Aylmer Buesst

Aylmer Buesst (28 January 1883 3 January 1970) was an Australian conductor, teacher and scholar, who spent his career in the United Kingdom. He was mainly associated with opera and vocal music. He also wrote a work on the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's operas, and he was an authority on heraldry.

Biography Aylmer Wilhelmy Buesst and Helen Violette Buesst (née Pett). His brothers were Victor Augustine (1885–1960; a composer), and Tristan Noël Marchand (1894–1982; a soldier, barrister and collector of Australiana).

Aylmer Buesst conducted the Moody-Manners Opera Company, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company,

His book Richard Wagner's The Nibelung's Ring: An Act By Act Guide to the Plot and Music was published in 1932, and had a second edition in 1952.

In 1933 he was appointed Assistant Music Director for the BBC until 1936. He led the premiere performance of Béla Bartók's Cantata Profana, in a radio broadcast from London on 25 May 1934. He led the Scottish Orchestra 1939–40.

He held teaching posts at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music. His students included the composers Buxton Orr and Imogen Holst, the conductors George Weldon, Robert Jenner, and Thomas Loten, and the tenor Ian Partridge.

He was President of the St Albans Orchestral Society, and his daughter Jill was a pianist.

He died in January 1970, aged 86.

Recordings Aylmer Buesst made recordings with Richard Crooks and Heddle Nash. The principal singers were Heddle Nash, Justine Griffiths, Harold Williams, Buesst's wife May Blyth, and Marjorie Parry (then John Barbirolli's wife). The recording has been released on CD, paired with Eugene Goossens conducting Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. This release has received a number of glowing reviews.