Albert Coates

Albert Coates (23 April 1882 – 11 December 1953) was an English conductor and composer. Born in St. Petersburg where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses. He was a success in England conducting Wagner at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1914, and in 1919 was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. His strengths as a conductor lay in opera and the Russian repertory, but was very unjustifiably not thought as impressive in the core Austro-German symphonic repertory despite powerful, incisive renditions of Beethoven's Ninth in 1923 on late acoustic 78s, and of Mozart's "Jupiter" a few years later on very early electrical 78s. After 1923 he failed to secure a permanent conductorship in the UK despite richly deserving of that honor, and for much of the rest of his life guest-conducted in continental Europe and the U.S. In his last years he conducted in South Africa, where he died at 71. As a composer, Coates is little remembered, but he composed seven operas, one of which was performed at Covent Garden. He also wrote some concert works for orchestral forces.