Musician, teacher and conductor Hugh Allen Wilson died on December 18 at his home in Bolton Landing.
Wilson was born in Bolton in 1925, the son of pianist Anna Wilson and Clarence Wilson.
A 1946 graduate of Yale, Wilson took pleasure in noting that he was the only member of his class never to have changed his address – he spent his adult life at Allenhurst, the house in which he grew up.
Wilson’s career in music began at an early age. He was appointed organist at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Lake George at the age of 14. “Had it not been for that experience, I might not have had the career I did,” Wilson once said. According to Wilson, he had just started to play the organ when his godfather, the Rev. E.M. Parrott, St. James’ rector, offered him a post when the church’s organist announced she would be spending winters in the south. “My mother made a deal with me and ‘uncle’ Ned that if I would take the job, she would send me to Glens Falls to study with Cecil Wright, the organist at the First Presbyterian Church,” Wilson once recalled. “I made rapid progress, and all in all, things went well,” he said. “In my second year, I had the good fortune to have Louise Homer Stires, the daughter of Louise Homer, in my choir.” Wilson also played the organ at Villa Marie Antoinette for Harry K. Thaw, the husband of Evelyn Nesbitt who shot architect Stanford White.
At Yale, Wilson studied with Paul Hindemith, Gustav Leonhardt and Marcel Dupre.
In 2009, Wilson was invited back to Yale to teach a Master Class on the three organ sonatas of Paul Hindemith.
Of all the musicians who have performed the three organ sonatas, Wilson was one of the few whose interpretation was informed by access to Hindemith himself.
“Hindemith heard me play the three sonatas, and yes, he made some helpful comments,” said Wilson.
In 1948, Wilson created the Bolton Music Festival and presented a series of four concerts at the Bolton Central School auditorium. Meyer Kupferman and choreographer Franziska Boas were among the artists who participated in the festival.
After receiving his BA from Yale, Wilson embarked upon a PhD in music at the University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; he left in 1949 to become the organist and music director at the Glens Falls Presbyterian Church, a post he held from 1949 to 1966 and again from 1986 to 2004.
Wilson also began teaching at Union College, where he remained until 1998. In addition to teaching music history, Wilson was director of the Union College Choir and the Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs.
In 1984, Wilson became the first music director of the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until his retirement in 1998.
After retiring from Union and the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, Wilson became chairman of the Sembrich Opera Museum, on whose board he had served for many years.
Wilson once noted, “During the first third of the twentieth century, the “Big Four” at Lake George were Homer, Leopold Auer, Alma Gluck and the incomparable Marcella Sembrich, in whose studio in Bolton Landing, now the Sembrich Museum, many of the great operatic singers of the middle of our century – Lucielle Browning, Natalie Bodyana and John Charles Thomas, to mention a few – learned their craft.”
Wilson’s mother, Anna Wilson, was an accompanist for Sembrich and her students, and Wilson liked to say that as an infant he had teethed on Sembrich’s pearls.
Wilson was still a member of the Sembrich’s board at the time of his death, which was announced by the Sembrich.
In accordance with Wilson’s wishes, no funeral or memorial services have been scheduled, said Sembrich chairman Bill Hubert.