Myers Foggin

Myers Foggin (23 December 1908 – 1986) was an English concert pianist and conductor. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England^[1]. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1927-1932. His teachers included the composer York Bowen.

Professional career

Soon after completion of his studies, Foggin was appointed Professor of Pianoforte at the Royal Academy (1936-49), later also holding the post of Director of Opera (1948-65). He was Warden of the Royal Academy from 1949-65.

Foggin’s international concert pianist career included appearances in Paris, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Malta and Algiers. He appeared frequently in concert in the United Kingdom, and he made several recordings as a pianist for Decca. These include Charles Villiers Stanford's Clarinet Sonata in F major, Op. 129 with Frederick Thurston, to whom Stanford rededicated the work, Brahms’ Sonata in E flat major, Op. 120, No. 2 for clarinet and piano (also with Thurston), and Brahms' Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano, Op. 91, in which he and the viola virtuoso Max Gilbert, a colleague at the Royal Academy, accompanied the Liverpool-born contralto Nancy Evans. Together with Watson Forbes (viola) he recorded two works by Richard Henry Walthew (1872-1951) – the Sonata in D for Viola and Piano and A Mosaic in Four Parts^[2][3]. He accompanied the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing on a Parlophone record of songs by Tchaikovsky and Frank Bridge released in 1934^[4].

Foggin undertook a tour of Czechoslovakia in September 1946 together with the cellist David Ffrangcon-Thomas performing cello sonatas by British and Czech composers. During the tour he also broadcast a specially arranged programme of British piano works from Prague^[5].

Foggin was guest conductor of several leading Italian orchestras in addition to holding several appointments in the UK, where he conducted the People's Palace Choral Society (1936-49) and Croydon Philharmonic Society (1957-73), and he was musical director at the Toynbee Hall from 1946-49. He was appointed Principal of Trinity College of Music and was Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society from 1968 and President of the National Federation of Music Societies from 1967-72. Foggin was guest conductor with the Carl Rosa Opera, Sadler’s Wells Opera and the B.B.C. He died in Chichester in 1986.

Notes

1. ^ International Who’s Who in Music and Musicians’ Directory, seventh edition, Cambridge, 1975
2. ^ Francis F. Clough, G. J. Cuming The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music, London, 1952
3. ^ Edward Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor The Record Guide, revised edition, London, 1955
4. ^ Reviewed in The Gramophone, January 1935
5. ^ Russell Palmer British Music, London, n. d.

Persondata
Name	Foggin,Myers
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Date of birth	23 December 1908
Place of birth
Date of death	1986
Place of death