| Biography Conductor Pianist Teacher On Teaching Conducting Contact |
Trained originally as a pianist under Wight Henderson at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, Alan Hazeldine was a Governor's Recital Prize winner there playing Beethoven's Opus 111 Sonata and Liszt's E major Polonaise in his final recital. He went on to win a place on the Advanced Conducting Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where, on completion of his course, he was awarded the Principal's Conducting Prize and the Kapsalis Cup for Conducting. From London he went to Italy where he studied with the legendary Sergiu Celibidache and onto Bulgaria where he spent a year working with Konstantin Iliev at the Bulgarian State Conservatoire.
His work since then has been mainly as a conductor and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia as well as with Scottish Ballet and English National Ballet.
He has been musical director of the London based Corinthian Chamber Orchestra since their formation in 1995. The CCO promotes their own series of concerts in St James's, Piccadilly and has a policy of providing an excellent platform for younger British soloists, and composers, in central London. The orchestra promoted its own cycle of Beethoven symphonies in the Regent Hall in London and has gained an enviable reputation for giving fine performances of a wide variety of music. (See www.coninthianorchestra.org.uk)
Recently he was a guest of the Bulgarian State Conservatoire in Sofia where, under the auspices of the British Council, he conducted a series of classes and gave a concert with the fully professional orchestra attached to the conservatoire. During his last visit to Sofia he conducted a concert of Beethoven, Mozart and Pekov (contemporary Bulgarian) with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2002 he was also invited to be the co-chair of the selection panel charged by the government of Cyprus to select a new musical director for the Cyprus State Orchestra and has been invited back to Nicosia as guest conductor.
On his return from abroad he was appointed to the staff of the
Guildhall School of Music and was soon the Musical Director of the drama
college. He prepared several musicals for the college and established a
sound musical training for the actors in their second and third years.
He subsequently moved to the music college and has been responsible for
building a conducting course as part of the graduate, and now
degree, course in the college. This course, when followed up by
post-graduate study, has produced some
fine conductors, several of whom now hold good positions across Europe.
Two of his students, having trained on the Guildhall Course, won
the competition for the assistantship of the Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra, one going on to win the Donatella Flick International/LSO
Conducting Competition.
As a result of his reputation as a
professor at the Guildhall School and as a conductor, Alan Hazeldine has
several times been invited to visit Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, where he conducted
their orchestra, symphonic wind band and choir as well as teaching
conducting and piano on the faculty. He has maintained his interest in
the piano and returned to concert performance on that instrument in
1995, giving several recitals in and around London and playing Mozart's
K466, D minor Concerto, while conducting from the keyboard in St James's
Piccadilly.