Richard StudtConductor & Concert Master
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About

Richard Studt began playing the violin at the age of four and joined the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain while in his teens.  He studied with Manoug Parikian at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the Boise-Mendelssohn Scholarship, the Marjorie Heyward Prize and the Recital Medal.  He joined the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 1968, playing for some ten years and regularly appearing as soloist in concerts, on recordings, on radio and television.

In the late 1970s, Richard was Concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra and appeared as a guest of Andre Previn in his television series `Previn and Friends`.  He directed the London Virtuosi and the Concertante of London as well as his own ensemble, the Tate Music Group of London. Richard first studied conducting with Maurice Handford, although Sir Simon Rattle (with whom he also studied) was the main source of encouragement for his first professional engagements. Subsequently, he attended some of the courses of the legendary Romanian conductor, Sergiu Celibidache.

In 1988 Richard was appointed Director and Associate Conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, working closely with many well-known artists including Leonidas Kavakos, Tamas Vasary, John Williams, Alfred Brendel, Tasmin Little, Michaela Petri and Julian Lloyd-Webber. 

Since the closure of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta , Richard continued to conduct and/or direct, at home and abroad, a number of orchestras including the City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Danish Radio Sinfonietta, Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Varmland Sinfonietta, Norrkoping Orchestra, Athens Chamber Orchestra, Sudwestfalische Philharmonie, RTE Orchestra, Dublin, Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, Hagen Philharmonic, Ulster Orchestra, Georgian Chamber Orchestra and the Filarmonica of the City of Mexico. He has also accepted several invitations to conduct at the Royal Academy of Music and enjoys coaching young musicians.

Over the years Richard has enjoyed coaching and working with young musicians. In the ‘70s, he was appointed to the Music Faculty of Southampton University where he taught and performed, organized and played chamber music and conducted both the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras.  He conducted and trained the Ulster Youth Orchestra for four years from it’s foundation in 1994 and subsequently conducted and coached orchestras at the Royal Academy of Music. Richard coached at the George Enescu Music School in Bucharest, directed the String Course at Canford Summer School  and given Master Classes at Dartington, Portsmouth Grammar and Marlborough College. As a violin teacher, Richard has sent many pupils to the Royal Music Colleges and has taught at the Menuhin School.

He has recorded extensively for Naxos, EMI and Guild. Discs include English and Twentieth Century String Music, Scandinavian String Music, Arvo Part, CPE Bach and Mozart.

In addition to conducting the Sinfonietta in repertoire ranging from Handel's Messiah to Lutoslavski's Preludes and Fugues, Richard has broadcast for the BBC whilst continuing to play the classical violin concerto repertoire of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Mozart, Haydn, Bach and Vivaldi.

There is also a lighter side to Richard's violin playing - as well as recording many film scores, from Star Wars to Harry Potter, he was featured as soloist with John Williams in Richard Harvey's 'Plague and the Moonflower' and recorded the signature tune for the Granada Television series, 'Jeeves and Wooster'.