Hilary Davan Wetton is Artistic Director of the City of London Choir and Associate Conductor of the London Mozart Players. He is Conductor Emeritus of the Milton Keynes City Orchestra and the Guildford Choral Society.
A student of Sir Adrian Boult at the RCM, he won the Ricordi conducting prize in 1967. Over a career spanning 50 years, he is particularly admired for his interpretations of twentieth-century British music, conducting many first performances for British composers as well as neglected works by Gardner, Parry, Holst, Dyson, Bridge, Sterndale Bennett and Samuel Wesley.
His extensive discography includes recordings for Hyperion with both the Holst Singers and the GCS, a series of acclaimed recordings for Collins Classics with the LPO, including Holst’s Planets, Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, and discs for Naxos and EM Records with the CLC. He was awarded the Diapason d’Or for Holst’s Choral Symphony (Hyperion, 1994). In Terra Pax: A Christmas Anthology (Naxos, 2009) reached number two in the Gramophone classical chart and enjoyed wide critical success. Beethoven’s Der Glorreiche Augenblick (Naxos, 2012) has also been much admired, receiving a five star review in BBC Music Magazine. Flowers of the Field (Naxos, 2014) with the City of London Choir, London Mozart Players, Roderick Williams and Jeremy Irons went quickly to number one in the Classical Chart.
He has close working relationships with the Military Wives Choirs: In 2016 he was conductor of their recording, Home for Christmas, which was No 2 in the Classic FM chart for five consecutive weeks. He has just released a new disc with them: Remember, a recording of specially commissioned music for the 1918-2018 anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Hilary has broadcast frequently for the BBC and Classic FM. His broadcasts with the Ulster Orchestra of rare British Symphonies were much admired, and he later recorded this repertoire with the MKCO for Unicorn Kanchana. For five years he was presenter/conductor for Classic FM’s Masterclass. He was also Jo Brand’s organ teacher for the BBC 1 series, Play It Again.
He has been awarded honorary degrees by the Open University (MA) and De Montfort University (D.Mus) and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Plans for 2019 season include several concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, appearances in the Rye, Malcolm Arnold and English Music Festivals and the first in a new series of concerts at Cadogan Hall with the RPO and the CLC. On April 26th he celebrates his 75th birthday with an all British programme at the Royal Festival Hall.
Twitter: @HilaryConductor
