Biography
Denis Vaughan (born 6 June 1926) is an orchestral conductor. Vaughan was born in Melbourne, Australia, and graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Music in 1947. He won a scholarship to study organ and double bass at England’s Royal College of Music, under the tutelage of George Thalben-Ball and Eugene Cruft.
In 1950, he joined the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and went on tour to the United States with Sir Thomas Beecham. By 1954 he was assistant conductor and chorus master, in which capacity he formed the Beecham Choral Society. This was followed by engagements at La Scala, Hamburg and Munich opera houses and a season at Bayreuth as assistant to Hans Knappertsbusch. In 1959, together with Klemperer, Celibidache, Bernstein and Maazel, Vaughan was invited to conduct one of the special concerts performed in Parma in honour of Arturo Toscanini.
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By 1966, having settled in Rome, Vaughan had received worldwide acclaim for his recordings for RCA Victor. His discography with the Orchestra "Scarlatti" of Naples includes the complete symphonies of Schubert, twelve Haydn symphonies, works by Schubert, Bach and Mozart, including eleven early symphonies and the opera Il re pastore (with Lucia Popp, Reri Grist, and Luigi Alva).
In the 1950s he participated in annual concerts featuring four harpsichordists, the three others being Thurston Dart, George Malcolm and Eileen Joyce. In 1957 this group also recorded two of Vivaldi's Concertos for Four Harpsichords, one in a Bach arrangement, with the Pro Arte Orchestra under Boris Ord. They also recorded Malcolm's Variations on a Theme of Mozart.
Denis Vaughan is an acknowledged world authority on the manuscript scores of Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and Antonín Dvořák. He continues to conduct, as for instance in May 2005, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.