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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Birmingham

Forward, looking backward

19 Friday Jun 2020

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Anniversary, BBC, Birmingham, CBSO, Christmas, Jessica Duchen, John Suchet, Norman Lebrecht, Symphony Hall, The Spectator

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It was very wet in December. That’s my excuse for those shoes.

Life comes at you fast, they say: Forward was published in November and for the next few weeks it seemed like there was hardly a night that I wasn’t at a CBSO concert or at CBSO Centre, signing copies. It was exhausting but huge fun: not just because of the many kind comments about the book itself, but also because it was a chance to meet and chat to the CBSO’s supporters. That was always my favourite part of the job when I was duty manager for concerts at CBSO Centre – the enthusiasm that people feel for “their” orchestra is genuinely touching, and the stories that they have to tell of their concert-going activities are endlessly enjoyable. I spoke to ex-players, ex-singers, and audience members with memories stretching back to the George Weldon era in the late 1940s. Since I always intended the book to be a centenary gift from the orchestra to its friends and followers, this was enormously gratifying.

Maria & Forward

My fabulous colleague Maria made the whole thing possible (and discovered most of the best pictures). When the  very first copy of the book arrived at CBSO Centre, the occasion  seemed to call for at least one bottle of fizz.

But it was still something of a surprise to realise that it was actually out there, making its way in the world and being read far beyond Birmingham. I popped into Waterstones on New Street and Foyles in Grand Central to sign copies. “It’s nice to have something in the local history section that isn’t Peaky Blinders” commented the manager. I gave an interval interview about the history of the orchestra on BBC Radio 3, and recorded a series of short films for the CBSO website. The Spectator kindly asked me to write something about the history of the CBSO for its Christmas edition, and BBC Music Magazine followed suit shortly afterwards.

Then there were the reviews, which if I’m honest I dreaded – but since I dish it out regularly as a critic, I was hardly in a position to expect sympathy. In fact, reviewers seem to have been very positive. I was particularly delighted to be reviewed in The Oldie; Richard Osborne wrote that “Such books can be a terrific bore but this is a gem: a lovingly researched, entertainingly written and handsomely designed and printed volume”. Jessica Duchen gave the book one of her end-of-year personal “Awards” on her long-running blog: “gorgeously produced, seamlessly readable, superbly expressed and full of splendiferous anecdotes. A wonderful anniversary tribute to the orchestra, with the lightly-worn engaging touch of the insider who knows exactly how it really works”.

John Quinn, on MusicWeb International, did the book proud: “Richard Bratby has told the story uncommonly well. His style is eminently readable and clear. It’s obvious that the book has been scrupulously researched.” Nigel Simeone, in Gramophone found it “thoroughly engaging” and Norman Lebrecht, in The Spectator (a review of which, like the Gramophone write-up, I knew nothing in advance), noted – with typical acuity – that “no nation state in modern times has chosen great leaders so unerringly well as the CBSO”. BBC Music Magazine gave it five stars.

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John Suchet was kind enough to endorse the book, so it was a lovely coincidence that we both ended up signing at the same table at Symphony Hall on 22 November. One purchaser wanted John to sign Forward instead of me: and who can blame them?

Since then…well, we all know the story and the fact that the book is currently only available for purchase online is of no significance beside the fact that the CBSO’s long-planned centenary celebrations are on hold and that everyone involved with the orchestra is intensely, anxiously trying to find a way to salvage something. There isn’t much comfort to be had in the current situation, and I’ve never believed that history repeats itself.

But one constant of the CBSO’s history has been the depth of the support that it has received from the community that it serves; that, and a near-miraculous ability for doing great things under intense pressure. The CBSO has turned a crisis into a triumph quite a few times over the last 100 years. Things are worryingly quiet at the moment – though as the orchestra’s CEO Stephen Maddock pointed out a few weeks ago, if you think planning a concert season is hard work, just try cancelling one. But we wait; we hope; we keep the faith. Let’s hope the dawn is not far away.

Potting history

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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Birmingham, CBSO, Forward, George Weldon, Research, Ruth Gipps

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An unconventional guide to the CBSO’s 1949 season – commissioned by Ruth Gipps and published in “Play On”, the orchestra’s short-lived first in-house magazine.

Forward: 100 Years of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is published by Elliott & Thompson on 29 November 2019, and is available from the CBSO website from 14 November 2019. I will be signing copies at the CBSO concert at Symphony Hall on Saturday 23 November.

A few weeks ago I wrote a short article about the writing process for the CBSO’s in-house magazine, Music Stand. Here it is:


It’s January 2018. Stephen Maddock and Abby Corfan have just asked me to write a new centenary history of the CBSO, to be published in November 2019. And I’m sitting there in Starbucks at Symphony Hall: flattered, of course. Excited, obviously. But also, if I’m honest, feeling a little bit like I’ve just been asked to level Barr Beacon with a teaspoon.

I mean, where to start? There’s already one excellent history of the CBSO. Crescendo!, by Beresford King-Smith, was published in 1995 and it’s a tour-de-force – unsurprisingly, since Beresford was on the CBSO staff for more than half of the orchestra’s entire history, and also created (and for many years curated) the CBSO’s archive. I’d be drawing heavily on his work whatever I did, so I headed over to Sutton Coldfield for a chat. Generous as always, Beresford gave his blessing, and encouraged me to use many of the terrific unpublished anecdotes that never made it into the final version of Crescendo!

Still, the question remained: what could a new book bring to the party? Obviously, I’d need to chronicle the 25 years (a quarter of the CBSO’s existence) that have elapsed since Crescendo! appeared. As a staff member from 1998 to 2015, I’d witnessed many of those years at first hand, but if there’s one thing that a History degree teaches you, it’s that personal memories are unreliable things. Eleven months isn’t a long time to research and write a book, so I began by scheduling interviews with as representative a selection of long-serving CBSO veterans as time and travel allowed.

I was thrilled that each of our living music directors (Simon, Sakari, Andris and Mirga) made time to talk to me – and startled by how candid they were. Former Chief Exec Ed Smith plied me with excellent wine at his London club; Sheila Clarke didn’t hold back (I’d hoped she wouldn’t); Mike Seal spilled the beans on the CBSO football team, and of course Stan Smith – the 96-year old father of our CBSO “family”, who played in the first violins from the 1950s through to the Rattle era – had some irreplaceable memories to share. Hearing about the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem from someone who actually played in it isn’t so much a perk of the job as an unforgettable privilege.

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But as I dug back beyond living memory, the archives took over – and that’s where it got really intriguing. I was too late to talk to Louis Frémaux (even if he’d been willing), but a personal statement, enbargoed during his lifetime, means that for the first time we’re able to read his side of the controversy that led to his sudden resignation in March 1978. Further back, through the music directorships of Hugo Rignold and Andrzej Panufnik, the Holocaust survivor Rudolf Schwarz and the former racing driver George Weldon; well, the more I rooted around, the more vividly they sprang to life. And then on past Leslie Heward (I’d love to have heard him conduct live) and a youthful Adrian Boult, to 1920 and the orchestra’s founder, the brilliant but clearly maddening Appleby Matthews.

I wanted to tell this story in full colour. When I was duty manager at CBSO Centre, I loved chatting to audience members about the orchestra, and I’ve tried to recreate the pleasure of those conversations – to put together a proper 100th birthday present for our audience, a lively and entertaining narrative with no specialist knowledge required. Along the way, we’ve aimed to share as many treasures from the archive as possible. Picking out the illustrations (there are over 120, many unseen for decades) has been huge fun (Maria Howes, of the marketing team, has a real eye for a quirky visual). Stephen was also anxious for me to explore some of the bigger themes of the CBSO’s first century: there are chapters devoted to touring, recording, new music and the Chorus. Much of the established history of UK orchestras is, in reality, merely the story of London orchestras. In the areas of public funding, education work and opportunities for women, Birmingham was decades ahead of the field.

So when I’ve encountered someone particularly interesting, I’ve paused to enjoy their company. Orchestras attract outsize personalities, and the CBSO story is full of them, from founding father Granville Bantock and his homicidal parakeet Scheherazade, to second oboe Ruth Gipps, who’s only now starting to receive her due as a major post-war composer. I’ve tried to let the audience have its say too – remembering always that this is Birmingham’s orchestra, rooted in its city, and growing and changing with it. Who’s to say that a concert in Vienna’s Musikverein touched more lives than one at Saltley Coliseum – or whether Elgar got a bigger ovation than AR Rahman? (spoiler alert: he didn’t). There are so many tales to tell that we’ll never run out of new perspectives. I’ve chosen the ones that I enjoyed the most; and I really hope that you enjoy them too.

Forward

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Andris Nelsons, Birmingham, CBSO, Forward, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Sakari Oramo, Simon Rattle

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Forward: 100 Years of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is published by Elliott and Thompson on 29 November 2019, and is available from the CBSO website on 14 November 2019.

It’s been a while since I wrote here, and the only real excuse I can offer is that in January 2018 I was commissioned by Stephen Maddock and Abby Corfan of the CBSO to write a new illustrated history of the orchestra to celebrate its centenary in 2020. It was a thrilling commission to receive, but also an overwhelming one. With a copy deadline of Christmas 2018 – and no relaxation in my usual working schedule – that meant devoting almost all of my free time in 2018 to research in the CBSO Archive, reading some 61 books on the general subject, conducting interviews with over 30 living witnesses of the CBSO story (including Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Sakari Oramo and Simon Halsey), and then untangling various (often conflicting) narratives to write the story – trying all the while to make it both historically rigorous and an entertaining read. The aim was to create a sort of ‘100th birthday gift’ from the CBSO to its supporters: something that they could genuinely enjoy.

And then, after submitting the manuscript, there was almost as much work to be done again: proofreading, rewriting and discussing the design with my brilliantly sympathetic and patient editor Olivia at Elliott and Thompson; then seeking out around 100 historical images and obtaining the necessary legal permissions – a task in which I was helped, with enormous patience, imagination and enthusiasm, by my old CBSO colleague Maria Howes. The CBSO Archive is full of rarely-seen treasures; the aim was to get a few of them out there for people to enjoy. This sort of thing, for example:

Harold Gray grimace

CBSO associate conductor Harold Gray rehearses a group of management and music staff in Haydn’s ‘Toy Symphony’ some time in the 1970s – percussionist Annie Oakley (left) assists.

You wouldn’t imagine how much legwork is involved – even obtaining the necessary permissions for the cover image, Concerto by Alexander Walker, took us about two months of research. Who owns the intellectual property of a deceased Catholic monk, who had taken a vow of poverty? This was exactly the sort of thing I didn’t expect to learn when I started out on this project, and which kept me, Maria, Abby, and Olivia and her team busy right through until the end of last month (Even the index required weeks of work). Whereupon we all breathed an enormous sigh of relief and I, for one, cleared off on holiday to look at more Austro-Hungarian relics in Transylvania.

 

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Even the title took some thought and a few drafts. Forward is the motto of the City of Birmingham, and the book is about the city as much as its orchestra. The two cannot be separated and both share the same ambitious, forward-looking, sometimes impatient outlook – a subject that I’ve written on before now.

Anyway, it’s with the printers now – and rather to my surprise I feel distinctly nervous. It feels a bit like waiting to go onstage; there’s already been some press and part of me is terrified to see what glitches and howlers we missed (there are always some), just as an equal, if quieter, part of me is excited to see how people react. Above all, I hope that readers enjoy it, and that it deepens their enjoyment of and appreciation of the CBSO. It’s on sale from the CBSO website from 14 November and from Amazon and all good real-world bookstores from 28 November 2019. I may well be talking about it again…

Unprecedented folly

26 Sunday Feb 2017

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Birmingham, Ljubljana, The Spectator

Mahler in Ljubljana: what were they thinking?

Reiner in Ljubljana: what were they thinking?

Like many people in the world of classical music, I’m worried by the trend of appointing young, unproven conductors to posts in major orchestras and opera houses. Sure, they look good in PR photos, but what experience can they possibly bring?

And what hope is there for the future of music if we continue with this craze for youth over experience? I’m talking about the likes of this young Gustav Mahler (23) at Olmutz, Hans Richter (25, Munich), Richard Strauss (21 – Meiningen – rumour has it he shares an agent with Hans von Bulow, if you want to know how this whole shadowy machine really works), Bruno Walter (21, Breslau), Otto Klemperer (22, Prague), Fritz Reiner (22, Laibach), Carlos Kleiber (28, Dusseldorf), Bernard Haitink, (26, Amsterdam), and Leonard Bernstein (25, New York).

Or worst of all, Wilhelm Furtwangler (21, Zurich) and Herbert von Karajan (21, Ulm) – what hope do either of these admittedly talented young people have of developing naturally as musicians when forced into the spotlight, and placed under such unrealistic pressure at such a young age? I fear for the art of music – really, I do.

Anyway, here’s something I wrote on the subject for The Spectator.

Quote of the Week

11 Friday Dec 2015

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Birmingham, Luigi Arditi, Shakespeare

A friend of Luigi Arditi’s, told of the composer’s plans to visit Birmingham one day, strongly encouraged him to visit Stratford-on-Avon as well: ‘It would be a pity to leave the area without visiting the birthplace of Shakespeare,’ he remarked.
‘But who is this Shakespeare?’ Arditi asked. ‘Haven’t you heard of the man who wrote Othello,’ the friend replied, understandably amazed, ‘and Romeo and Juliet? The Merry Wives of Windsor?’ ‘Ah,’ Arditi declared after a moment, ‘you mean the librettist!’

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