Adrian Leaper

Adrian Leaper has built his reputation chiefly through an extensive catalog of recordings rather than frequent concert appearances, despite professional engagements that have carried him across numerous European stages. More than one hundred albums stand to his credit, centered on expansive Romantic repertoire and British light-music classics and issued predominantly by the Naxos/Marco Polo and ASV imprints.

Born in the United Kingdom in 1953, he trained at the Royal Academy of Music and completed several seasons as co-principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra before devoting himself entirely to conducting. In 1986 an international competition led to his appointment as assistant conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, a post he retained for five years. During that interval he launched his recording activity, working at first with Czech and Slovak ensembles for Naxos. Once his Hallé contract ended, he undertook a broad schedule of guest engagements with European radio and regional orchestras as well as the principal London ensembles. From 1994 he served seven years as director of the Orquesta Filharmónia de Gran Canaria, cultivating a deeper interest in Spanish repertoire and producing roughly forty recordings with the ensemble. In September 2001 he assumed the music directorship of the RTVE Symphony Orchestra in Madrid.

His Naxos cycle of Nielsen symphonies drew favorable notices in the mid-1990s, and critics have often praised his discs for their architectural clarity and for the quality he obtains from secondary orchestras. Some reviewers, though seldom those writing in Britain, have found his accounts of impassioned scores by Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Sibelius somewhat restrained. He continued to record for Naxos into the new century while also releasing discs on Arte Nova, ASV, and other labels. A committed proponent of British light music, he led the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in a 1994 album of Edward German that reached the top of classical charts in 2022; he has likewise championed lesser-known repertory. In 2016 he conducted the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in an album of music by José Luis Greco for Naxos’ American Classics series.