LEONARD SALZEDO SOCIETY

Category: Music

  • Happy New Year from the Leonard Salzedo Society: a post that celebrates friendship

    It is friendship that keeps the Leonard Salzedo Society together. This heartening thought came to me as I looked around the Society AGM in November. A network of friends in Nottingham, a wider network of friends in other parts of the country, and last but not least, cousins on both sides of the family who…

  • Leonard Salzedo Birthday Stories

    Celebrating 24th September – the birthday of my father Leonard Salzedo – with some stories from his autobiography: “At eleven o’clock on the morning of Saturday 24th September 1921 I was born at a small private nursing home at 46 Amhurst Park, Stamford Hill, in  North London.  It was a large Victorian House and has…

  • The Wedding of Leonard Salzedo and Pat Clover: 30th May 1945

    From Leonard’s autobiography ‘At 3pm on the afternoon of Wednesday 30th May, Patricia Mary Clover and I were married at the Register Office in Hackney Town Hall, almost exactly twenty-five years after my parents had been married in the same place.  After the ceremony we returned to Stamford Hill, where I lived with my father,…

  • 103 years!

    24th September 2024 is 103 years since my father Leonard Salzedo was born. His music is still being played! And the Leonard Salzedo Society is constantly promoting new ventures and celebrating old ones. Harpsichord Concerto Here is a video of the June 2024 Palo Alto concert of Leonard’s Harpsichord Concerto played by my cousin Jonathan…

  • Two Concerti performed in June

    Fantastic! That’s how I felt about the concerts of Salzedo music I attended in June. Viola Concerto in Greenwich Richard Crabtree, violist, and Irina Lyakhovskaya, pianist, played the Viola Concerto in the stunning venue of the Old Royal Chapel, Greenwich. Richard, for whom the Concerto was written, is a longtime friend and supporter of Leonard…

  • A chance meeting around Easter changes two lives forever

    Leonard writes: “One Saturday afternoon in March 1945 I received a telephone call from a Basil Ashmore who asked me to come and see him later that afternoon at the Gateway Theatre, Notting Hill Gate.  When I arrived the young lady I met didn’t seem very pleased to see me but said she would call…

  • Christmas 2023

    Looking for Christmas memories in my father’s autobiography, I am struck not by the happier ones but by the wartime ones with their mixture of horror and hope. 1944 – Flying Bombs In September 1944, the V2s began to hit London. Called Flying Bombs, they were long range ballistic missiles. On a terrifying night, Leonard…

  • Anniversary Post

    Leonard Salzedo 24th September 1921 – 6th May 2000 A year since the Leonard Salzedo Celebration concert in London organised by the Leonard Salzedo Society on the 101st anniversary of Leonard’s birth. Two years since the launch of the film on YouTube Leonard Salzedo A Life Composed in Music for the Centenary of this birth.…

  • Leonard gets a medal!

    #OTD 80 years ago 22 July 1943, in the main hall of the Royal College of Music 21-year-old Leonard Salzedo received the Tagore Gold Medal for outstanding student of the year from the then Princess Elizabeth, aged 17. The Queen was there to see her daughter in her first public engagement. Official Photo of the presentation…

  • The premiere of Salzedo’s First Symphony

    On 10th May 1956 the premiere of Leonard Salzedo’s 1st Symphony by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (of which Leonard was a member) conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham took place at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Sir Thomas Beecham Leonard Salzedo writes ‘Early in 1956 I had a message that Sir Thomas Beecham had some concerts…