George Hurst at Canford
George Hurst made his first appearance at Canford Summer School of Music in 1959 when Cyril Gee invited him to conduct the symphony orchestra in the second week. At that time Canford Summer School was sponsored and organized by Cyril’s company, Mills Music. George asked Cyril why he didn’t have a Conductors’ Course, to which the reply was ‘We tried that and it wasn’t a success’. George’s attitude to teaching was that if you had learned something valuable — as he had under Barzin and Monteux — that you had a duty to pass it on. Consequently he made Cyril an offer of a Conductors’ Course the following year and that if it made a loss he would bear half of it.
The course, though small, was a great success, with most of the students staying on for the second week to play in and observe George work with the symphony orchestra. Certain talented members of the course would be invited to conduct a piece in the symphony orchestra concert.
This pattern continued until 1970 when George relinquished the symphony orchestra and continued to give informal sessions to the Conductors’ Course out of session time in the second week. In 1971 he took the chamber orchestra in the second week and in 1972 the Conductors’ Course had grown to such an extent that it was extended to two weeks.
Canford quickly became known throughout the world as ‘the place to go’ to learn to conduct. It was said that students learned more from George in two weeks than in three years at a music conservatory.
Many of the household names among British conductors studied with him at Canford — Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Andrew Davies and David Atherton among them.
His assistants and many of his pupils became teachers themselves, keen to pass on what they had absorbed at Canford. Among them was Colin Metters, who established the highly esteemed Conducting Course at the Royal Academy of Music, and which in its turn has produced a generation of fine conductors; Ilan Volkov, Mark Wigglesworth, Edward Gardner, Daniele Rustioni and Ludovic Morlot, to name but a few.
George’s pupils now teach at the Royal Academy of Music (Dominic Grier), the Royal College of Music (Toby Purser) and London Conducting Academy (Denise Ham).
Canford Summer School — now Sherborne Summer School of Music under the direction of Malcolm Binney, another conductor who studied with George — continues George’s musical and technical legacy with conductors’ courses taught by Rodolfo Saglimbeni and Denise Ham. The course is now in its 63rd year.