In England, he built his reputation at first as a composer: his Symphonic Poem (1918) was presented by the
Royal College of Music; he himself conducted its professional premiere at the Queen's Hall in 1922, and the work was published as the result of a
Carnegie Award. The first modern performance and recording was broadcast on 24 October 1995, played by the
BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by
Barry Wordsworth.[7] In 1920
Lilian Baylis appointed Collingwood as the chorus master for her opera company at the
Old Vic in London. Despite the poor conditions he persevered and made a significant contribution to the improved musical standards at the company.[1] He conducted opera at the Old Vic and
Sadler's Wells Theatre, becoming principal conductor at Sadler's Wells in 1931.[8] His steady hand did much to establish Sadler's Wells as a viable alternative to
Covent Garden.[9] He gave early British performances of operas by
Mussorgsky and
Rimsky-Korsakov.[5] His own first opera, Macbeth, was presented there under his own direction on 12 April 1934, with
Joan Cross singing Lady Macbeth.[10] Music from the opera had already been played in the
Queen's Hall on 10 November 1927 and it would be revived in Hammersmith in 1970.[1] A recording of excerpts from Collingwood conducting Lohengrin during his Sadler's Wells years survives, with Henry Wendon in the title role, plus Joan Cross and Constance Willis, offering an example his work at the time.[1]
In January 1934, he conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra in a recording of the Triumphal March from Caractacus and the Woodland Interlude by Sir
Edward Elgar, supervised by the composer himself by telephone from his sickbed before his death a month later.[11]
Although most of his professional life was spent in Britain, Collingwood travelled to Berlin to supervise recordings by
Yehudi Menuhin and
Wilhelm Furtwängler, and to oversee the 1956 Meistersinger conducted by
Rudolf Kempe. In 1950 and the following year he played a key role in recordings involving
Pablo Casals, first in
Prades then in
Perpignan.[1]
His second opera, The Death of Tintagiles, set to Alfred Sutro's translation of
Maurice Maeterlinck's drama, was premiered on 16 April 1950. His other compositions include a piano concerto and a piano quartet.[4]
Lawrance Collingwood brought many foreign operas to the British stage for the first time.[12] His premieres as a conductor included:
Nikolai Medtner dedicated his song The Raven to Lawrance Collingwood.
Collingwood died in
Killin,
Perthshire, Scotland on 19 December 1982, aged 95.[4]
Record producer
Concurrently with his conducting activity Collingwood worked in the recording industry; from 1926 to 1957 he was a musical supervisor for the Gramophone Company (later EMI) and was Musical Advisor from 1938 to 1972. He remained a freelance, retained for a certain number of sessions per week for which he was sent plans each week.[1] From the 1920s he supervised nearly all
Edward Elgar's recordings for HMV and was also given the task of providing electrical orchestral accompaniments to go with acoustic recordings by
Enrico Caruso and
Luisa Tetrazzini.[1]
^
ab"School Notes"(PDF), Westminster Abbey Choristers' Magazine, 1909, p. 3
^The Wycombiensian, September 1957, p. 360 – the school magazine of the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe: "D.J. Watson (1903–09)... wondered whether he was the Lance Collingwood who was at the R.G.S. when Watson entered in 1903. It was the same person... L.A. Collingwood, a Westminster Abbey choirboy, was sent to the school by Sir Frederick Bridge, the Abbey organist and a brother-in-law of Mr. G.J. Peachell, then headmaster of the school." Lance was perhaps his school nickname.