Reginald Paul

Reginald Paul, FRAM, (1894–1974), was a concert pianist, chamber music player, accompanist, organist and Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1927-1960). His career spanned five decades, without counting his success in the early years of the 20th century as a child performer at concert halls around North Wales, where he and his brother, the organist Leslie Paul, grew up. Biography After moving to London, Reginald Paul was an Ada Lewis scholar and a student of Tobias Matthay. During World War I, he served in the army as a volunteer with the County of London battalion. After the war, he resumed his studies with Percy Waller at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was a contemporary and friend, and later colleague, of the composers Alan Bush and Michael Head, who became godfather to one of his children . Alan Bush wrote later: “.. As a student at the Royal Academy of Music, I was, perhaps, the second best sight-reader in the building, the uncrowned king in this domain being my fellow-student, Reginald Paul ..”. His success at the RAM, where he won numerous prizes and medals, enabled him to quickly make a name for himself on the London concert circuit in the 1920s, with frequent performances as soloist or accompanist at the Wigmore Hall, the Aeolian Hall and other leading concert venues, as well as promenade concerts with Sir Henry Wood at the Queen's Hall, playing the Beethoven Emperor Concerto there on August 21, 1925, at the age of 31, and the Mozart E flat concerto a year later (August 19, 1926). After this performance of the Emperor, the Times critic wrote of him: “Mr Reginald Paul has proven that the qualities he has shown at recitals in the smaller halls bear being transferred to the larger field of the pianoforte concerto with orchestra. His reading was that of a thorough musician ..”(The Times, August 22, 1925). The Daily Telegraph critic was equally enthusiastic after a Wigmore Hall solo recital (October 23, 1925): “Some very flattering things have been said of Mr Reginald Paul's playing recently at a promenade concert, as of his recitals last year.