Frank Shipway

Frank Edwin Shipway (9 July 1935 – 6 August 2014) was a British conductor.

Shipway was born in 1935 in Birmingham. He studied piano first with his father and then with Alisa Verity. He earned a scholarship to The Royal College of Music to study piano and later switched to conducting.

In 1963 he became music director of the South-West Essex Symphony Orchestra, which was soon renamed the Forest Philharmonic Society (FPS). He remained at the FPS until 1991.

Shipway was further trained in conducting by John Barbirolli and helped by Herbert von Karajan. His first professional conducting position was with the Berlin Opera in 1973 as assistant conductor to Lorin Maazel. He also worked with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the English National Opera in this period and developed an operatic repertoire largely from the Classical and Romantic periods.

In 1991, Shipway formed the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Italy and served as its chief conductor for four years. From 1996 to 1999 he was chief conductor and artistic director of BRT Philharmonic Orchestra in Brussels, and then of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. He also served as guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra, Teatro alla Scala Orchestra, and the Moscow, Helsinki and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestras.

In addition to conducting, Shipway gave master classes and served on the juries of a number of international competitions including the Nikolai Malko and Arturo Toscanini conducting competitions.

For several years prior to his death, Shipway was a frequent guest conductor with the São Paulo State Symphony. BIS Records issued a recording of Shipway conducting Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony with that orchestra in late 2012. Another BIS recording with Shipway leading the same orchestra in the Walton and Hindemith Cello Concertos is planned for release in late 2014.

Shipway died on 6 August 2014 of injuries sustained in a car accident in Wedhampton, England. He was 79.

Shipway contributed to several classical music compilations. He also conducted four significant recorded performances that are highly regarded in the classical music community:

• Mahler, Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Philharmonic label
• Shostakovich, Symphony No. 10 in E minor. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Philharmonic label
• Strauss, Alpine Symphony. São Paulo State Symphony. BIS label.
• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 in E minor, The Voyevoda. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Philharmonic label

The Strauss recording was a finalist for BBC Music Magazine's Best Orchestral Recording of 2014.