Sir Alexander Gibson at 100 Posted Mon 23 February 2026
Sir Alexander Gibson CBE (1926-1995) was the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s longest-serving Principal Conductor and Music Director, from 1959 until 1984, and the first Scot to be appointed to the position. Sir Alexander Gibson was created Commander of the British Empire in 1967 and made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen’s Jubilee Honours list in 1977.
Born in Motherwell on 11 February 1926, Alex Gibson grew up in the Lanarkshire village of New Stevenston and was educated at Dalziel High School, where he showed early signs of his musical talent on the piano and organ. By 18 he was studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, working simultaneously as organist of Hillhead Congregational Church in Glasgow’s West End. War interrupted his later studies at Glasgow University, when he was assigned to the Royal Signals Band. Gibson remained in military service until 1948, when he took up a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music in London, followed by further courses of study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.
Following appointments with Sadler’s Wells Opera in London and as an Assistant Conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra, Gibson was appointed Music Director of the Scottish National Orchestra or SNO (as it was then known) in 1959. It was an unusually bold appointment by a board and management who, up until that point, had favoured Vienna-based conductors such as Hans Swarowksy, Walter Susskind and Karl Rankl – all regarded as ‘safe’ musical hands, with repertoire mostly focused on Central European composers. Aged just 33, Gibson brought a new energy to the SNO and made his mark straight away – for his first season he changed the layout of the Orchestra, introduced new repertoire including all seven of Sibelius’ symphonies, initiated a contemporary music festival and conducted the British premiere of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto.
With a mission to make music and opera more accessible to people in Scotland, as well as putting Scotland on the cultural map, Gibson founded Scottish Opera in 1962, utilising the SNO as the orchestra in the pit. He conducted the Orchestra for its first-ever foreign tour in 1967, and its first US tour in 1975. The SNO made its first commercial recordings with Gibson, possibly the only recordings ever to be made in Glasgow’s St Andrew’s Hall before it burned down in 1962. Thanks to those critically acclaimed recordings and tours, the world was beginning to take notice of the Gibson/SNO partnership, and together they attracted some of the best international talent to perform in Scotland, such as Jessye Norman, Arthur Rubinstein and Mstislav Rostropovich.
What does Alexander Gibson mean to the RSNO today? Although there are very few members of today’s Orchestra who played under Gibson, his 25 years are not easily forgotten, and there are still traces of his influence when the Orchestra performs certain repertoire, especially his beloved Sibelius. Despite being made nearly 50 years ago, his recordings of Sibelius’ symphonies and tone poems are still regarded as among the finest interpretations to this day; it’s thanks to those recordings and many others made by Sir Alex and ‘his’ SNO that today’s RSNO is considered one of the world’s great recording orchestras.