By Jonathan Blumhofer

The late Sir Colin Davis leading the New York Philharmonic in 2007.

Sir Colin Davis, former music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; president of the London Symphony Orchestra; and principal guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic (among other titles), died in London on Sunday night. He was 85 and had been in failing health for some time.

The British press has since been filled with retrospectives: how, as Michael Wright of the Telegram puts it, the young Davis, a “prickly firebrand,” matured into “a thoughtful, magus-like philosopher-musician”; about the special insights he brought to familiar repertoire; and, above all, about his deep, insatiable love of making music. Indeed, for much of the latter part of his career, Davis was that rarest of breeds, a conductor seemingly without ego, one who made music simply for the love of it.

For many on this side of the Atlantic, Davis is probably best known through his recordings. His discography is enormous and historically significant: he recorded the first complete cycle of Berlioz’s orchestral music in the 1960s and ‘70s; made what for many—myself included—remains the greatest Sibelius symphony cycle on disc (with the Boston Symphony), also in the ‘70s; and his accounts of the operas of Mozart and Verdi with both the ROH and Dresden Staatsoper remain among the most thoughtful and exciting in the catalog.

Of late, Davis’s fruitful relationship with the London Symphony yielded a magnificent series of releases (along with, it must be said, a few clunkers) on that orchestra’s LSO Live label. His new Berlioz recordings—of Les Troyens, The Damnation of Faust, Romeo and Juliet, and others—reveal a tremendous growth of his already formidable understanding of that composer over four decades. Similarly, his ferocious account of Britten’s Peter Grimes, a production that toured with much acclaim to New York about a decade ago, is one of the most terrifying and haunting on record.

Davis was discriminatory in his choice of repertoire: his affinity for Sibelius and Berlioz has already been noted, and his love of Mozart never dimmed. He didn’t have much patience with contemporary music (much of it “[didn’t] really speak to me,” he told the Boston Globe in 2010) and, in his career, championed only a few living composers including, notably, Sir Michael Tippett. Most recently, James MacMillan has been the object of Davis’s attention: MacMillan’s St. John Passion, premiered in 2008 and presented by Davis with the BSO in 2010, was composed for the conductor’s 80th birthday and is dedicated to him.

It was my good fortune to catch one of those 2010 performances, not so much for the music—which I thought exhausted its few worthwhile musical ideas well before its 90 minutes were up—as for the opportunity to experience Davis in action. And, though looking frail, he drew an electrifying performance from the BSO and Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Despite the fact I didn’t care much for the piece, that concert remains, for interpretive reasons, among the most strongly etched in my memory.

When news of Davis’s death broke, I took out my favorite (relatively) recent disc of his, a 2004 LSO Live recording of Falstaff. This is music of youthful, buoyant energy, written by Verdi shortly before he turned 80. Davis recorded it at roughly the same age, and he drew some of the most thrilling playing and singing from his extended ensemble I’ve yet heard captured on disc. This is that rarest of albums: one that makes you want to stand up and cheer at the end of each act. And yet, there’s no sense that this performance had anything to do with Davis, the orchestra, or the soloists—it’s all about Verdi and the music, and the ensemble’s collective affection for the music comes across palpably. This is what made Colin Davis so special, and that’s one reason, at least, why he will be so sorely missed.