Lionel Friend

About the artist

Lionel Friend was born in London and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he won all the major conducting prizes. His teachers included Sir Adrian Boult, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and Sir Colin Davis.After further study at the London Opera Centre he was engaged by Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera as conductor, chorus-master and assistant to John Pritchard and Bernard Haitink. Subsequently he held positions in Germany and with English National Opera, conducting a wide range of composers including Mozart, Rossini, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Janá_ek, Puccini, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Berg, Weill and Britten.

His symphonic repertoire is equally broad, and in Britain he has conducted concerts with the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He has also appeared with the BBC Symphony, including at the BBC Proms, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Elsewhere in Europe he has worked with the Orchestre National de France, Hungarian National Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Austrian Radio Symphony in addition to orchestras in Denmark, Norway and Germany.

Notably with the BBC Symphony and the Nash Ensemble he has given many performances of 20th-century works, including over 100 premières. He has conducted numerous radio recordings and his CDs include music by Stravinsky, Schönberg, Debussy, Poulenc and Britten.

Currently his concert and opera engagements take him around the world: in recent seasons conducting Mozart in Holland and Northern Ireland, Puccini in USA, Verdi in Brazil, Wagner in Australia, Schubert at the Buxton Festival and concerts in Budapest, Brussels, Perth, Frankfurt and London.

Lionel was appointed Conductor-in-Residence at Birmingham Conservatoire in August 2003.