Anthony Collins’s first professional musical experience was gained at the age of seventeen as a violist with Hastings Municipal Orchestra. The orchestra’s size was moderate, about forty musicians, and its repertoire consisted of light music and popular classical items for the enjoyment of summer visitors to the town. Having served in the British army for the duration of World War I, with the restoration of peace Collins entered the Royal College of Music in 1920. Here he studied violin with Serge Rivarde and composition with Gustav Holst and in 1925 he joined the London Symphony Orchestra, for which he was both to lead the violas and to serve as a director of this self-governing body. During this period the LSO performed in the concert hall and in the opera house. As a director of the orchestra Collins was closely involved in the ultimately abortive negotiations with Sir Thomas Beecham for the formation of a new London orchestra based upon the membership of the LSO. Beecham’s desire to dispense with the services of certain members of the orchestra resulted in this plan coming to nothing and instead Beecham formed the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932.

In 1934 two events occurred which were to have a catalytic effect upon Collins. Firstly, the inaugural season of John Christie’s new Glyndebourne Festival Opera took place in Sussex. Christie asked the leader of the LSO, George Stratton, to form the orchestra for the Festival and Stratton assembled the cream of London’s orchestral musicians, including Collins. The experience of working with such a major Central European conductor as Fritz Busch in the relaxed environment of Glyndebourne must have indicated to Collins that there was more to life than the rat-race of London’s orchestral world. Secondly, during the same year the LSO performed the musical score for the soundtrack of the film Things to Come, composed by Sir Arthur Bliss at the invitation of the film’s conductor Muir Matheson, and one of the very few film scores to which the film was cut rather than vice versa. Playing for films was to become a major component of the LSO’s schedule.

Almost certainly influenced by these two experiences, Collins decided to leave the ranks of the LSO and to make a new career in conducting and composing. He gained initial experience as a conductor with the Carl Rosa and Sadler’s Wells Opera Companies, but his big breakthrough came in 1936 when Herbert Wilcocks asked him to compose the music for his major film production Victoria the Great, and following its signal success, a sequel Sixty Glorious Years. In addition to composing, Collins also conducted his old colleagues of the LSO in the making of these soundtracks. During 1938 Collins made his London conducting debut with the LSO in Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 and in 1939 he formed the London Mozart Orchestra which recorded and participated in the London Music Festival.

Collins left England for America in 1939 and settled in California where he both composed and conducted for the RKO film studios for the next six years. After the war he returned to England where he continued to compose for films, and conducted the LSO as well as other ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Liverpool, Halle, and Birmingham orchestras. His concert programmes frequently featured music by English composers, of which he was a strong advocate: among his earliest recordings were several devoted to the music of Sir Granville Bantock.

Victor Olof, a former orchestral colleague from the pre-war LSO, had become the first classical music producer with Decca Records and in 1950 he invited Collins to make a number of recordings with the LSO, most notably the first recorded cycle of the symphonies of Sibelius, completed in 1955. This enjoyed considerable success and critical acclaim. In 1953 Collins returned to the USA, conducting the LSO in New York, and was to be based in America for the rest of his life. Following his Decca recordings he made a further two LPs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for Olof, after the latter had moved to EMI in 1956. Collins’s own compositions in addition to his film scores included two symphonies for strings, two violin concertos, four short operas, chamber music, songs and numerous pieces of light music, of which the most well-known is probably Vanity Fair.

Anthony Collins, possibly because of his experience both as an orchestral player and as a composer and conductor of music for films, was an excellent recording conductor. The eminent British critic Robert Layton has written that he ‘…never made a dull record’ and that he had ‘…a natural gift for spontaneity’. His recordings combine a strong sense of atmosphere and of dynamism when required, as well as throughout an excellent sense of the appropriate style. While his discography is comparatively small it contains some outstanding entries, such as his incandescent account of Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, two highly evocative collections of the music of Delius including a superb Paris, and an extremely strongly characterised Falstaff by Elgar. It is however through his magnificent set of the complete Sibelius symphonies that he will be best remembered. Rarely has the intensity of Collins’s performances, aided by superb engineering from Decca in the Kingsway Hall, been equalled, and the atmosphere thus engendered remains spell-binding. At the time of recording, Collins was concerned about some of the tempo markings, and Victor Olof telegraphed Sibelius with these points. The composer immediately replied, ‘Pleased to hear about recording – stop – Metronome marks difficult to follow – stop – Conductor must have liberty to get performance living – Greetings – Jean Sibelius.’ Collins certainly carried out the composer’s wishes.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).