HISTORY
b’ and me!
he colleagues who populated it, by Anthony Parsons note missing in such a dense score. Nowadays every kid has got an alto, but I don’t know how players coped with the Rhenish, the Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert Masses, and so on, in the days when the alto shelves were bare. They must have been very brave men. Boulez introduced many new ideas and in the early 1970s the orchestra worked with high intensity, often at music it had no taste for. We did a huge number of first performances; not so many second. But for all his exacting commitment, Boulez had a good sense of humour if the moment was right. We rehearsed his Pli Selon Pli to death, performed it, recorded it and took it to Paris. There we hatched a little joke. The piece begins with an almighty crash; every note on the piano. The antidote was obviously a chord of C major. No one chickened out and the effect was stunning, especially for Pierre who almost had a seizure and needed several moments to get over his laughter. Jack Pinches left to become Head of Brass and tutor of the Corps band at Eton College, to be followed by as contrasting a character as you can imagine. Tom Clough was another RCM product with huge ability in the techniques of contemporary music. He worked with the London Sinfonietta in their smaller scale repertoire and joined us at a time when our performances seemed to get ever more monumental, incomprehensible or exasperating, according to your mood. Tom stayed only a couple of years and apart from his splendid playing he achieved some notoriety for an audible comment he made during the closing announcement of a broadcast during our late night series from the Round House, Chalk Farm, to the effect that listeners would probably not have another chance to hear that particular piece again. Down at the bass end of the section, Peter Harvey had decided to sample the freelance life a few months after I joined in 1970 (he said it was nothing personal) and Richard Tyack came from the Bournemouth SO the same year to take over. Dick had studied on a joint course at Manchester University and the RNCM for his B.Mus, with trombone lessons from Terry Nagle of the Hallé. He freelanced in London after that and did rather well. On his 22nd birthday he got the call to join the LSO on its world tour,
and with his clothes packed in a cardboard suitcase purchased in Kilburn market, flew off on his own to New York to catch up with the orchestra. Dick stayed in the BBC for 20 years and then finished his career at the Royal Opera House, wallowing in the fruity register of the contra bass trombone. We all got on very well and sustained each other through musical excesses such as Stockhausen’s Carre for four orchestras, which took hours of rehearsal and a lot of self-control, to Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, which was money well spent, exhilarating to perform and only possible with the BBC’s financial resources. David Evans, principal of the CBSO, followed Tom Clough in our second trombone chair, a powerful player and a social asset in the agreeable line of all our appointments. But he moved on to be principal at Bournemouth and eventually into teaching at the military establishments down in that area, happier to have a settled life with his family than spending it on the orchestral coach. Tom Winthorpe then joined us from English National Opera. Tom was an apprentice draughtsman after leaving school, but was an accomplished violinist and when he decided to give music a go it was as 1st study violin/2nd study trombone at the RAM. Sid Langston was still Professor, and he agreed that Tom could do equal 1st study when he began to prefer the brass section. He landed the job of principal in the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and it was quite a plum appointment because the Ulster Orchestra had no trombones of its own and actually fitted rehearsals around the BBC section; a nice little earner on the side. He moved to ENO at the Coliseum in 1974 and to the BBC SO in 1979. He had always wanted to be in a big symphony orchestra, but somehow got the hankering for opera again and went to the Royal Opera House in 1985, where he joined up with Dick Tyack again. Alfred Flaszynski was our principal through all these times and changes, but he was feeling the strain by the early 1980s, having survived serious heart troubles, and died in 1985. Chris Mowat emerged on the orchestral scene by a different route, a music degree at Cambridge University and lessons with Denis Wick. He
broke through immediately and had a tenyear BBC career as principal in the Northern Orchestra, followed by a year with the Hallé before moving to the RPO, then to us. I recall him in a Prom standing above the bust of Sir Henry Wood to deliver the dramatic Oration in the Grand Messe des Morts, and several Mahler 3 performances on a tour of Japan, when over three weeks he could never get his jet lag right. Audiences don’t know what players go through sometimes. His compositions and his scholarly editions of many of the best solos are well known to you all. Replacing Dick had not been easy. True there were extremely good players around, but the one Chris Mowat really wanted had been doing very well indeed in the studios for long time. Steve Saunders was first-call bass trombone for films, TV and recording sessions, also doubling on tenor tuba and on bass sackbut with His Majestys Sackbutts and Cornetts. He took a bit of persuading that he could still fit in some of that around the BBC schedule, but in the end he decided it wasn’t such a bad idea. Henry Hardy became the new co-principal when Tom left us. He had done boys service in the army and a stint in the Royal Artillery Band, also studied at Kneller Hall then went to the RCM full-time as a pupil of Arthur Wilson. In only his second year, Henry won the principal job at the Scottish National Orchestra, hastily bade farewell to student life and headed to Glasgow, where he stayed for seven years. With that valuable experience under his belt, he moved south again and freelanced in London for four years until we invited him to join the Beeb. And that brings us back to 1998, when my involvement with the orchestra ended. There had been plenty of ups and downs, notably the 1982 MU strike of musicians to save orchestras that the BBC wanted to disband; times when our tempers were tested by the ‘artistic’ demands of some contemporary music, and fabulous playing by the soloists from all the sections. Mostly, our conductors were a privilege and a joy to play for, and looking back over the years to compile this article, I was lucky to be in orchestral playing at a good time, and I wouldn’t have changed it.
THE TROMBONIST | SPRING 2012 | PAGE 25