Georgina Dobrée (8 January 1930 – 27 April 2008) was an English clarinettist. She firstly played the violin and piano in her childhood years but dropped the violin and later took up the clarinet as a second instrument while studying in London. She began her professional musical career in 1951 and continued up until 1999 around several locations. Her career also saw her set up her own record company and undertake a professorship role at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...

Biography

Early life

Dobrée was born at 74 Sutherland Avenue in

Maida Vale Maida Vale ( ) is an affluent residential district in North West London, England, north of Paddington, southwest of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn, on Edgware Road. It is part of the City of Westminster and is northwest of Charing C ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

on 8 January 1930. She was the only child of the literary scholar

Bonamy Dobrée Bonamy Dobrée (2 February 1891 – 3 September 1974), British academic, was Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds from 1936 to 1955. Dobrée declared himself a Channel Islander, and was rather proud that both his Bonam ...

, and his wife, the author and poet Gladys May Mabel (Valentine), ''née'' Brooke-Pechell. Dobrée was first raised in Mendham Priory in

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

and later moved to

Earls Colne Earls Colne is a village in Essex, England named after the River Colne, Essex, River Colne, on which it stands, and the Earls of Oxford who held the manor of Earls Colne from before 1086 to 1703. History Manor of Earls Colne In the time of ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

. She began studying the violin and piano at an early age. Dobrée was evacuated to the United States when

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

broke out and stayed with friends of her parents. While studying at the

Peabody Conservatory The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a private music and dance conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1857, it became affiliated with Johns Hopkins in 1977. History Philanthropist and ...

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

, she stopped playing the violin for a clarinet she found by chance at her new home. Dobrée immediately discovered a natural liking for the instrument.

Career

She returned to London after the war ended and spent three years studying the piano under

Harold Craxton Thomas Harold Hunt Craxton (30 April 188530 March 1971) was an English pianist, teacher and composer. Early life Born in London, and growing up in Devizes, Craxton began studying piano with Tobias Matthay and Cuthbert Whitemore in 1907. Career ...

at the

in London. Dobrée took the clarinet as a second instrument and studied it George Anderson. She won a scholarship offered by the government of France to study with the principal clarinettist of the

Orchestre National de France The Orchestre National de France (; ; abbr. ONF) is a French symphony orchestra based in Paris, founded in 1934. Placed under the administration of the French national radio (named Radio France since 1975), the ONF performs mainly in the Grand ...

Gaston Hamelin in 1949. Dobrée's affinity for French music is possibly explained on how aware she was of her French

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

ancestry from her parents. She felt comfortable with playing French instruments in the French style but was required to switch instruments and adopt the more contemporary German sound upon returning to England. In the 1951 Hoveringham Festival, Dobrée performed in association with the

Griller Quartet The Griller String Quartet was a British musical ensemble particularly active from 1931 to c.1961 or 1963, when it was disbanded. The quartet was in residence at the University of California at Berkeley from 1949 to 1961. It performed a wide repert ...

led by the violinist Sidney Griller, and in the next year, she made her debut broadcast on the

BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces ...

at the same festival. She flew to

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

to attend the International New Music Holiday Course in the summer of 1953 and took first prize in a competition for a new contemporary music prize. Dobréet returned to London in the autumn to partake in a series of lectures and recitals on twelve-tone music at London's contemporary music centre of the era,

Morley College Morley College is a specialist adult education and further education college in London, England. The college has three main campuses, one in Waterloo on the South Bank, and two in West London namely in North Kensington and in Chelsea, the ...

. Throughout the 1950s, her concerts in London featured regular recitals for the

Society for the Promotion of New Music The Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM), originally named The Committee for the Promotion of New Music, was founded in January 1943 in London by the émigré composer Francis Chagrin, to promote the creation and performance of new music i ...

and regularly appeared alongside the McNaughton New Music Group. Dobrée had been playing the basset horn in 1952 and started to appear with the instrument in her performances half a decade later. She reverted to performing with French instruments and amassed a total of six basset horns of which she carried in a special case for easy transportation while travelling by plane. It was when she was performing the sonata for piano and basset horn by

Franz Danzi Franz Ignaz Danzi (15 June 1763 – 13 April 1826) was a German cellist, composer and conductor, the son of the Italian cellist Innocenz Danzi (1730–1798) and brother of the noted singer Franzeska Danzi. Danzi lived at a significant time i ...

, and with the clarinettist

Thea King Dame Thea King DBE FRCM FGSM (26 December 1925 – 26 June 2007) was a British clarinettist. Biography Early life Thea King was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, the daughter of Henry Walter Mayer King, the manager of his family engineer ...

, the Mendelssohn Konzertstücke op. 114. At the invitation of King, Dobrée became a member of the Portia Wind Ensemble and founded the Chantry Ensemble with the flautist

William Bennett William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as the third United States secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of d ...

Gordon Jacob Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 18958 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about ...

's Miniature Suite for clarinet and viola was among the many works written for Dobrée. Her last appearance in the Darmstadt Festival came in 1964. In 1967 she was made a professor of clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Around the same period, Dobrée began researching some neglected works of the 18th and 19th centuries and her editions of some of the works were published from 1968 onward. From an

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

recording of

Johann Melchior Molter Johann Melchior Molter (10 February 1696 – 12 January 1765) was a German composer and violinist of the late Baroque period. He was born at Tiefenort, near Eisenach, and was educated at the Gymnasium in Eisenach. By autumn 1717 he had lef ...

's concertos for D clarinet that same year, she set up her own record company, Chantry Records. She and the pianist Alexander Kelly gave a series of concerts in 1973 at Leighton House in

Holland Park Holland Park is an area of Kensington, on the western edge of Central London, that lies within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and largely surrounds its namesake park, Holland Park. Colloquially referred to as 'Millionaire's Row', ...

to celebrate the pairing 21st anniversary of the beginning of their partnership. Dobrée travelled to the United States in 1978 and gave performances at the National Gallery to which the critic for ''

The Washington Times ''The Washington Times'' is an American Conservatism, conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It covers general interest topics with an emphasis on Politics of the United States, national politics. Its broadsheet daily edit ...

'' Joan Reinthaler was complementary towards.

Later years

The increasing demands of touring and lecturing gradually made her teaching role impractical and gave up her professorship in 1986. Dobrée did however continue lessons, masterclasses and workshops on an individual basis. She continued to expand the contemporary repertoire for the basset horn throughout the 1990s and commissioned new works from several British and Eastern European composers. In 1995, Dobrée recorded a collection entitled ''This Green Tide'' on a work conducted by

John Mayer John Clayton Mayer ( ; born October 16, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he left for Atlanta in 1997 with fellow guitarist Clay Cook, with whom he formed the short-liv ...

. To ensure her works would remain available, they were transferred to Emerson Edition in 1999. That same year, Dobrée finished one of her last editions, a collection of four French clarinet works that was published by Kevin Mayhew. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her later years and moved to a nursing home in

Hitchin Hitchin () is a market town in the North Hertfordshire Districts of England, district of Hertfordshire, England. The town dates from at least the 7th century. It lies in the valley of the River Hiz at the north-eastern end of the Chiltern Hills ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the ...

. Dobrée fractured her left femur in early 2008 and underwent surgery. She later died of a chest infection at the Lister Hospital in

Stevenage Stevenage ( ) is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, about north of London. Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Stevenage w ...

on 27 April 2008. Dobrée was not married.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dobrée, Georgina 1930 births 2008 deaths Academics of the Royal Academy of Music Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music English classical clarinetists English people of French descent Musicians from the City of Westminster Musicians from Essex Musicians from Suffolk Peabody Institute alumni People from Earls Colne People from Maida Vale People from Mid Suffolk District 20th-century English women 21st-century English women English women musicians