Following a conducting career in Britain, Europe and Australia, Raymond Holden is now a leading authority on performance history and performance practice
Raymond Holden has worked as a conductor, broadcaster and lecturer with leading orchestras, broadcasting organisations and academic institutions in Britain, Europe, Australia, North America and Africa, and has published regularly with Oxford, Cambridge and Yale University Presses, ICA, EMI and Warner Classics, Hans Schneider Verlag (Vienna) and the Royal Academy of Music Press.
Raymond’s research interests include the role of the conductor in the 19th and 20th centuries, marked scores and recorded sound documents as historical evidence, Richard Strauss as a composer-conductor and how performance traditions can act as pedagogical tools. He has published extensively in recent years, with contributions to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Music & Letters, Performance Practice Review, Richard Strauss-Blätter, Richard Strauss Jahrbuch, Studien und Berichte, edition text + kritik, Man & Culture, CRQ Editions and ICA, EMI and Warner Classics.
For Oxford University Press, Raymond has written for Oxford Bibliographies, is music advisor to the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and has contributed 49 signed articles to the Dictionary. For Cambridge University Press, he has written chapters for Companion to Conducting, Companion to Richard Strauss and Richard Strauss in Context, as well as co-authoring The Marks of the Maestro with Stephen Mould. For Yale University Press, he has written The Virtuoso Conductors and Richard Strauss: a Musical Life. Raymond published Glorious John, Barbirolli: a Chronicle of a Career and Maestro Glorioso: Ten Essays in Celebration of Sir John Barbirolli for the Barbirolli Society in association with the Royal Academy of Music. He has also written Elder on Music: Sir Mark Elder in Conversation with Raymond Holden and Speaking Musically: Great Artists in Conversation at the Royal Academy of Music.
Currently Raymond is writing Performing Beethoven’s Fifth: Approaches for a New Century for Cambridge University Press. He has disseminated research on BBC Radio and Television, ABC Radio, Classic FM (South Africa), 3MBS FM (Melbourne), Vision Australia Radio, LBC, Danish Radio and Television, RAI Radio and Television, Servus TV (Germany) and SRF (Switzerland). He regularly lectures around the world, and has been both a visiting and guest professor at major universities, conservatoires, conferences and arts organisations in Britain, Europe, North America, Africa, Australia and Asia.