Gilbert & Sullivan: Complete Overtures

"I can't see why anyone wanting a collection of Sullivan's comic opera overtures should wish to look elsewhere "
- Gramophone

Andrew Penny was born in Hull and graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music following clarinet studies with Sydney Fell. As a postgraduate he was the first holder of the Rothschild Scholarship in Conducting, studying with Sir Charles Groves and Timothy Reynish. He worked with Sir Edward Downes in Holland and later at the BBC Conductors Seminar in 1985.

He has been Musical Director of the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra since 1982, the Head of Woodwind at Hymers College since 1978 and he directed the Conductors Course at the University of Hull for many years. In November 1999 he directed two performances of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, (The Symphony of a Thousand) as part of the Millennium Celebrations in that city.

Since 1992, Andrew Penny has made over thirty recordings for the Naxos and Marco Polo labels. Much of the repertoire is of British music includes symphonies by Sir Malcolm Arnold and Havergal Brian, film music by Vaughan Williams and Walton, theatre music by Sullivan and Holbrooke and light music by Coates and Arnold. His complete cycle of the nine symphonies by Arnold is now finished and will be available in 2001, the year of Arnold's 80th birthday.

In the Gramophone Awards of 1999, the Editor's Choice Award was made to twenty-two Naxos Discs as an outstanding contribution to Twentieth Century British Music. Three of these releases were conducted by Andrew Penny; the Arnold Third and Fourth Symphonies and two disc of Walton's music for the Olivier films of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V and As You Like It.