Bringing Music to the Community for over a Century

Conductor: Adrian Partington

Adrian Partington Adrian is a musician of rare versatility and has subsequently enjoyed success as conductor, chorus master, pianist and organist.

He is a widely acknowledged choral conductor: the Artistic Director of the BBC National Chorus of Wales, Conductor of the Bristol Choral Society and the Chorus of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Associate Conductor of the Oxford Bach Choir. In January 2008, he became Director of Music at Gloucester Cathedral, and joint conductor of the Three Choirs Festival.

Since taking up the BBC appointment in 1999, Adrian has prepared the BBC National Chorus of Wales for a dozen or more concerts and recordings per year for BBC Radio 3, many of which he has conducted himself.

Until 2000, Adrian was conductor of the City of Birmingham Youth

Chorus and Associate Conductor of the CBSO Chorus. He has prepared choirs for some of the great conductors of the past quarter of a century—Haitink, Abbado, Rattle, Tortelier and Elder. Under Adrian's guidance, the Bristol Choral Society has maintained its place as one of the leading big city choirs in the UK. Performances are given with leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with which the chorus has particularly close ties.

Adrian has worked extensively with many of the principal choirs in the country—The London Symphony Chorus, The Philharmonia Chorus and the Bach Choir. He directed the BBC Symphony Chorus for the Opening Night of the Proms in 1995.

He has also worked with some of the UK's leading orchestras: the BBC National Orchestra of Wales being one he conducts every season, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which he has directed for several 'Summer Proms', the Mozart Festival Orchestra, with whom he is touring in the Autumn of 2007, and the English Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, both of which he has conducted in orchestral programmes at the Three Choirs Festival.

In 2001, for Welsh National Opera, he conducted the first performance of the community opera Katerina by Ruth Byrchmore and has subsequently conducted several similar projects. The much-acclaimed City Songs, a community drama for soloists, schoolchildren and symphony orchestra was revived at the Birmingham Hippodrome in 2007.
When not conducting, Adrian is active as a pianist and an organist. Her performs in an established duo with the international Baroque violinist, Margaret Faultless and plays continuo with the English Chamber Orchestra, Florilegium (with which he performs the famous annual St Matthew Passions at the Royal Festival Hall) and Collegium Musicum 90, with which he has featured on many Chandos CDs.

 

 Adrian was Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge and accompanied the chapel choir in the famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and on recordings and tours. He has enjoyed organist's posts at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and Worcester Cathedral, where he was organist and assistant conductor for the Three Choirs Festival of 1984, 1987 and 1990. He has performed solos with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Brass section of the Berlin Philharmonic. He has recorded a dozen solo CDs and given recitals across Europe, the USA and Australia.