Internationally recognised as one of Britain's most gifted and versatile conductors, Richard Hickox was principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales from 2000 to 2006 when he became conductor emeritus.
Since January 2005 he was music director of Opera Australia in Sydney and at the Victoria Arts Centre, Melboune.
Hickox was associate guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra since 1985 and music director of the City of London Sinfonia since 1971. He was artistic director of the Northern Sinfonia between 1982-1990 and had been co-director of the period instrument group Collegium Musicum 90 since its formation.
He had regularly conducted the major UK orchestras and had appeared many times at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Bath, Cheltenham and the BBC Proms.
Winner of Gramophone Record of the Year and Best Orchestral disc of 2001, for his recording with the London Symphony Orchestra of Vaughan Williams' Symphony No 2 (which also received a Brit Award), Hickox's position at the centre of British musical life had been recognised by many other awards.
He had received a further three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy, two Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award, and the Association of British Orchestras award. He had been elected an honorary fellow of Queens' College Cambridge, where he was organ scholar, and was awarded a doctorate of music at Durham University in 2003.
Hickox was a regular guest in major opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Cologne, Washington and Los Angeles.
In 2004 BBC Wales televised his Turn Of The Screw, a Katie Mitchell production for television. At the Spoleto Festival in Italy, where he was music director for five years, he had conducted Rosenkavalier, Cunning Little Vixen, Prokofiev's War and Peace, and Menotti's The Consul.
Hickox's international career had seen him conduct many of the leading orchestras in Europe, Japan and North America, including most recently the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre de Paris and the New York Philharmonic, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus coming up. He was a regular guest with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Richard Hickox was committed to an extraordinarily wide range of repertoire, which he conducted with a rare assurance, including over 100 first performances. Particularly memorable have been a highly acclaimed series of concerts at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra including a number of semi-staged operas such as Billy Budd, Hansel and Gretel and Salomé, the first ever complete cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies in London with the Bournemouth Symphony, and series of Elgar, Walton and Britten at the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
His phenomenal success in the recording studio had resulted in nearly 300 recordings. His exclusive association with Chandos Records continued with the completion of his Britten operas with the City of London Sinfonia besides ongoing commitments to the London Symphony and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (notably Elgar's symphonies).
Richard Hickox was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Jubilee Honours List in 2002, and received many other awards including two Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the first ever Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award, and the Association of British Orchestras award.
