Ian Whyte

A contemporary of Erik Chisholm, Ian Whyte was born in 1901, and was a kindred spirit. Like Chisholm, he was versatile; composer, conductor, pedagogue and political wheeler-dealer.

As a composer, he was a pupil of Vaughan Williams and Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London, and his compositions were often heavily influenced by folk and Celtic idioms.

He was the first conductor of the BBC’s Studio Orchestra (which grew into the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra), the first full-time orchestral ensemble in Scotland. Its path was neither straight nor easy, but under Whyte it grew into a full scale symphony orchestra, committed to playing the latest music by Scottish composers alongside orchestral work of all periods and from all countries. It was with the BBC that he served as mentor to many young conductors, including Sir Alexander Gibson and Sir Colin Davies.