Roy Westbrook initially studied history as an
undergraduate, and then obtained a diploma in music history at
London University and was for some years head of music day schools
at Oxford University, where he led day courses on The Trojans
of Berlioz, and on operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Richard
Strauss. He has also contributed to courses on many other composers
and genres, including the classical string quartet from Haydn
to Schubert, and much of the symphonic repertoire, especially
Bruckner, Mahler, and Sibelius. In 2015 he gave pre-concert talks
at the Festival in Lahti, Finland celebrating the 150th
anniversary of Sibelius’s birth.
He reviews classical concerts and operas for the Bachtrack website (and of
course classical CDs and DVDs for MusicWeb International). He has made
recent reviewing trips to Finland (for the opera festival at Savonlinna),
to Latvia for orchestral concerts at the inaugural Riga-Jurmaala festival,
and to Bonn for the annual chamber music festival held in the Beethovenhaus, the composer’s birthplace.
Roy Westbrook has joined Terry Barfoot (a fellow MusicWeb reviewer) on
numerous Arts in Residence events, not least recent ones on Schubert, Bach
and Handel. He is co-author (with Terry Barfoot and Christopher Headington)
of a history of opera. All this activity has been alongside an early career
in the civil service, and then a management studies PhD leading to an
academic career in business schools, closing in 2014 when he retired early
from the post of Professor and Deputy Dean of the Saïd Business School,
Oxford University. He has also served as Senior Tutor for St. Hugh’s
College, Oxford. He has two grown sons, and lives in Oxfordshire with his
wife and an implausible number of books and recordings.
