conductors’ Course, where his principal tutor was Dean Dixon. In 1964 he became the inaugural winner of the Watney Sargent Award for conductors. The Midland Sinfonia acquired a permanent office in Nottingham in 1966 and gave it’s first London Concert at the Queen Elisabeth Hall in 1968. It was renamed the English Sinfonia.
Neville Dilkes became a frequent broadcaster worldwide, and has toured extensively, both as a guest conductor and with his own orchestra in most European countries and the USA.
His close and long-standing relationship as a recording artist with EMI has enabled him to reach wide audiences, and to record a large repertoire with particular emphasis on British music.
A few recordings...
