The conductor Vernon Handley was a great champion of British composers, a persuasive advocate of their importance and an outstanding interpreter of their work.

Although his vast repertoire ranged from Mozart and Beethoven to Honegger and contemporary composers, it was in 20th-century English music, particularly that of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Bax, that he excelled.

Witnessed in the concert hall, Handley’s conducting could seem uneventful, with its lack of spectacular gesture. This economy, and his conducting technique in general, were carefully modelled on that of his mentor, Sir Adrian Boult. But his interpretations were often overwhelming, and his many recordings include accounts of Elgar and Vaughan Williams as passionate as any committed to disc.

Vernon George Handley was born in Enfield, Middlesex, in 1930. He grew up in a musical household — his father, a Welsh factory worker, had been a member of Llandaff Cathedral choir, and his mother was a piano teacher. She refused to help her son, however, declaring him unteachable, and Handley later took some pride in describing himself as entirely self-taught.

His aptitude and appetite for music were apparent at an early age, although an injury to his hand when he was 8 ruled out a career as an instrumentalist. At Enfield School he was aided by a sympathetic music teacher who invited him to conduct the school choir. This experience persuaded the 16-year-old Handley that he had found his metier. A number of visits to the BBC’s Maida Vale studios to watch Boult rehearsing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra also left a deep impression on him, and installed Boult as one of his musical heroes.

After his National Service Handley went to Balliol College, Oxford, to read English philology. He flourished in Balliol’s overwhelmingly intellectual environment, but his musical activities — which included conducting the university orchestra — had a deleterious effect on his studies. He barely scraped through his degree after a final term at Oxford in which he had given eight concerts.

There followed a period in which Handley eked out a living conducting amateur choirs and music society orchestras, when necessary assembling his own ensembles to conduct. But in 1953 his talent was recognised by Boult, whose advice and patronage were to have a profound impact on his career.

Boult had retired as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1950 but remained hugely influential in British music. Handley first wrote to him as a student, asking for guidance, but received only a discouraging duplicated reply. Undeterred, he wrote subsequently to Boult’s secretary, asking permission to observe a rehearsal and expressing enthusiasm for the works of Holst that Boult was to conduct. This elicited a far more promising response: Handley was invited not only to attend the rehearsal, but to meet Boult in person.

Boult could be exacting, even difficult, and the meeting turned into an intimidatingly rigorous examination of Handley’s technique. But it undoubtedly helped that the two shared a love of English music, in particular the works of Arnold Bax; and Boult was sufficiently impressed by Handley to offer to help him. Handley became Boult’s protégé, accompanying him to rehearsals and often spending hours with him afterwards discussing what they had just heard as well as his own musical development.

In time Boult allowed Handley to assist at rehearsals, and he also helped him to obtain his first professional engagement in 1961, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. This caused a minor sensation and led immediately to invitations from a number of other orchestras.

His London debut, with Morley College Symphony Orchestra, followed soon afterwards, and included a performance of a work that became one of the most important in his repertoire: Bax’s Third Symphony.

In 1962 Vernon Handley obtained his first full-time appointment, as musical director to the Borough of Guildford. His main responsibility was to conduct the borough’s semi-professional orchestra. He soon decided that the ensemble was quite capable of sustaining itself as a professional outfit, and quickly persuaded Guildford Council that this should happen. The orchestra became the Guildford Philharmonic, and in only a few years Handley presided over a transformation in the quality of the orchestra, which began to attract players from the London orchestras, and a substantial increase in the size of its audiences.