Biographythe finest trainer of young choirs in the country today The Times
After 26 years as Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College, Ralph Allwood left Eton on 1st September 2011 to pursue freelance activities. These include conductor of the orchestra of St Paul's Girls' School, Director of Music at Hampstead Parish Church. He will continue as Director of the Eton Choral Courses. One of this year's projects is the founding of Inner Voices, a choir for young people from ten different London schools.
He was a pupil at Tiffin School and graduated from Durham University in 1972 with the Eve Myra Kysh prize for music, conducting the University Chamber Choir from 1970-1972. He was later a member of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks and then became Director of Music at Pangbourne College.
While Director of Music at Uppingham he founded the annual Choral Courses for prospective choral scholars. There are now seven Eton Choral Courses, attended each year by four hundred singers aged between 16 and 20, and 110 have now been held. 2010 was the 30th Anniversary of the courses.
He is a judge for the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and is a regular visitor to several choirs, including the National Youth Choir of Wales. Most recent choral travels have taken him to Nantes, Aberdeen, Philadelphia, Canberra, Cardiff, Beijing and Minneapolis.
He has worked with James Levine and the Philharmonia Chorus on the Brahms Requiem, with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Bach Choir on Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and with Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Choir on Mahler 2 and 8.
When he directed Eton College Chapel Choir they toured Israel, the Arabian Gulf, America, France, England, Ireland, Japan, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, South Africa, China and Italy. The Choir has released eight recordings, most recently with Signum. As Musical Director of Windsor and Eton Choral Society he conducted 80 choral and orchestral concerts.
Ralph is director of the Rodolfus Choir, a young choir made up of the best singers from the last four or five years' Eton Choral Courses. They released recordings of music by Tallis, Francis Grier, Bax and Villette, English Folk Song arrangements, Howells, arrangements by Gottwald and the Monteverdi Vespers with the Southern Sinfonia. A disc of the Bach B minor Mass with Signum is the latest, and one of Elgar partsongs will shortly be released.
He is a choral advisor for Novello and Co, for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and for the Voices Foundation.
