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17
Woodwind and Brass Soloists
and my Colleagues in the Orchestra
So many fine soloists have come out
of the orchestra – Galway, Goossens, Brymer, Camden, Brooke, Brain,
Bean, Parikian, Pini, and many more.
As well as the soloists I have written
about there was always the pleasure of playing in the orchestra with
colleagues one respected and admired, especially the woodwind and
brass players. The woodwind and brass soloists when I was young and
for a large part of the time I was in the profession were all members
of one of the London orchestras or free-lance musicians in London
so that at one time or another I played alongside all the artists
I shall refer to. It is only in the last 25 or 30 years that it has
been possible in Britain for a woodwind or brass player to consider
a career entirely as a soloist.
Two very fine flautists Geoffrey Gilbert
and Gareth Morris both had successful solo careers at the same time
as being members of one or other of the London symphony orchestras.
James Galway was the first flautist to leave orchestral playing altogether
and make a highly successful career as a soloist, but only after he
had been principal flute in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and then,
later, of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for some years. The great
oboist Leon Goossens, who maintained his international solo reputation
from the 1930s for the following 30 years, still continued to play
in orchestras throughout his life. The same was true for the clarinettists
Frederick Thurston and Reginald Kell, and later Jack Brymer and Gervase
de Peyer. From when I began to be really interested in playing the
clarinet in 1939 and for many years afterwards the only opportunity
to hear the Mozart Clarinet Concerto was when Frederick Thurston played
it each year at the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of which
he was principal clarinet.
It was not until Kell went to live
in the USA in 1949 that he was able to give up orchestral playing.
Previously he had at one time or another been principal clarinet in
the LSO, the LPO, the RPO and Philharmonia. He had been my hero in
my teens and the first time I sat alongside him remains one of the
most thrilling moments of my life. He had not been able to attend
the rehearsal in the morning so I had had to move up to play first
clarinet – that was still in the days when a star player could get
away with something like that. When he came onto the platform at the
concert in the evening he introduced himself, ‘My name is Reg Kell’
– as if I would not know who he was! He was a big man with large hands
and when he took the clarinet out of its case to assemble it, it was
as if it were a piccolo. Just the way he did that was a thrill..
Many years later Gervase de Peyer,
who had been principal in the LSO, followed Kell to the USA where
he has had a very successful solo career for many years. He is one
year younger than I am and we often played together in several orchestras.
From the start it was clear he was more suited to being a soloist
than an orchestral player, even though he was a fine player in the
orchestra. He had a natural tendency to play as a soloist, whatever
position he was in, as I found when he played second to me. I have
written about Jack Brymer several times already but must refer to
him again here because he was one of the great wind players of the
second half of the 20th century, as Beecham said once at a rehearsal
after Jack had played particularly beautifully. For me all his finest
qualities, his soft, clean articulation and silken, seamless legato
combined with a wonderful lyricism are to be heard in the stunning
recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto he made with the RPO and
Beecham. This is a rare example of conductor, soloist and orchestra
coming together as if they were one. A recording to treasure.
Archie Camden and Gwydion Brooke were
both outstanding bassoonists each with a very personal way of playing
and totally different from each other. Camden, who was in the Hallé
Orchestra before he came to the BBC Symphony Orchestra when it was
formed in 1930, was the first British bassoonist to change from the
French bassoon to the German or Heckel Bassoon. Adam Heckel assisted
in redesigning the bassoon keywork in 1820 and soon started manufacturing
instruments. Traditionally the German bassoon has a much more ‘woody’
tone and is rather less flexible than the French and it was in this
way that Camden played. He was for many years the most outstanding
player in Britain. Not long after Camden started playing the German
instrument Gwydion Brooke who was still at the Royal Academy of Music
heard about this new instrument and went to see Camden in Manchester
and at once got himself a similar instrument. It was not long before
he had persuaded his fellow bassoon students and their professor to
change, too. Brooke joined the RPO at the same time that I did and
he was also in the Philharmonia whilst I was so I had many opportunities
to witness his incredible virtuosity. He had a very idiosyncratic
style and was the first to play the German bassoon with vibrato making
his playing much more flexible. His performances of the Weber Concerto
were dazzling.
Even the great Dennis Brain, for me
the finest wind player of all, played the horn in orchestras until
the end of his all too short life. It was after a concert with the
Philharmonia at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957 after a performance
of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony. He was driving back to London in the
early hours of the morning when he must have dozed off for a moment,
crashed his car and been killed instantly. He had been sitting just
behind me on the platform of the Usher Hall and I remember thinking
at the time how extraordinary it was that when, near the beginning
of the symphony, the horn has just a single held note, by some magic
Brain made it sound like a melody. This event remains vividly in my
memory, not only because apart from Ginette Neveu I have never felt
the loss of any another musician quite so powerfully, but because
through chance my own life was spared on that occasion.
I had to get back to London that night
as I had an unusually attractive TV engagement the following morning,
one of a series of Sunday afternoon half-hour programmes, playing
on screen in a quintet: two violins cello, piano and clarinet. We
played special arrangements of light music and accompanied a very
popular singer in the 1950s, Elizabeth Welch. I had considered returning
with Dennis by car, but as he was not feeling too well he decided
to stay for a while with his friend the flautist Gareth Morris before
setting off. Not wishing to risk being late I decided to take the
night train instead. As it happened the train was very late and when
I eventually arrived at the BBC White City TV studios I was told there
was a telephone message from my wife. She had been told by a neighbour
of a news item on the radio reporting the death of Dennis Brain in
a car accident and was concerned that I might have been involved.
Sixteen years later, when the Philharmonia
was on the way to give a concert in Warsaw, one of several we were
to give with Norman Del Mar conducting, on a tour of Poland and Romania,
I was sitting chatting with him on one of the interminable coach journeys
we had to undertake. We were remembering various artists we had both
worked with and he mentioned Dennis Brain, with whom he had been second
horn in the RAF Central Band and then in the Philharmonia. I told
him about an extraordinary dream I had had about Dennis, and that
it had been so vivid that when I awoke it took me a while to realise
it had been a dream. I was astonished when Norman told me he had had
a similar dream at about the same time. It seems that Dennis’s sprit
had lived on. I wonder if there were other musicians who may have
had a similar experience?
Inspired by Dennis Brain there has
been a succession of superb British horn soloists, Alan Civil and
Barry Tuckwell, and now David Pyatt. There have also been some very
fine trumpet players in a particularly English tradition. The first
I remember hearing was Ernest Hall whose noble tone dominated the
BBC Symphony Orchestra’s brass section. Richard (Bob) Walton, his
pupil, followed in the same style and was Beecham’s principal trumpet
in the LPO and RPO. Two more players in the same tradition were David
Mason and Philip Jones who went on to form the celebrated and much
recorded Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. Another very fine player in
quite a different style was George Eskdale, for many years principal
in the LSO and a distinguished soloist. In contrast to the Ernest
Hall school of playing this was more akin to the brass band cornet
sound and style, very lyrical and suited for playing melodies.
In general the difference in sheer
technical ability of the woodwind and brass instrument soloists and
their colleagues in the orchestras is not very great. There are a
good many wind players in the orchestras with enough technical skill
to perform the solo repertoire. It is usually a matter of temperament,
personality and musical imagination that holds them back.
In the previous chapter I suggested
that many orchestral string players at some time, probably when they
were quite young, will have dreamt that perhaps they might one day
have the opportunity to become a soloist or a member of a string quartet.
Whereas for woodwind and brass players the possibility of a solo career
was extremely unlikely, there have always been opportunities for violinists,
cellists and pianists to become soloists As a rule it has usually
been clear from a fairly early age, often by the age of four or five,
whether there is the outstanding talent required for a successful
solo career.
Of those that show obvious natural
ability only a very few will go on to have an international solo career
There will be some others who start off quite well, perhaps winning
some competitions but just not having what it takes to break into
the ‘big time’. A number of very fine string players decide that the
satisfaction of a life playing chamber music will be far more rewarding
than the solitary glory of being a soloist. Nearly all the other string
instrumentalists wanting to follow a career as a professional musician
will play in an orchestra of some kind, most as what used always to
be called ‘rank and file’ players, though now, in these days of political
correctness, they are referred to as ‘tutti’ players. From amongst
them will arise those with outstanding technical and musical qualities
who in addition have the qualities of leadership needed to lead a
section. Not all very good players have this quality so that in a
very good orchestra there may be quite a few exceedingly good players
within the string sections.
In chapter 4 I wrote about the small
orchestras there were in the cafes, restaurants and at seaside resorts
at the beginning of the last century. Until the 1940s these little
orchestras provided the opportunity for violinists with sufficient
technique and musical qualities to lead a small group and express
themselves musically in an individual way. Now there are far more
orchestras requiring good violinists, but there they have to be part
of a section, playing the same notes as everyone else in the section,
whether they are the leader or sitting at the back. The many opportunities
for personal self-expression available in the past have gone. Now
they only really exist for the soloist or chamber musician.
As well as the pleasure when sitting
in an orchestra of listening to my woodwind and brass colleagues,
there was also the enjoyment of hearing the violin and cello solos,
the much less frequent viola solos and the extremely rare solos for
the double bass. The Leader (Concert Master) of an orchestra has some
wonderful solos in the orchestral, opera and ballet repertoires, such
as those in Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, the Missa Solemnis
by Beethoven, Tchaikosky’s Suite in G, in the opera from Thais
by Massenet and the well-known violin solos in the ballet music for
Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky.
The solo violin part in Ein Heldenleben
by Richard Strauss is particularly demanding and calls for considerable
virtuosity. Michel Schwalbé, for more than 30 years Karajan’s
leader of the Berlin Philharmonic, was famous for his performances
and recording of the solo part in this work. He had a fantastic technique,
comparable with any of the great international soloists and used to
dazzle the National Centre for Orchestral Studies Orchestra each year
when he came to coach them for me. Though Oscar Lampe who was leader
of the RPO for some time had no pretension to be a soloist and had
neither the technique nor the brilliance of Schwalbé I particularly
remember him playing the big solos in Heldenleben with great
sensitivity when we recorded it with Beecham.
Over the years I have listened to
many fine leaders – outstanding players such as Rodney Friend, who
was leader of the LPO and then the New York Philharmonic before returning
to lead the BBC Symphony Orchestra , Hugh Bean, Carl Pini, Erich Gruenberg
and Manoug Parikian, all leaders of the Philharmonia at one time.
Manoug Parikian was (for me) the ideal leader. As well as being a
very fine violinist, he had a bearing and authority that commanded
respect from everyone, the members of his section, the whole orchestra
and conductors. All of them had solo careers though they were never
really able to established themselves as full-time soloists. Not even
Schawlbé with his virtuosity managed to do that. Is it, perhaps,
a question of personality? Or because they had the qualities a good
leader requires: a concern for their section and, at times, for the
whole orchestra , rather than the over-riding ambition needed by a
soloist?
The principal of the cello section
also has many big solos to play. Some of the best known in the concert
repertoire are those that come from operas and ballets such as the
cello solos in the suites from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty,
the Overture to William Tell by Rossini, the Overtures
Morning Noon and Night in Vienna and Poet and Peasant by
Suppé. The solos in the slow movements of the Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 1 and Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. In Jeux
d’enfants by Bizet, in the movement Little Husband,
Little Wife, there is a lovely duet for violin and cello (sometimes
now played by the whole of the violin and cello sections). One of
my earliest music memories is hearing this played by Marie Wilson
and Raymond Clark, when they were both in the BBC Symphony Orchestra
at a broadcast from the BBC Maida Vale studios, where I had been taken
by my father. Many years later I played in the RPO and the Philharmonia
with Raymond when he was their principal cello. He was a beautiful
player and had the musicianship and skill to have been a distinguished
soloist, but always remained in the orchestra, perhaps lacking the
necessary ambition.
Anthony Pini, who was principal cello
with the LPO and RPO for Beecham and later of the Royal Opera House
Orchestra, was a very fine orchestral cellist as well as a distinguished
soloist, particularly well known for his performances of the Elgar
Cello Concerto. It is not often that the clarinet section sit near
to the front desk of the cellos, but on one occasion when the RPO
were playing for the opera at Glyndebourne I found that was I sitting
a few feet away from Pini. We were doing Ariadne auf Naxos
by Richard Strauss in the original version, in which the first act
is a play with incidental music, often performed separately at concerts
as the suite Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. I was enormously impressed
with the way he played every note with such immaculate accuracy. Only
one other player had this same effect on me, the clarinettist Bernard
Walton. During the Philharmonia tour in South America I sat next to
him whenever we played the Brahms Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4. His absolute
accuracy of intonation, note values, dynamics and rhythm were a model
of orchestra playing. It takes great discipline to play like that
and if not allied to a response to the music itself can lead to a
sterile performance. Pini and Walton were both artists as well as
remarkable craftsmen.
There was one other cellist who unfortunately
had a rather short career. John Kennedy, the father of Nigel Kennedy
the violinist, was a wonderful player. He had a most beautiful tone
and a gift for playing a melody with tremendous charm and grace. Shirley,
Lady Beecham showed me a video of a rehearsal for a concert at Lincoln
Inn Fields, with Beecham conducting the RPO when Kennedy was playing
the cello solo in the Overture Morning, Noon and Night by
Suppé. Beecham hardly conducts at all and his face expresses
sheer delight as he looks and listens to Kennedy. Part of this concert
was televised, though unfortunately not the overture. Kennedy was
a lovely man, high spirited and amusing, but sadly too fond of the
strong waters. After a while he left the orchestra and went back to
Australia where he died a few years later.
Even though there are so many ‘viola
jokes’, probably the result of having been played in the past by indifferent
violinists, the viola when played really well has a wonderfully rich
tone. In the hands of an excellent player the viola solos in Strauss’s
Don Quixote and Harold in Italy by Berlioz and the ballet
Giselle by Adolphe Adam can be very beautiful.
So far I have only written about the
enjoyment of listening to the individual musicians in the orchestra
who have solos to play, but anyone who has played in an orchestra,
even a not very good one, will tell you that there is a special thrill
when sitting in the middle of the orchestra when it is going full
blast in a big tutti passage. There are places, particularly in the
compositions by Wagner, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, when the
whole of the violin or cello section have a big tune fortissimo that
I found tremendously exciting.
Chapter
18
