- He was fond of collecting antique clocks and old books. He was also a keen golfer,.
- British composer, orchestrator, pianist and harpist, trained at the Birmingham School of Music. He was Music Director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, afterwards working for the BBC (including as leader of the BBC Salon Orchestra) during the 1930's and 40's. He composed incidental film music and also led a harp septet and the Leslie Bridgewater Quintet (in which he played piano). His 'serious' compositions include a String Quartet and a Piano Concerto, premiered on the radio in February 1947.
- Much Quintet repertoire was arranged by him from 18th Century music, most of it then rarely heard: Arne, Mozart's opera singing friend Michael Kelly, Domenico Scarlatti, Robert Jones, Veracini and Henry Eccles.
- After the Second War Bridgewater penned incidental scores for a number of films, including "Against the Wind" (1947) and, based on a railway disaster, "Train of Events" (1949).
- His most important compositions were a String Quartet and a Piano Concerto premiered on the radio in February 1947 and recorded by Paxton on 78s.
- One fascinating item was a Hindoo Lullaby derived from an 18th Century collection of Hindoo melodies and published by him in a version for violin and piano. Maybe the revival work he - and others like Alfred Reynolds - did help to bring about the baroque revival of the 1950s and afterwards.
- His music never commanded quite the popularity of Coates or Haydn Wood but it was regularly performed.
- He is a prime example of a light music man whose career was largely made by the BBC, for whom he worked for many years, and although he did work in other musical areas these were again, arguably and for the most part, light music.
- Much of his other incidental music was for 'old plays', Restoration and Victorian, though one more modern play, Dodie Smith's "Dear Octopus", popular during the 1940s, drew from his pen a lively overture.
- He was educated at the Birmingham School of Music where he studied with York Bowen and, interestingly, Roberto Gerhard.
- He composed incidental music to at least twenty of Shakespeare's plays, though a few were for the London stage.
- Many of his later essays in the incidental music genre were for broadcast transmissions; William Congreve's "Love for Love", from which three songs (A Nymph and a Swan, Charmion and Cynthia) were published; George Farquhar's "The Beaux' Stratagem" (1950), which also yielded three songs (Highwayman's Song, O Good Ale and 'Tis True I Never Was in Love); Sir John Vanbrugh's "The Relpase" for which, once again, he wrote three songs (A Heart and a Head, The Rake's Repentance and Lord Foppington's Ditty), plus the orchestral movements Foppington Gavotte, Hoyden Theme and a final Contredance, and Moliere's "Tartuffe", for which he provided a score comprising arrangements from Moliere's contemporaries Lully and Rameau.
- It was the BBC, on whose music staff he worked for many years, which inspired his most notable work. He conducted the BBC Salon Orchestra 1939-42 and formed the Leslie Bridgewater Quintet (piano, played by him, and strings).
- His suites included Rustic Suite (Country Dance, Lover's Lane and, perhaps recalling his Midlands youth, Bromsgrove Fair) and, from 1955, Ballet in Progress (Danse de le Poupee, The Enchanted Ballroom, Polka Grotesque).
- His work, with the possible exception of Prunella, is more or less neglected.
- Leslie Bridgewater may have led a harp septet. He certainly had a Harp Quintet (separate from the Leslie Bridgewater Quintet), which broadcast prolifically in the 1930s, and made a few recordings for HMV.
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