Oliver Gledhill

English cellist Oliver Gledhill has won critical praise for recitals and radio broadcasts in mainstream repertory, and he is the rediscoverer of the British composer W.H. Squire (1871-1963). Related to a family of musicians named Spivakowsky or Spivakovsky, Gledhill was born in 1966. He attended University College School in London on a scholarship and then majored in Classics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. Gledhill moved on to the Guildhall School of Music on another scholarship, winning further support there in the form of the Suggia Gift (twice). He also won the school's Concerto Prize. Among Gledhill's other early awards was First Prize in the 1989 ISTEL/Redditch Music Society Young Musicians Awards Strings Competition. His teachers have included William Pleeth, Edmund Kurtz, André Navarra, Paul Tortelier, and Janos Starker. Gledhill has been a familiar figure on concert scenes in London and beyond. He has performed at Wigmore Hall, in the prestigious Conway Hall Series (with pianist Boris Berezovsky), and at the Purcell Room, as well as at festivals in France, Spain, Italy (the Festival Pontino), and the Czech Republic (the Humana Festival). He is a regular on live broadcasts on Britain's Classic FM radio network and has also been heard on its Australian counterpart. Gledhill made his recording debut with a CD called Cello Serenade on the Rhinosaurus label, and he has gone on to release eight more albums. One of these was the 2016 CD Miniatures for cello and piano by W.H. Squire, recorded for Naxos. The album was the result of years of research by Gledhill on Squire, culminating in a 2013 Ph.D. thesis. Gledhill discovered that he was distantly related to Squire through his maternal grandfather Henry Spivakowsky, also known as Henry Calve. Gledhill has written articles and reviews for The Strad magazine and the British Journal of Music Education. He has served an examiner for Trinity College London, and has selected repertoire and revised cello syllabi there. Gledhill has composed a number of technical studies for cello. He is a member of Mensa, the international high IQ society.
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