John 'Jack' Arthur Lanchbery OBE (15 May 1923 – 27 February 2003) was an English conductor and composer who was famous for his ballet arrangements, and for his ballet adaptations of canonical works.
He served as the Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet from 1959 to 1972, Principal Conductor of The Australian Ballet from 1972 to 1977, and Musical Director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1978 to 1980. He continued to conduct regularly for the Royal Ballet until 2001.
Lanchbery was widely considered (including by Rudolf Nureyev) to be the greatest ballet conductor of his time, and to be "a conductor and music director of unmatched experience" who was "directly responsible for raising the status and the standards of musical performance". Maina Gielgud stated that he were "the finest conductor for dance of his generation and probably well beyond". One critic wrote that "the music was always on its best behaviour" when Lanchbery was conducting.
Early life
Lanchbery was born in London on 15 May 1923, and began violin lessons and music composition when he was eight years of age. He was educated at Alleyn's School, who was later a renowned chorister, and with Kenneth Spring, who was the founder of the National Youth Theatre and whose composer mother encouraged Lanchbery's musical talent.
Lanchbery was in 1942 awarded the Henry Smart Composition Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied under Sir Henry Wood until the Second World War, during which he served in the Royal Armoured Corps, after which he returned to the Royal Academy of Music to study for two more years before he returned to his alma mater Alleyn's School to work as its music-master. He was declined the job of Director of Music at Alleyn's School, and subsequently worked for a music publisher. He obtained the position and made his debut with them at Edinburgh in 1948.
Principal Conductor of The Australian Ballet: 1972–1977
Notable successes for Lanchbery included the arrangement of the Liszt music for Kenneth MacMillan's stormy multi-act Mayerling, which premiered at Covent Garden in 1978; and the arrangement of Franz Lehár's score for the first full-length ballet production of The Merry Widow, for The Australian Ballet in 1976.
In 1971, he composed the music for the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter. He also arranged the music and conducted the orchestra for Nijinsky in 1980.
Lanchbery was the first composer to successfully convert operas into ballets (The Tales of Hoffmann, The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus),
Director of American Ballet Theatre: 1978–1980
The American Ballet Theatre used 14 Lanchbery arrangements between 1962 and 2002: he was the Musical Director of the Company between 1978 and 2002. Their productions included his arrangement, for Natalia Makarova, Minkus's La Bayadère in 1980. Lanchbery arranged more than 30 pieces by Franz Liszt
Works
Some of the most popular ballets are arrangements of non-ballet works. Perhaps the best-known is Alexander Glazunov's arrangement of Frédéric Chopin's piano music into the ballet Les Sylphides. Another famous example is La boutique fantasque, which is a 1919 arrangement of Gioachino Rossini's music by Ottorino Respighi. However, Lanchbery was the most successful and re-arranger of music for ballet.
- Title – original composer
- The Tales of Beatrix Potter – Michael William Balfe and others, but also included much original music by Lanchbery
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Hector Berlioz