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Lambert, Constant (1905-51).
Lambert was born in London, his father was the Australian painter George Lambert and his brother the sculptor Maurice Lambert. He was a student at Christ's Hospital, where he composed a short operetta for a school concert, and at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Vaughan Williams, Sargent, Fryer, Morris and Dyson. One of his fellow students was Leslie Heward, who later became a distinguished conductor and who also died before his time. Lambert moved in a brilliant circle in London, which included the young Walton, the Sitwells, Hyam Greenbaum, Bernard van Dieren and Anthony Powell; he was influenced by jazz, as well as by Russian and French music. When he was scarcely 20 he was commissioned by Diaghilev to write a ballet; Romeo and lulier was his first published composition, but Diaghilev produced it in circumstances wbich drew Lambert's disapproval.
Lambert was extraordinarily gifted and versatile. In the words of Hubert Foss, 'in his eminence of soul, Constant Lambert stood alone, defying the statistics, and all his life creating new circumstances into which his person might fit' (The Gramophone, September 1951). His genius flowered in three directions as composer, as conductor, and as critic. After Romeo and Julief he wrote much music; his first and probably most successful piece, The Rio Grande, appeared in 1927 - a setting of a poem by Sacheverell Sitwell for chorus, piano solo and orchestra which employs jazz rhythms. The work was performed so often that Lambert came to dislike it. At that time he also wrote the Music for Orchestra (1927) and the Piano Sonata (1928-9); later his commitments as a conductor restricted his composing, but he was to complete a ballet Pomona (1931), the Piano Concerto (1934), Summer's Last Will and Testament (1936), the ballet Horoscope (1938), music for the films Merchant Seaman and Anna Karenina, and arrangements for the ballet of music by Meyerbeer (Les Patineurs), Boyce (The Prospect Before Us), Liszt (Apparitions) and others. As a critic he wrote for many papers and journals, but mainly the Sunday Referee and New Statesman. He could be devastating and often witty, as he was in conversation. His best known writing is Music Ho!, published in 1934, which became one of the most influential books to appear on the British musical scene in that decade. Its subtitle A Study of Music in Decline gave a clue to its theme, the division between the unpopular music of the contemporary highbrow composers and the popular music of the lowbrow composers of musical comedy. His scathing remarks about Stravinsky and Brahms and the English folk-song school, and his praise of Liszt, Balakirev, Glinka, Puccini, Sibelius, Weill and others demonstrated his wit and acute observation, and his readiness to fly in the face of current musical fashion.
In 1930 Lambert was chosen to be conductor of the Comargo
Society, formed in London to keep alive the work of Diaghilev,
who had died the year before. Out of the Society grew the Vic-Wells
Ballet, which became the Sadler's Wells Ballet and finally the
Royal Ballet. Lambert was conductor of the Vic-Wells Ballet from
1931 to 1947; he also conducted, from time to time, the Scottish
Orchestra in Glasgow, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, the BBC
Symphony, the Halle and the London Philharmonic Orchestras. He
was a brilliant conductor, despite deafness in his right ear,
and was a ballet conductor of the first rank. In the concert hall
he found the French and Russian repertoire the most congenial;
he also performed Haydn, Mozart and the evennumbered Beethoven
symphonies, and was especially attracted to composers of lighter
music such as Chabrier and Waldleutel. But he avoided the symphonies
of Brahms, and the German and Austrian romantics. During World
War II he toured Britain with the Sadler's Wells Ballet, usually
playing the piano to accompany the dancers. One of his finest
achievements was the production of The Faery Queen in 1946 at
Covent Garden; this took up six months of his time, but was one
of the first major events heralding the revival of interest in
Purcell's music. His programmes with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
after the war were of great interest for their unusual repertoire.
The reason for his resignation from Sadler's Wells in 1947 is
somewhat obscure, and it appears that his death in 1951 was as
much the result of alcoholism and the hostile reception by some
critics to his last ballet Tiresias, as of the broncho-pneumonia
and diabetes officially recorded.
Irving, Ernest (1878-1953).
Born in Godalming, Surrey, Irving conducted in theatres in London {1900 40), appeared as a conductor in Paris and Madrid was a member of the management committee of the Royal Philharmonic Society, and in 1935 became musical director for Ealing Film Studios, arranging, composing and conducting music for films. He also wrote incidental music for the theatre. He recorded some of the music by Lord Berners for the film Nichotas Nickleby.
Sargent, Sir Malcolm (1895-1967).
Born in Ashford, Kent, Sargent grew up at Stamford, Lincolnshire, studied the organ at the Royal College of Organists in London, from 1911 to 1914 was articled to the organist at Peterborough Cathedral, and then became the organist at the Melton Mowbray parish church. As a child, he had learned the piano, and his first experience at conducting was directing The Yeomen of the Cuard at the age of 14. After graduating B.Mus. at Durham University, he went on to win a doctorate at 21, being, at the time, the youngest to receive the degree in England. Eight months' war service interrupted his career in lgl8, after which he studied with the pianist Moiseiwitsch and achieved a reputation as a pianist and accompanist. His first appearance with a professional orchestra was in 1921 when he conducted his own composition /mpressions on a Windy Day with the Halle Orchestra when it visited Leicester, and this he repeated at a Promenade Concert in London at Sir Henry Wood's request.
In 1922 Sargent organised the Leicester Symphony Orchestra and appeared occasionally with it as a concert pianist, once playing a Rachmaninov concerto with the young Adrian Boult conducting. His programmes were daring for a fledgling conductor with a novice provincial orchestra, and included The Dream of Gerontius, Schubert's Symphony No. 9 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. He later recalled that he had heard none of the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, except the Pastoral, until he conducted them himself. Moving to London in 1924, he embarked on a bewildering series of musical assignments: conducting Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Company, the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, the British National Opera Company, the Robert Mayer Children's Concerts, and the Royal Choral Society in their spectacular annual presentation of Hiawatha of ColeridgeTaylor. He also taught at the Royal College of Music, and conducted the first performances of Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. His greatest success was the Courtauld/Sargent concerts, which were an annual series of six concerts at reduced prices, started in 1928-9 by Mrs Samuel Courtauld, with Sargent the musical director. In the concerts the London Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras were conducted by himself and by many notables, including Klemperer, Walter, Beecham, Szell, Kleiber and Schuricht. At these concerts Klemperer made his London debut with Bruckner's Symphony No. 8, Walter conducted Das Lied von der Erde, and Schnabel played three concertos at the one concert - the Mozart D minor, the Beethoven No. 3 and the Brahms No. 1.
Sargent was particularly in demand as a choral conductor, and regularly directed many choral societies in England, not the least being the Huddersfield Choral Society, with which he toured Europe and the United States, performing Messiah. Choral music was his first love, and certainly showed him at his best as a conductor; he confessed that his first preferences in music were Messiah, Bach's Mass in B minor, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and The Dream of Gerontius; Beecham once remarked that Sargent was 'the greatest choirmaster we have produced'. In 1932 Sargent assisted Beecham when he formed the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and shared the direction of their concerts with him. His first tour abroad was to Australia in 1936, and he returned there later in 1938 and 1939. He was with the Halle Orchestra from 1939 to 1943 and the London Philharmonic in 1939; in 1942 he commenced a six-year association with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which at that time was a group of considerable distinction and had many of the best players taken from the London Philharmonic. With the Liverpool Philharmonic he conducted 720 concerts and 100 recording sessions. He was knighted in 1947, and in 1950 succeeded Boult as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This began his intimate connection with the London Promenade Concerts, which lasted almost to his death in 1967, although his appointment with the BBC Symphony terminated in 1957. He toured extensively after World War II, to the United States, Canada, Japan and in Europe, as well as to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Sargent was generally a good conductor, but only occasionally a great one. In English music he was a lesser figure than Wood, Beecham or Boult. His strength was in choral, romantic and British music; all these came together in The Dream of Gerontius which he conducted with the utmost conviction, as is testified in his 78 r.p.m set with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Huddersfieid Choral Society et al., recorded in 1945 . An untiring advocate of British music, he once advised the Viennese that 'Elgar is fine, forgive me, a finer composer than Bruckner (C. Reid, Malcolm Sargent, London, 1968, p. 344~. Despite his love for the Viennese classics, he could rarely rise above the routine in interpreting them. He resolutely refused to accede to the present-day practice of performing the oratorios of Handel and the Mass in B minor and Passions of Bach with small choirs and 17th-century instrumentation, maintaining that Handel and Bach intended that their music should be performed by large forces. He had no sympathy with contemporary atonal music, which led the BBC to allocate more and more of the Prom concerts to other conductors competent m this repertoire. He always conducted with the score in front of him, was a rapid assimilator of new scores, and claimed he could conduct immediately a thousand pieces. He abandoned composition early in his career, but later arranged Brahms' Vier ernste Gesange for orchestral accompaniment.
With the public Sargent enjoyed a vast popularity, encouraged by his studied eloquence, set off by the carnation in his buttonhole, and a flair for showmanship unusual among British conductors. His ready wit made him a favourite of the Brains Trust, the BBC radio show. To the world he was the very model of a modern Englishman; to many Englishmen he was just 'Flash Harry'. On the other hand, his peremptory demands and his questionable alterations to scores invited animosity among orchestral players, with whom he often had trouble establishing a lasting authority. His occasional contretemps with them appeared to upset him more than the offended musicians; in 1935 he commented publicly that pensions for orchestral musicians would cause them to play less well, and this estranged him from English orchestral players for many years. Edward Heath (in his book Music: A Joy for Life, London, 1976) summed up Sargent well: 'In the last 20 years of his life (he) was probably the British conductor and musician best known to the public, particularly to the promenaders, who adored him. In the world of professional music he was rather more controversial and there were always those ready to sneer. Perhaps as a result of his restless nervous energy, he did conduct too many concerts a year; perhaps his repertoire of major works was somewhat limited; perhaps he did lack sympathy with the avant-garde products of contemporary music festivals; and perhaps he was snobbish m his approach to the non-musical world. For all that, he did a great deal to encourage British music and British musicians.'
During World War II and in the years immediately afterwards
he was very active in the recording studios. Sargent was the butt
of Beecham's wit more than once. Sir Thomas was asked, after he
had appointed Sargent as his assistant with the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, why he had such a high opinion of him. He answered
that 'if you ever appomt a deputy, appoint one whom you can trust
technically; but his calibre must be such that the public will
always be glad to see you back again'. Beecham always called Sargent
'Flash'; he was told that Sargent had gone to Tokyo. 'Good God',
he replied, 'Malcolm in Tokyo! What is he doing there?' 'Conducting.
He's having an amazing success.' 'I see,' said Beecham, 'a Flash
in Ja-pan.'After a tour of the Middle East, Sargent told Beecham
he had been detained and released by the Arabs. 'Released,' exclaimed
Beecham. 'Had they heard you play?' But Beecham did not always
have the last say. Once he arrived at one of his favourite hotels
in the provinces unannounced, and asked for his favourite room,
to be told that it was already occupied. He suggested that the
occupant might be asked to transfer to another room, but the manager
of the hotel said that he thought the man had retired. They both
went to the room, knocked at the door, and made their request.
'Certainly not. I'll do nothing of the kind,' was the response.
'But', said the manager, 'this is Sir Thomas Beecham.' The man
said: 'I don't care if it's Sir Malcolm Sargent.'
Boult, Sir Adrian 1889-1983
The son of a Liverpool merchant, Boult was born at Chester, Lancashire, and studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a D.Phil. in Music. At Oxford he came into contact with Sir Hugh Allen, who was then professor of music. Afterwards he went to the Leipzig Conservatory, where he observed Nikisch and studied with Reger (1912-13). He returned to England, gave some orchestral concerts in Liverpool, conducted opera at Covent Garden where he assisted with the Bodanzky performance of Parsifal (1914), and came into prominence when he directed several concerts of the Royal Philharmonic Society {1918). He was with the War Offlce and the Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement in World War I, and has told the story that at one poimt he helped to organise the supply of footwear to the British army; in his offlce, surrounded by boots, Vaughan Williams made the first revision of his London Symphony. From 1919 to 1930 he was a member of the teaching staff of the Royal College of Music; among his students were Leslie Heward and Constant Lambert. His subject was conducting; in 1921 he published A Handbook on Conducting and 42 years later produced another volume, Thoughts on Conducting. In the early 1920s he conducted the British Symphony Orchestra, which had been formed by ex-service musicians, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Diaghilev Ballet Company and the British National Opera Company, leading Die WalLure, Parsifal and Otello.
Boult's first major appointment was with the City of Birmingham Orchestra (1924-30). In 1930 he was named director of music at the British Broadcasting Corporation and permanent chief conductor of the newly formed BBC Symphony Orchestra. His work with the orchestra in its formative years was possibly his greatest contribution to British music. When it was assembled most of the best players in Britain were recruited for the front desks, and as it was a permanent radio orchestra there was ample rehearsal time and its standards were higher than those then prevailing in the country. In its first concert m October 1930 was included Brahms' Symphony No. 4, for which Boult had 12-15 rehearsals. The orchestra became one of the leading ensembles in Europe until World War II; the London Philharmonic, formed by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932 because he had been prec1uded from conducting the BBC Symphony, was a rival. Toscanini had the highest regard for the BBC Symphony and conducted it on visits to England in 1935, 1937, 1938 and 1939, and the exceptional results he achieved with it in his recordings in England were not accidental.
Boult remained with the BBC until 1950 when he was obliged to resign, having reached the retirmg age for a civil servant. In his 20 years with the orchestra he led 1,536 concerts, an average of 77 a year. In the l920s and 1930s he toured frequently in Germany, Austria, Spain, Czechoslovakia and in the United States, where he was one of the very few guest conductors with the Boston Syrnphony Orchestra. To these overseas audiences he introduced much British music; at the Salzburg Festival in 1935 he presented a programme entirely of British music. All his life he has been a consistent champion of British music both on record and in concert; Vaughan Williams, Holst, Elgar, Bliss, Moeran, Ireland and others have received his dedicated patronage, and he believes that Parry, Stanford and Rubbra are the most underrated British composers in this century. Curiously, Boult never recorded Delius and gave him virtually no attention. He was knighted for services to music in 1937 and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1944. After retiring from the BBC he became principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1950), but resigned from the position affer leading them on a tour to the USSR in 1956. He nonetheless retained a close connection with the London Philharmonic, and in 1959-60 spent the season with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Also, from 1962 to 1966 he returned to the staff of the Royal College of Music.
Boult is a modest, patient and undemonstrative musician with catholic musical tastes. Despite his success with Wozzeck, which he presented after intensive preparation with the BBC Symphony and soloists in the 1933-4 season, he professes little comprehension of twelve-tone music; in 1931 he performed, with apparent distinction, the Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra, but said that when he came to do the piece again three years later in Vienna, performing it, incredibly, for the first time there, he found nothing in the score to remind him of the previous performance. He then remarked to himself that if someone had said to him that it was an entirely new set of variations on a different theme he would have believed them. He dislikes showmanship of any kind, once saying that a conductor should appeal to the eyes of the orchestra and to the ears of the audience. On the podium his stance is exceptionally still; he never uses his feet and his left hand comes into play only sparingly. In rehearsal he is economical, and in a symphony he will play to the end of the exposition before replaying unsafisfactory passages. He endeavours to have the composer present when rehearsing a new work, although he once found one British composer so exhasperating at a rehearsal that he greeted her: 'Good morning, Dame Ethel, and what are your tempi for today?' From his public performances it would be difflcult to detect his personal preferences, but he has remarked that he considers it his duty to make the best of whatever score he is given: 'As an executant I am not, and have no right to be, a critic of any kmd, even to the extent of having preferences or favourites.'
Boult has said that the greatest influences on him as a youmg man were Richter, because of the solidity and architectural power of his conducting, and Wood, whose performances had affection and beauty. In later years he much admired Weingartner, Furtwangler and Walter. Casals, too, was a profound teacher; Boult once spent a month at Barcelona observing him rehearsing his orchestra. From Nikisch Boult learned to talk with the point of his baton and not with his voice at rehearsals. In his autobiography, My Own Trurnpet (1973) he named those who were the greatest conductors in his experience: for Bach - Steinbach and Hugh Allen; for Haydn and Mozart - Strauss and Walter; for Beethoven - Richter, Safanoff, Furtwangler and Weingartner; for BrahmsSteinbach; for Wagner - Richter, Walter (for The Ring and Die Meistersinger) and Nikisch (for Tristan und Isolde); for TchaikovskyWood and Safanoff. Boult's own strength as a conductor is best revealed in music in large forms and breadth of structure; his emotional reserve makes him less impressive, some may say duH, in highly coloured but less significant music. His acute ear gives him an unusual capacity for achieving a fine balance among the instrumental groups, and he appeals to the musicians to listen to one another. He rarely edits a score, but in Beethoven follows Weingartner's alterations. Normally he obeys scrupulously the composer's instructions, particularly with Elgar. He conducted familiar repertoire from memory, otherwise he used a score. With the possible exception of Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir John Barbirolli he was the greatest British conductors of the 20th Century.
above notes J.Holmes
Sir Henry Wood 1888-1944
"It would seem that we have only one conductor, i.e. a conductor who does nothing but conduct-himself a giant- Henry J. Wood". Thus Sir Edward Elgar reflected on English conductors in a lecture delivered at Birmingham University in November 1905. As critics of this widely reported remark were quick to point out, there were then other renowned English musicians who had achieved high reputations as orchestral directors. At Bournemouth was tbe redoubtable Dan Godfrey and there were other provincial musicians of note, but for the most part the important English conducting posts were held either by foreigners or by English musicians for whom conducting was a role secondary to teaching or composing. Too often these musicians were content to obtain reasonably accurate performances with, as Elgar put it "any attempt at expression sternly repressed".
It was against such a background of mediocre standards in orchestral performance that in 1888, at the age of 19, Henry Wood secured his first engagement as a conductor. Blessed with musical parents who had encouraged him and made available a sound academic training, Wood was already experienced as an organist and singing teacher and was soon to have his ambition to be a conductor fired by a meeting with the great Hans Richter, who gave him an impromptu demonstration of stick technique. Taking what opportunities there were to conduct touring opera companies and concerts Wood steadily built a name as an orchestral director. And watching his progress was the manager of the recently built Queens Hall in London, Robert Newman.
In early 1895 Newman invited Wood to direct a new permanent orchestra in a season of PromenadeConcerts at the Queens Hall. Thus began a working relationship between the two men that lasted until Newman's death in 1926. It was also the birth of the annual season of these concerts which Wood was to conduct for half a century and which as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts" was to evolve as one of the greatest musical festivals in the world. With Newman's management flair often needing financial support from private benefactors the existence of Wood's Queens Hall Orchestra sometimes seemed precarious - it acquired the word 'New' for contractual reasons in 1915 -but through it all Sir Henry, as he became in 1911, achieved an orchestral revolution.
Over a period of many years English musical instruments had been built to pitch upwards of a semitone sharper than the previous norm to give a more brilliant effect. This English Philharmonic pitch was a strain on singers and Wood restored the Low or Continental pitch. He also introduced the then novel unanimity of bowing for his string players. And he abolished the deputy system, which had enabled his players to send deputies to play at arehearsalor even at a concert. Wood wanted a truly permanent orchestra, so in 1904 he had to re-form his ranks whilst his disgruntled ex-players formed a second London orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra. He achieved standards of ensemble and intonation which if less than impeccable by today's standards were impressive then. His rehearsals were exact and timed to the minute, prepared beforehand by the meticulous marking of orchestral parts. All this was harnessed to a rock-like conducting technique, precise and direct, the tip of his two-foot long baton expressing the slightest nuance with absolute clarity. It had to be so, for many of his three hour long Prom programmes had but one rehearsal on the morning of the concert and there were many new works to be tackled. This technique he evolved through practice and experienee there were no conducting classes in those days. The orchestra also played in regular Sunday afternoon concerts and at many other engagements and Wood also carried out a crowded schedule of conducting at concerts and choral festivals up and down the country.
Wood's record in promoting new works is without parallel
in Britain. He would conduct any composition which he felt worthy
of performance whether it was to his taste or not. Some of these
then sank without trace but many great works were heard for the
first time in England under his direction. There were many British
works, of course, but before the first world war he introduced
Mahler's First Symphony in 1903, works by Debussy and Sibelius,
Bartok's Suite for Orchestra No. 1 in 1914, and astonishingly
Schoenberg's Five pieces for orchestra Op. 16 as early as 1912.
In the inter-war period Sir Henry kept pace with the latest developments
and presented works by Milhaud, Roussel, more Bartok, much of
Hindemith's output and pieces by composers such as Webern, (;erhard,
Copland and Shostakovich. But he was not a specialist in any period
or style. In the early days of the Proms he had to conduct popular
trifles to entice audiences on to more substantial
fare and he could always be relied upon to produce idiomatic and
accurate performances of the whole orchestral and choral repertoire.
Perhaps because of his sheer industry and range and the basic
practical demands this made on him he was never a 'great' conductor
like Toscanini or Furtwangler. Yet when the mood took him he could
achieve great performances. At his very last concert in July 1944
he overcame failing health and drew on some inner strength to
produce a Beethoven Seventh which electrified his Prom audience
and exhausted his players.
Henry Wood approached the task of making records in the sarne practical fashion as when giving concerts although it was not a process he particularly liked. His recording career began in earnest when in 1915 the Columbia Company started seriously to tackle the problems of recording the orchestra. Using the scaled down orchestrations and the reduced number of players necessary to accommodate the limitations of the pre-electric recording horn,Wood recorded mostly short pieces or larger works severely cut, until in the early'twenties consumer opinion persuaded the record companies to issue larger works uncut. With the advent of electric recording in 1925 a new world was opened and Wood's 1925 studio recording of The Merry Wives of Windsor overture shows clesrly how the greatly extended frequency and dynamic range of the microphone could now cope with the sound of a full orchestra in the usual scoring. Soon the engineers realised that they could enhance this increased range by the use of a more open acoustic -and that the microphone could capture the sound of the largest forces. So it came to be that Columbia recorded live extracts from a performance of Messiah given under Sir Henry by a choir of 3,000 voices and an orchestra of 500 at the Crystal Palace Handel Festival of 1926.
This festival had been founded to celebrate the centenary of Handel's death in 1859 in a fashion so as to "produce the broadest, grandest effects". The Centre Transept of the Crystal Palace was chosen as the largest hall in London for the performances and their success encouraged the promoters to establish a triennial festival of Handel's choral works, with choirs from all over the country taking part. By 1926 the appeal of such a gargantuan musical feast had faded and in that year the festival died of its own weight. In three of the six published Messiah sides ensemble is still more awry than in the wo choruses chosen for this record but despite the imperfections (and the loss of the postlude to "Behold the Lamb of God") these records preserve the last enormous sounds of a bygone era with amazing fidelity.
By the end of 1926 Columbia used concert hall recording venues where possible and so the acoustics of the Scala Theatre accommodated the records of Leonore No.3, The Ride of the Valkyries and the Danse Macabre, with its fiercely recorded xylophone. The Midsummer Night's Dream overture was recorded in the still more spacious Central Hall, Westminster. Elgar was right to call him a `'giant". Henry Wood was the first truly professional English conductor, a man whose influence on the shape of British music-making today was profound.
Notes by A. Sanders
Sir Hamilton Harty 1879-1941
BORN ON 4 December 1879 at Hillsborough in what is now Northern
Ireland, Herbert Hamilton Harty received his early musical education
at home, and later from Michele Esposito in Dublin, where he had
moved after successive appointments as a church organist. In 1900
he moved to London, rapidly gaining an immense reputation as a
highly sensitive accompanist, and in 1904 marrying one of the
most distinguished of his vocal artists, Agnes Nicholls. This
reputation ensured a hearing for his own compositions, and it
was as conductor of his tonepoem "With the Wild Geese"
that he made his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra on 20
March 1911. Not until then had he realized his talents with the
baton; but during the Great War, which prevented the appearance
in Britain of so many foreign artists, those talents were in considerable
demand whenever his scrvices were not required by the Admiralty
for minesweeping in the North Sea.
Harty's first engagement at a Manchester Halle concert took place in January 1915. When, after the war ended, the depleted Halle Orchestra found itself in need of a permanent conductor, his claims were advanced by Albert Coates and by Beecham, who was ever one of his great admirers. So in 1920 began a thirteen year association which saw the Halle grow in strength from 73 players to 96; its recognition in the 1920's as the only British orchestra capable of withstanding comparison with the great visiting orchestras from Europe; and the establishment from 1921 * onwards of the Halle's name on recordsmade by the Columbia company, to which Harty had for some years been musical adviser. His services were recognised with the conferment of a knighthood in 1925.
Harty's career broadened with visits to the USA in 1931, 1932 and 1933; and with it, his ambitions. His suggestion of closer arrangements with the LSO was accepted by that orchestra at a time when it was battered by competition from the newly founded BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His training rapidly bore fruit, but as he was no box office "draw" he remained the LSO's conductor-in-chief for only two seasons between 1932 and 1934, thereafter appearing as guest. Most of his recordings at this time were made with the LPO, but he did not appear in public with this orchestra so long as he remained at the head of the LSO. An exception to this was made when in 1934 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Another outstanding occasion in this last phase of his career occurred a month later on 3 December of that year, when he conducted the first performance-minus its as yet uncompleted finale-of Walton's First Symphony, which as soon as it was completed in 1935 Harty made for Decca among his last batch of recordings. He died at Hove on 19 February 1941.
Among generations of autocrats on the podium, Harty was exceptional in his easy familiarity of manner with his players, treating them almost as a family of friends. That persuasive manner and his highly accomplished technique -a clear, economical beat with an expressive but never elaborately gesticulating left hand-was highly effective with British players; witness the comment of George Stratton, newly appointed at Harty's suggestion as leader of the LSO at its time of peril in 1933: "He was a giant, and the Orchestra gave their all, and even more, for him".
To what purpose did he put these gifts' As the "Enigma" Variations reveal in ample measure, Harty's performances were all ardour, spontaneity and fire, with, however, a judicious admixture of elegance and poise, of the mercurial and of wit, all of which ensured that his enthusiasm did not overbalance into the meretricious. Never a rigid disciplinarian in requiring, for example, uniform bowing, he nonetheless obtained a silken attack from the strings, electric excitement in tuttis. Such qualities found their pre-ordained outlet in his legendary performances of Berliaz, who was for him a greater composer than Wagner. Equally distinguished were his readings of Brahms (notwithstanding his own stated reservations about his works). "Under Richter, Brahms was the great classical composer," remarked Archie Camden to the writer; "not until Harty came along did we realize he was a romantic'" Mozart (with sharply reduced forces), Schubert, Mendelssohn and late romantics such as Strauss and Mahler found Harty ever responsive.
Harty's attitude towards both British and modern music was ambivalent. Modern works were sometimes programmed with reluctance; and while happy to conduct his own works as frequently as possible, he also remarked that, with the exception of Vaughan Williams, "So many clever musicians are writing in England today that it is strange no English music is being made." Later he relented somewhat, and younger men, such as Bax (the Celtic connection), Walton and Lambert were performed with some frequency.
Thus Harty was in no sense an Elgar "specialist," unlike his contemporary Landon Ronald, programming the two symphonies and the major choral works only sparingly with the Halle. Certainly his approach to the "Enigma" Variations is far from conventional, but its immediacy and ardour, its suppleness and flexibility of phrasing carry all before it. No conductor granted his soloist in the orchestra more freedom for self-expression -albeit within the bounds of his own conceptions-and this characteristic is well to the fore. Perhaps a more consistent exactitude of ensemble might now be expected in a few of the more rapid variations: the needle-sharp wit that begins Variation 2, for example, does not quite survive throughout. But where today is to be found such spontaneity, such dash and conviction, and such bounding joy in the music?
The programming of his own, often Irish-inspired works with the Halle has been mentioned. The "Irish" Symphony received its first performance with them on 13 November 1924 and Samuel Langford in the "Guardian" remarked that "As an arrangement of melodies his symphony is an undoubted triumph. The scherzo (The Fair Day) is instantaneously effective." But Harty's limitations as a composer are suggested by Langford's further query as to "whether he should have the order of merit as a composer or as the expert arranger of national melody." No matter; the scherzo may be enjoyed for the brilliant and witty showpiece it is. Note the unmistakeable voice of Archie Camden's bassoon towards the end. This very work was Harty's farewell to Manchester with the Halle on 23 March 1933.
Remarks such as Langford's embittered Harty's attitude towards Manchester's critics; needlessly so, for Langford and Cardus, great writers both of them, well knew Harty's worth. Not long ago Cardus remarked that, were he alive today, Harty would be recognized as one of the world's great conductors. The over-fond recollection of a distant past? Then let Cardus's description in 1928 of the transformation wrought in the Halle' under Harty's baton be added: "It is not enough to praise the Halle Orchestra as the best in the land; it * the only orchestra. It is equal to Sir Hamilton Harty's most urgent demands for fire and passion; it has not a jot more than * quite necessary of that efficiency which has been named as a deadening defect by critics in this country . . . Sweeter woodwind than the Halle could not be heard in a dream; the strings seemed warmer this time than euer before; the brass was majestic. "
notes: C. Dyment
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