Warwick Braithwaite
| Warwick Braithwaite | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Henry Warwick Braithwaite |
| Born |
9 January 1896 Dunedin, New Zealand |
| Died | 19 January 1971 (aged 75) London, England |
| Years active | 1919–1971 |
| Relatives |
Joseph Braithwaite (father) Rodric Braithwaite (son) Nicholas Braithwaite (son) Jill Braithwaite (daughter-in-law) John Braithwaite (brother) Rewi Braithwaite (brother) Roderick Braithwaite (brother) David Braithwaite (nephew) |
Henry Warwick Braithwaite (9 January 1896 – 19 January 1971) was a New Zealand-born orchestral conductor. He worked mostly in Great Britain and was especially known for his work in opera.
Braithwaite was one of the youngest of a large number of children (at least 16 and as many as 22 children, but the records are inadequate) born to Joseph Braithwaite and Mary Ann Braithwaite (née Bellett) in Dunedin. His father was later mayor of Dunedin between 1905 and 1906.
The family were musical – the Braithwaite family would perform Gilbert and Sullivan to friends and relatives in their 20-room house in Dunedin, and his elder sister Mabel Manson emigrated to England before he was born, where she made a considerable career as a singer.
Braithwaite's brothers included John Braithwaite, who was convicted and executed for mutiny during World War I and pardoned by the New Zealand government in 2000, and Rewi Braithwaite, who played in New Zealand's first official international soccer match, against Australia in 1922.
Braithwaite served briefly in the New Zealand armed forces during World War I. He won various competitions as both a composer and pianist and then followed his sister to England in 1916 as the Goring Thomas Compositions Scholar at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where studied composition and piano.
He joined the O’Mara Opera Company as chorus master, a touring opera company run by the Irish tenor Joseph O'Mara, and with them made his debut as a conductor with Auber’s Fra Diavolo in 1919. After this he joined the British National Opera Company as a repetiteur and also in 1922 spent a year working for Bruno Walter at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. When Walter left to go to America, Hans Knappertsbusch was appointed to the job and immediately terminated the employment of any non-Germans working for the company. Thereafter he became the first Assistant Musical Director of 2LO, the precursor to the BBC, and then moved to the BBC's Cardiff 5WA Station Orchestra where he conducted many of the first UK performances of Sibelius’ music. That orchestra was closed down when the BBC decided to centralise its efforts and put its money into the newly formed BBC Symphony Orchestra in London under Sir Adrian Boult.
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