John Warrack

{{Short description|English music critic and oboist (born 1928)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

John Hamilton Warrack (born 9 February 1928) is an English music critic, writer on music, and oboist.

Career

Born in London, Warrack is the son of Scottish conductor and composer Guy Warrack and Jacynth Mary Ellerton. He was educated at Winchester College (1941–1946) and the Royal College of Music (1949–1952).[https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/warrack-john-hamilton-1928 Encyclopedia.com] In the early 1950s he was a freelance oboist, playing mostly with the Boyd Neel Orchestra and Sadler's Wells Orchestra. From 1954 until 1961 he was music critic for The Daily Telegraph, and from 1961 until 1972 for The Sunday Telegraph. From 1978 until 1983 he served as the artistic director of the Leeds Festival. From 1984 until 1993 he taught on the music faculty at the University of Oxford.

He is the author of Six Great Composers (1955); Carl Maria von Weber (Hamish Hamilton, 1968, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1976), the standard study of Weber in English;[https://books.google.com/books?id=bp08AAAAIAAJ Google Books] German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner (2001) and the co-author of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1964, with Harold Rosenthal) and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1992, with Ewan West).[https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803121109174 Oxford Reference]

Warrack lives in Helmsley, North Yorkshire. He is the father of the stonemason Simon Warrack.BBC Radio 3 Private Passions, 20 Nov 2022; Radio Times 19–25 Nov 2022, p. 122

References