Albert Coates (musician)

Early years

Coates was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the youngest of seven sons of a Yorkshire father, Charles Thomas Coates, who managed the Russian branch of an English company, and Mary Ann Gibson, who was born and raised in Russia to British parents. He learned the violin, cello and piano as a child in Russia, and was raised in England after turning twelve. After attending the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth,

Coates returned to Russia to join his father's company, but was drawn to conducting in Artur Nikisch's conducting classes.

Nikisch appointed Coates répétiteur at the Leipzig opera, and he made his debut as a conductor in 1904 with Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. In the same year, he was invited by Eduard Nápravník to conduct in St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre.

Coates's conducting of Siegfried at the Mariinsky led to his appointment as principal conductor of the Russian Imperial Opera, a post he held for five years, during which he became associated with leading Russian musicians, including Alexander Scriabin, In July 1910, he married Ella Lizzie Holland.

International career

Coates first appeared at Covent Garden in 1914 in a Wagner season. He won critical praise for his performance of Tristan und Isolde and particularly for his conducting of Die Meistersinger. His conducting of Puccini's Manon Lescaut later in the same season was also well received, his Parsifal less so.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 did not at first adversely affect Coates. The Soviet government appointed him "President of all Opera Houses in Soviet Russia", based in Moscow. By 1919, however, living conditions in Russia had become desperate. Coates became seriously ill, and with considerable difficulty left Russia with his family by way of Finland in April 1919. After his arrival in England, he was appointed chief conductor of the LSO. Reviewing his first performance in the post, The Times praised him warmly, along with the younger Adrian Boult and Geoffrey Toye, in an article on "The Conductor's Art". In September 1919, he was appointed to teach a new class for operatic training at the Royal College of Music. Reporting the appointment, The Times wrote, "There can scarcely be a musician in this country with so wide and cosmopolitan an experience of operatic performance."

The following month, there occurred an incident for which Coates is remembered in many books and articles. The LSO gave the world premiere of Elgar's Cello Concerto under the baton of the composer, but Coates, who was conducting the rest of the programme, appropriated most of Elgar's allotted rehearsal time. As a result, the orchestra gave a notoriously inadequate performance. Elgar did not complain publicly, but the musical world knew privately of Coates's behaviour. With this exception, Coates served English composers well in the post-war years, giving the first performances of large-scale works including Vaughan Williams's revised A London Symphony (1920), Delius's Requiem (1922), Bax's First Symphony (1922), and Holst's Choral Symphony (1925). He conducted many other early performances of music by contemporary English composers, including the second complete performance of Holst's The Planets in 1920, two years after its premiere. Among works from continental Europe introduced to England by Coates were Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto, each with its composer as soloist. In January 1926, he gave the first stage performance outside Russia of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Invisible City of Kitezh, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

After his contract with the LSO expired in 1922, Coates held no more permanent conductorships in the UK, although he directed the Leeds music festivals of 1922 and 1925. Coates left Rochester in 1925 as a result of a disagreement with the orchestra's sponsor, George Eastman, over artistic policy. The reason for his failure to secure a permanent position in the UK was, according to one commentator, that although he was a fine conductor of opera and of Russian concert music, "his interpretations of the Viennese classics were less acceptable" and as the latter were more important in British musical life, "Coates failed to win for himself the highest reputation among his own countrymen."

Later years

In 1925, Coates was invited to Paris to conduct at the Opéra. He continued to make regular guest appearances in many of the world's artistic centres until 1939. He conducted opera in Italy (1927 to 1929) and Germany (Berlin State Opera, 1931), and concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (1935) and in the Netherlands, Sweden and the USSR, which he visited three times.

On 13 November 1936 the BBC broadcast the world's first televised opera: scenes from Coates's Pickwick, directed by Rosing, were shown in advance of the work's premiere. In 1938 he conducted George Lloyd's opera 'The Serf' at Covent Garden with The New English Opera Company, directed by Rosing.

When World War II broke out, Coates moved to the US. There, together with Rosing, he founded the Southern California Opera Association. Productions included Coates's opera Gainsborough's Duchess. He guest conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and worked briefly in Hollywood, making cameo appearances in two 1944 MGM films, Two Girls and a Sailor and Song of Russia.

In 1946, Coates moved to South Africa, accepting the conductorships of the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra and, later, the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra. He settled in Milnerton, Cape Town, with his second wife Vera Joanna Nettlefold (a soprano professionally known as Vera de Villiers), and died there in 1953. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says of him "Although he was important to the fortunes of the London Symphony Orchestra immediately after the First World War, his contribution to British musical life was ephemeral. As a composer he has lost his place in the repertory, and as an executant he is remembered generally by collectors with an interest in historic recordings."

Compositions

In its obituary of Coates, The Times wrote that his compositions "fell between the two stools of national character and international sympathy, with a resulting ambiguity of achievement." His concert works included a piano concerto and a symphonic poem The Eagle, dedicated to the memory of his former teacher Nikisch, which was performed in Leeds in 1925.

Recordings

Coates made early contributions to the representation of orchestral music on record, beginning in 1920 with Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy and afterwards conducting many excerpts from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and (in 1923 and 1926) two complete recordings of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Personal life

Albert Coates was married twice. In 1910 he married Ella Holland, with whom he had one daughter, Tamara Sydonie Coates, who became a professional oboist. Coates' grandchildren include violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch and doublebass player Paul Miller. His great-grandchildren include composer Benjamin Wallfisch, cellist and baritone Simon Wallfisch and singer-songwriter Joanna Wallfisch. Later in life, Coates married South African mezzo-soprano Vera de Villiers, née Johanna Veronique Waterston Graaf. He also had an affair with Angel Records founder Dorle Soria, uncovered after Soria's death.

Sources

References

1. "Albert Henry in "General Register Office: Foreign Registers and Returns. Registrar General"".
2. Holden, Raymond, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67630 "Coates, Albert Henry (1882–1953)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 27 February 2011 {{ODNBsub
3. he studied science at [[Liverpool University]].Kennedy, Michael, [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/05999 "Coates, Albert," ] ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford Music Online, accessed 27 February 2011 {{subscription required}}
4. Liner notes to EMI CD CZS 5 75486 2 (Albert Coates: Great Conductors of the Twentieth Century series), EMI 2002
5. Leipzig Conservatory]], to study the cello with [[Julius Klengel]] and the piano with [[Robert Teichmüller]],University of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig, archive, A, I.1, 7943 (study documents)
6. Tchaikovsky]]'s [[Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky). First Piano Concerto]] and [[Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven]]'s [[Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven). Seventh Symphony]]. ''[[The Times]]'' judged him "sound and artistic", though "not particularly inspiring to watch.""Music", ''The Times'', 27 May 1910, p. 10
7. "Tristan und Isolde", ''The Times'' 20 February 1914, p. 8
8. "Die Meistersinger", ''The Times'', 23 February 1914, p. 10
9. "Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden", ''The Times'', 25 April 1914, p. 6
10. "Parsifal at Covent Garden", ''The Times'', 24 April 1914, p. 7
11. [http://www.naxos.com/person/Albert_Coates/32333.htm "Albert Coates"], Naxos Records, accessed 27 February 2011
12. "The Conductor's Art", ''The Times'', 30 April 1919, p. 15
13. "Mr. Albert Coates's New Post", ''The Times'', 18 September 1919, p. 8
14. Lloyd-Webber, Julian, [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3665153/How-I-fell-in-love-with-E-Es-darling.html "How I fell in love with E E's darling"], ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', 17 May 2007; and Anderson, Keith, Liner notes to Naxos CD 8.550503, Dvořák and Elgar Cello Concertos (1992), p. 4
15. Newman, Ernest. "Music of the Week", ''The Observer'', 2 November 1919
16. Moore, p. 347; and "Heifetz in Elgar's Concerto", ''The Times'', 26 November 1920, p. 10
17. "This Week's Music", '' The Times'', 6 December 1920, p. 10
18. "Royal Philharmonic Society, Delius's Requiem", ''The Times'', 24 March 1922, p. 10; and "The New 'Requiem' by Frederic [sic] Delius", ''[[The Manchester Guardian]]'', 23 March 1922, p. 8.
19. "Two Choral Composers – Holst and Vaughan Williams", ''The Times'', 17 October 1925, p. 10
20. Kennedy, pp. 66–67
21. In 1923, he was appointed joint principal conductor with [[Eugene Aynsley Goossens. Eugene Goossens]] of the [[Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra]] in the US. He was among the co-founders of [[Vladimir Rosing]]'s pioneering [[American Opera Company]].[[Quaintance Eaton. Eaton, Quaintance]], "Advance Guard", ''[[Opera News]]'', 27 February 1971, pp. 28–30
22. "Mr. Albert Coates", ''The Times'', 13 April 1925, p. 9
23. (18 November 1938). "The Serf".
24. He conducted the 1929 first recording of [[Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach]]'s [[Mass in B minor]], BWV 232, and the 1930 premiere recording of Rachmaninoff's [[Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
25. Brook, Donald. (1947). "Conductors Gallery - Biography". Stellenbosch University Library Archives.
26. de Jongh, Santie. (7 August 2007). "Biographical History".
27. (2024-04-15). "Book Review: "Master Lovers" -- An Inventive and Intelligent Fictional Memoir - The Arts Fuse".