Robert Irving (conductor)

Robert Augustine Irving, DFC*, (28 August 1913 – 13 September 1991) was a British conductor whose reputation was mainly as a ballet conductor.

Robert Irving, signed photograph

Born in Winchester, England, the son of mountaineer and author R. L. G. Irving, he was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in music. He studied with Malcolm Sargent and Constant Lambert at the Royal College of Music from 1934 to 1936.

During World War II, he served with the Royal Air Force, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and bar for two tours as a navigator in anti-shipping strike squadrons. He was the first Captain-Navigator in the Royal Air Force, opening the way for navigators to captain aircraft. An attempt by Dickie Richardson to recruit him to the post-war RAF was turned down in favour of conducting. He left with the rank of Squadron Leader. [1]

He then became assistant conductor with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and was conductor and musical director of Sadler's Wells Ballet from 1949 to 1958, working closely with Sir Frederick Ashton on several ballets. Having assisted Ashton in choosing music for his Picnic at Tintagel for New York City Ballet in 1952, Irving helped the choreographer to surmount musical problems in the last act of his Sylvia in September the same year, by interpolating passages from the same composer's La Source. In 1956, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Vic-Wells, now the Royal Ballet, Irving arranged music by Alexander Glazunov for a "grand pas de quatorze" by Ashton, Birthday Offering.[2]

In 1954 he introduced and conducted music from Act II of Swan Lake with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes for television, and in 1958 for BBC television he conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in Les Sylphides with Nadia Nerina and Philip Chatfield.[3] He conducted the 1957 telecast of Ashton's Cinderella on NBC in the series Producer's Showcase.[4]

From 1958 to 1989, he served as music director of the New York City Ballet, where he worked extensively with choreographer George Balanchine. For many years he conducted the New York City Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker, a task he repeated in the 1958 US telecast of the ballet.[5]

He died in his birthplace in 1991, aged 78.[6] A small memorial plaque to him may be found on the north-east wall of Winchester College chapel cloisters.