Edgar Bainton(1880-1956)

Edgar Leslie Bainton was a pupil of Walford Davies and Stanford, friend of George Dyson and long-time Principal of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Conservatory. He emigrated to Australia in 1934, and thus sadly faded from the British music scene. In 1914 while en route to the Bayreuth Festival, Bainton was apprehended as a British civilian in wartime Germany and interned for the next four years in Ruhleben Camp near Berlin. He was placed in charge of music-making at the camp and became acquainted with a number of other musicians, including Ernest MacMillan and cellist Carl Fuchs. Despite many hardships this four-year exile proved to be a period of great creativity, resulting in his Three Pieces for Orchestra and a piano concerto.