The Belfast native enjoyed a distinguished career which saw him work with the Ulster Orchestra, the NSO, Sadler’s Wells Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival
At the age of ten, he said, he knew he wanted to be a musician, and at the age of 12, that he wanted to be a conductor. By that time, he had already managed to digest a large collection of scores that came his way after the death of a music-loving neighbour.
Aged 20, Montgomery joined the music staff of the Glyndebourne Festival as a répétiteur. “In my first week at Glyndebourne,” he told this newspaper in 2006, “I had to play Strauss’s Capriccio, Verdi’s Macbeth, Monteverdi’s Poppea, Mozart’s Zauberflöte, Rossini’s Pietra del paragone, and something else, Mozart’s Idomeneo, I think.” He did this so well that, given his interest in conducting and the availability of a position, he was appointed assistant conductor, too.
In my first week at Glyndebourne, I had to play Strauss’s Capriccio, Verdi’s Macbeth, Monteverdi’s Poppea, Mozart’s Zauberflöte, Rossini’s Pietra del paragone, and something else, Mozart’s Idomeneo, I think In 1973 he succeeded French cellist and conductor Maurice Gendron as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, and began his long recording career with works by Arne, Johann Christian Bach, Percy Grainger and Handel for EMI and RCA. His Bournemouth album, Serenade for Strings, was issued in 1976 in the then cutting-edge, four-track Quadrophonic LP format.
His first major appointment at home came in 1985, when he was appointed artistic director of the newly-formed Opera Northern Ireland , and during his term he gave Ireland its largest offering of Mozart operas to mark the bicentenary of the composer’s death, which fell in 1991. Montgomery was always as interested in asking questions as in answering them, and his curiosity about music and the best way to perform it was insatiable
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