Music organiser, teacher, adjudicator and founder of the British National Youth Orchestra, Dame Ruth Railton, who died on February 23rd aged 85, made a huge impact on the music scene in the post-war years in Britain and became well-known in Irish music circles from 1974.
Born in Bradford, the daughter of a military chaplain who came up with the idea of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, her mother had been a pupil of the great Belgian violinist, Eugene Ysaye. Educated at St Mary's School, Wantage, a ballet career at first seemed likely and she obtained a place under Pavlova in Paris, however, an accident ended her hopes.
Returning to London, she entered the Royal College of Music, taking pianoforte and organ as well as attending Sir Henry Wood's conducting classes. Her war years were spent in arts administration and in 1945 she returned to work as a teacher, as well as training and conducting amateur orchestras and choirs.
She convinced a number of leading musicians that a boarding school for promising young instrumentalists should be founded and, despite considerable resistance, the idea became a reality in 1948 and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain was born.
Ruth Railton ran the orchestra with a rod of iron and enforced her strong moral principles, including 10 o'clock curfews and strict separation of the sexes. She devoted the next decade to its development, constantly searching out the best talent for the orchestra, which was limited to those aged between 13 and 19.
She received an OBE in 1954 and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1965 - the year after she resigned.
She married the chairman of the Mirror Group, Cecil Harmsworth King, in 1962. On his retirement, the couple moved to Dublin in 1974 and Ruth Railton soon became involved in musical activities from the Foxrock Ladies' Choir to the Feis Maitiu.
She took on a number of pupils in Ireland, including the 14-year-old Patricia Kavanagh, who greatly impressed her and whom she helped win the Fitzwilton Award in 1977. In the same year, she persuaded her friend, the Russian cellist Rostropovich, to give a recital at St Patrick's Cathedral and the proceeds were used to help the young pianist to study in Germany and Taiwan.
Ruth Railton was appointed to the board of the National Concert Hall when it opened in 1981, and her wide-ranging contacts enabled her to encourage international artists to appear. On the occasion of the NCH's first celebrity recital in 1981, she persuaded the leading Russian diva, Galina Vishnevskaya, to give a song recital accompanied by her husband, Rostropovich; the following evening he gave a cello recital.
Ruth Railton had a driving passion for music and her remarkably successful organisational skills sometimes led to her treading on people's toes: "You need a strong moral fibre to go on doing something excellent day in and day out", she told music critic, the late Fanny Feehan, in 1979. Her unsuccessful efforts to become involved with the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland also led to some amusing skirmishes with the late Dr Olive Smith.
She could be relied on to put her weight behind other good causes. In the late 1970s the old graveyard in Donnybrook was in a disgraceful state and she and her husband decided to take action. Together with An Taisce and friends they cleaned up the site and pressurised Dublin Corporation to take it over. It is now an attractive public park. When her husband died in 1987 she became patron of the Cecil King Award for the Young Manager of the Year, promoted jointly by the Irish Management Institute, the Institute of Management in Northern Ireland and The Irish Times.
Her memoirs, Daring to Excel; the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, were published in 1993.
It is sad to note that despite Ruth Railton's undoubtedly important place in British music, there is no entry for her in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Dame Ruth Railton: born 1915; died, February 2001