Harry Waldo Warner Recordings

Born in 1874, Harry Waldo Warner studied violin, then viola, with Alfred Gibson, and composition with Orlando Morgan at the Guildhall School of Music. He became professor of viola at the Guildhall from 1893-1920. As a performer he was well regarded, known in particular as a founder member of the London String Quartet during the years 1908-1929.

As a composer Warner was supported by businessman, amateur violinist and philanthropist Walter Wilson Cobbett on a number of occasions. Warner composed no less than four ‘phantasies’ (a genre specific to Cobbett’s composition competitions) which included three strings quartets (of which his Op.12 quartet won fifth prize in the first Cobbett competition of 1906, and his Op.18 won first prize in the string quartet category of the 1917 competition) and one piano trio (1907). His compositional craftsmanship was praised highly. Cobbett once remarked of a ‘critic enthusiastically appraising the second phantasy of Waldo Warner under the mistaken impression that it was the advertised Schoenberg quartet for which it had been substituted.’ Apart from these chamber works, he composed Three Elfin Dances (performed at the Proms in 1917 and 1924), The Broad highway: Sketches from a Tramp’s Diary, at least one hundred songs for solo or chorus, and two operas, The Royal Vagrants: A story of Conscientious Objection and Cupid’s Market.