Christopher Hyde-Smith (11 March 1935 – 25 February 2024) was a British
flautist
The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...
.
Christopher Hyde-Smith's flute playing has been compared in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' to Sir
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier ( ; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director. He and his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud made up a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the m ...
's acting in variety of expression, characterization and style. He has played all over the
British Isles
The British Isles are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner Hebrides, Inner and Outer Hebr ...
and at many festivals including
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk District, East Suffolk district, in the English county, county of Suffolk, England, north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the comp ...
, the
Three Choirs Festival
200px, Worcester cathedral
200px, Gloucester cathedral
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held annually at the end of July, rotating among the cathedrals of the Three Counties (Hereford, Gloucester, and Worcester) and originally fe ...
,
North Wales
North Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdon ...
and
York
York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...
. He has made many trips abroad appearing as soloist in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Scandinavia, Spain and Switzerland as well as North and South America. He has also visited Russia in an ensemble directed by
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...
. He has performed with
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló (Catalan: ; 29 December 187622 October 1973), known in English as Pablo Casals,[Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among th ...]( ...<br></span></div>, <div class=)
,
Paul Tortelier
Paul Tortelier (21 March 1914 – 18 December 1990) was a French cellist and composer. After an outstanding student career at the Conservatoire de Paris he played in orchestras in France and the US before the Second World War. After the war he bec ...
and
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
.
Hyde-Smith has played the
Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa (; 17 December 1749 – 11 January 1801) was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan School and of the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the best known of which is ''Il matrimonio segreto'' (1792); most of his ...
Concerto for Two Flutes with
James Galway
Sir James Galway (born 8 December 1939) is an Irish virtuoso flute player from Belfast, nicknamed "The Man with the Golden Flute". After several years working as an orchestral musician, he established an international career as a solo flute pl ...
at the
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London, England. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a G ...
and as concerto soloist he has frequently appeared with the
London Mozart Players
London Mozart Players (LMP) are a British chamber orchestra founded in 1949. LMP are the longest-established chamber orchestra in the United Kingdom. Since 1989, the orchestra has been Resident Orchestra at Fairfield Halls, Croydon.
History Begin ...
and also with the
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...
,
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London, England.
The RPO was established by Thomas Beecham in 1946. In its early days, the orchestra secured profitable recording contracts and important engagemen ...
,
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a music organisation based in Liverpool, England, that manages a professional symphony orchestra, a concert venue, and extensive programmes of learning through music. Its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmo ...
,
BBC Concert Orchestra
The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale sym ...
, Scottish and Welsh Orchestras, Philomusica and Northern Sinfonia.
William Alwyn
William Alwyn (born William Alwyn Smith; 7 November 1905 – 11 September 1985), was a prolific English composer, Conducting, conductor, and music teacher who composed over 200 cinematic scores, of which some 70 were for full-length features, ...
,
Stephen Dodgson
Stephen Cuthbert Vivian Dodgson (17 March 192413 April 2013) was a British composer and broadcaster. Dodgson's prolific musical output covered most genres, ranging from opera and large-scale orchestral music to chamber and instrumental music, as ...
,
Joseph Horowitz
Joseph Horowitz (born 1948 in New York City) is an American cultural historian who writes mainly about the institutional history of classical music in the United States. As a concert producer, he promotes thematic programming and new concert f ...
,
William Mathias
William James Mathias CBE (1 November 1934 – 29 July 1992) was a Welsh composer noted for choral works.
Biography
William Mathias was born in Whitland, Carmarthenshire. A child prodigy, he started playing the piano at the age of three and b ...
,
John Metcalf and
Alan Rawsthorne
Alan Rawsthorne (2 May 1905 – 24 July 1971) was a British composer. He was born in Haslingden, Lancashire, and is buried in Thaxted churchyard in Essex.
Early years
Alan Rawsthorne was born in Deardengate House, Haslingden, Lancashire, to ...
have written and dedicated works to him.
Hyde-Smith was a professor of flute at the
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...
, where he also studied. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1985. He was the founding chairman of the
British Flute Society. He played on a golden flute.
Harpist
Marisa Robles
Marisa Robles (born 4 May 1937) is a Spanish harpist and composer.
She was born in Spain, where she studied the harp with Luisa Menarguez, and studied music at the Madrid Conservatory, graduating at the age of sixteen in 1953. She made her conc ...
and Hyde-Smith were married in 1968, later divorced. They had two children.
Jane Hyde-Smith (née Jane Dodd) and Christopher were married in 1985 and have two daughters, the younger of whom is cellist
Abigail Hyde-Smith. Hyde-Smith died on 25 February 2024, at the age of 88.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyde-Smith, Christopher
1935 births
2024 deaths
British classical flautists
Place of birth missing
Academics of the Royal College of Music
Alumni of the Royal College of Music