Eleanor Warren | |
---|---|
Born |
Eleanor Catherine Warren 15 June 1919 London |
Died | 25 August 2005 | (aged 86)
Nationality | United Kingdom |
Known for | Cellist and music producer |
Spouse(s) | Walter Susskind |
Eleanor Catherine Warren or Eleanor Catherine Rutherford Warren (15 June 1919 – 25 August 2005) was a British cellist and music producer.
Warren was born in London in 1919; her father was William Rutherford Warren. Her Jewish German mother, Elsa Julia, née Seligman, was a cellist. Warren was playing as a small child and she was enrolled in the London Cello School. Warren was the youngest ever pupil at the age of five. (Jacqueline du Pré was to also study at the age of five in the 1950s). By the time she left the school as a teenager she had met many important musicians.
In 1936 she started the first phase of her career when Gregor Piatigorsky assisted her in getting her first concert appearance as a cellist. By the time of the second world war she was a member of the Ebsworth Quartet and they would tour factories to entertain the workers, play at the National Gallery and in air-raid shelters. She married Walter Susskind in 1943. After the war she continued to play and to teach. The quartet ended in the 1950s and she joined a trio until a back injury indicated a change of direction. She divorced her husband in 1953. She subsequently worked with the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Zorian Quartet and the English Baroque Ensemble. She also took part in film sessions with Malcolm Arnold, Jacques Loussier and Richard Rodney Bennett.
She joined the BBC in 1964 and in 1969 she organised a series of broadcasts from a music venue of her own devising. She had identified that the restored St John's Church in Smith Square was an ideal venue for BBC radio concerts. One of its advantages was its distance from traffic noise including underground trains. Each Monday lunchtime the music concerts would be broadcast on BBC Radio until the church was rebuilt.