Founding President and Chairman of the International Youth Foundation and Co-Founder and Chairman of the European Union Youth Orchestra.

Lionel Bryer was a successful London dentist who, inspired by a love of music and the desire to foster good relations with other countries by educating young people in their cultures, co-founded the International Youth Foundation. Through it he also co-founded what is now the Aberdeen International Youth Festival and the European Community Youth Orchestra (now the European Union Youth Orchestra).

The Lionel Bryer Scholarship Fund

The EUYO Prom on 11 August 2007 was held in celebration of the life of Lionel, who had such a great passion for music, education and inspiring young people to achieve their dreams. It was an incredible evening with 136 members of the EUYO performing under the baton of Sir Colin Davis, to a capacity audience of 5000, many of whom knew Lionel personally.

The Lionel Bryer Scholarship Fund was launched on the evening to enable his great vision to live on. It has already raised in excess of £30,000 and will support young, talented musicians in need of financial help. Enormous thanks to all those who have donated so far!

In this, its first year, the Fund will focus on young musicians from the two newest European Union country members, Romania and Bulgaria. Plans include the Fund financing sending some of Europe’s finest music tutors out to tutor young Romanian and Bulgarian musicians, who would otherwise not have access to such high-level teaching. In addition to offering group and private master-classes, focused on technical and musical issues, they will encourage the young musicians to take part in ensemble activities and aim to set up ensembles that will continue beyond the length of their stay. All teaching will be given free of charge and will be aimed in particular at young people who are unable to afford such lessons themselves.

For further information or to make a donation to the Fund please contact the EUYO office on
+44 (0)20 7235 7671 or info@euyo.org.uk

Lionel Walter Bryer was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and studied medicine at Witwatersrand University. Having developed an interest in music he studied the violin and joined the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra and the University of Witwatersrand Symphony Orchestra.

He left South Africa in 1950 to study, as a Rhodes scholar, at the University of Oxford. There he played in the University College string orchestra and enjoyed his other passion — sport: he was a rugby Blue and represented his college in cricket, tennis and skiing. He was awarded a Nuffield research fellowship and became a Harvard research Fellow. In 1956 he won the first Albert Joachim International Research Prize.

He then settled in London and set up a dental practice in Chelsea. A charming man full of joie de vivre, he would occasionally play opera at full blast and sing along to it while treating patients.

Bryer later moved his practice to Sloane Street, and finally to a grand building in Cadogan Square. By nature an innovator he developed a new technique of embedding pieces of ceramic into fillings to make them more durable. He founded the International Dental Foundation in 1973 and instituted a conference in Courchevel where postgraduate students were instructed in dentistry and skiing. (Bryer himself had remained an enthusiastic skier since university.)

His life had been broadened significantly in the 1960s through his friendship with Blyth Major, the manager of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and concert manager of the London Mozart Players. They conceived the idea of an International Festival of Youth Orchestras and Bryer’s wife, Joy, who was running her own international public relations company, joined the enterprise.

The first festival took place in 1969 and for two years was held in St Moritz, Switzerland, but it quickly outgrew that location and moved to Lausanne. Bryer was then approached by the British Tourist Authority, which invited him to bring the festival to the UK. From 1973 to 1979 it was held in Aberdeen and London.

When Bryer expanded the festival to include other art forms, which opened up opportunities for more countries to participate, its name was changed to the International Festival of Youth Orchestras and the Performing Arts. A Festival Orchestra was formed, which was conducted by, among others, Carlo Maria Giulini, Walter Süsskind and Leopold Stokowski. Such was its success that it was invited to participate in one of the BBC Proms in 1976 and opened the Edinburgh International Festival in 1978.

After 1980 Bryer bade farewell to Aberdeen because of its support for the international boycott of South Africa over apartheid. The festival then moved to Rome for a year, but by then the Bryers’ attention had turned to their next project. Their last festival was in 1982 but the event continues today, having been renamed the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.

Shortly after Edward Heath, the Foundation’s president and the Prime Minister, had taken Britain into Europe in 1973, the Bryers’ idea for a cultural project involving all member countries of the European Community was put before the European Parliament. The European Commission confirmed its patronage of the Orchestra in 1976 and the European Community Youth Orchestra was founded in 1978. Its first musical director was Claudio Abbado — now Vladimir Ashkenazy — and its first project a series of performances of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, with an overture conducted by Heath.

After a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique the same year, one critic wrote that the assistant musical director, James Judd, “coaxed a precision and brilliance from the orchestra that would have done credit to many professional ensembles”.

Keen to create opportunities for graduates of the EUYO Bryer formed the European Youth Opera in 1997. It rehearsed and performed in Baden Baden and toured to Paris in September 1998 with a production of Eugene Onegin directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, to great acclaim.

Bryer is survived by his wife, Joy Bryer, who remains at the helm of the EUYO, and by his three daughters.

The EUYO, an orchestra of international musical and educational renown, is the result of Lionel Bryer’s vision and hard work. For as long as the Orchestra continues to thrive, so will his great legacy.