John Carewe (born 24 January 1933) is a British conductor and teacher.
Biography
Very early in his student career at the Guildhall School of Music, Carewe gave up his original intention of being a composer and turned to conducting. His teachers, nevertheless, were all composers:
Walter Goehr and
Max Deutsch (both
Schoenberg pupils),
Messiaen (with whom he studied in Paris on a French Government scholarship) and
Pierre Boulez.[1][2]
In 1958, he founded the New Music Ensemble and gave many British premieres of music by composers including
Birtwistle,[3]Boulez,[4]Bennett,[5]Maxwell Davies,[6] and appeared at most of the major British festivals, including the BBC
Proms.[1][7] He was one of the three conductors in the first British performance of
Stockhausen’s Gruppen, given in Glasgow in 1960.[8][9]
In 1966, at the invitation of
Sir William Glock, Carewe became principal conductor of the
BBC Welsh Orchestra,[1] and held the post until 1971. From 1974 to 1986, Carewe was music director of the Brighton Philharmonic Society. He was principal conductor of The
Fires of London between 1980 and 1984.[10][11]
From 1993 to 1996, Carewe was Generalmusikdirektor (General Music Director) of the
Chemnitz Opera, which encompassed its resident orchestra, the Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie.[14]
Carewe's pupils have included Sir
Simon Rattle.[15] He frequently worked with the Bundesjugendorchester[16] and taught conducting at both the Royal Academy of Music[17] and the Royal College of Music in London. He has served on the jury of the
Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition.[15]
Carewe's recordings include Debussy's
Pelléas et Mélisande (recorded in 1988 after performances at Nice Opera),[18] and Milhaud's La Création du Monde and Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale (recorded with a chamber ensemble from the London Symphony Orchestra).[19]
Carewe has two daughters,
Mary, a vocalist, and Anna, a cellist.[20]
^Rupprecht, Philip (2015). British Musical Modernism: The Manchester Group and their Contemporaries. King's College London: Cambridge University Press. p. 119.
ISBN978-1316297988.