A few nights ago, I watched a wonderful music documentary about Jacqueline du Pré on BBC Four. It is an inspired film that I can thoroughly recommend.
It reminded me of a special moment, many years ago. But I must set the scene first. The Hallé went on a tour to the Caribbean, Mexico and South America in 1968. As we climbed down the steps from the airplane in Kingston, we were met by a steel band on the tarmac, playing Finlandia. Barbirolli had recently been awarded the Sibelius Medal in 1965 and we had recorded Finlandia for HMV the previous year. He didn’t recognise the piece until Martin Milner, the leader, told him what they were playing. The next day we went up into the hills and drank marvellous coffee. I remember being slightly intimidated by the vultures in the trees of the hotel garden.
Over 42 days and 23 concerts the whole orchestra, instruments and all, were transported to exciting places in Mexico, The Caribbean, Peru, Chile, Venezuela and Brazil by British Eagle in a Bristol Britannia (the Whispering Giant). Bruce Micklewright was the captain, and the plane and delightful crew took us everywhere. The Canadian First officer had flown U2 planes and told me that the ejection seat button, when pressed, was rumoured to destroy the pilot and the airplane simultaneously. Gary Powers had taken the risk and survived.
As we landed in, I think, São Paulo we noticed what looked like a reception committee lined up as the plane came to rest at the end of the runway. In fact, the runway at that airport was so short that a Britannia had never tried to land there before. They were all apparently wondering whether we would make it before we ran out of tarmac.
The people of Trinidad we found as charming as the Jamaicans, although the history of Trinidad is very different, their people having more Indian blood than the Jamaicans. The cab drivers only wanted to talk about cricket, and it was in Port of Spain where I was introduced to the Rum Punch, made with particular care being dedicated to the making of the grenadine sugar syrup. The drink was demonstrated to us by a friend of mine, Francis Pau, who was living in Port of Spain and whom I knew from the National Youth Orchestra horn section in 1960 and who was to become very active in the classical music scene in Trinidad. He certainly produced a knock-out punch that night.
In Trinidad, where they take steel bands and rum equally seriously, I spent time with Hugh Borde, who sadly died only a year ago. He had founded the Tripoli band a few years before. He was a charming and generous man, and allowed me to listen in to rehearsals which took place in his garage. They were rehearsing for their up-coming tour with Liberace. The standard of playing was spectacularly high. Their competitions involved the playing of various test pieces, which astonishingly included music like the Rachmaninov Paganini Variations, and the Britten Sea Interludes. It opened my eyes to the wonderful subtleties in their music-making.
Talking of exceptional musical skills, later in the tour some Brazilian percussion players were invited by the Hallé percussion section to the hotel to show off their brilliance. The Hallé players, no mean players themselves with stick and hammer, were open-mouthed in their admiration of these musicians’ skill, and the complexities of Samba rhythms.
Our first concert in America was in Mexico City, which is one and a half miles above sea-level. Barbirolli suffered badly as a result of the altitude and was probably glad when we left. I had been told that the best beer In South America was brewed by Germans. I thought this must include Mexico and was proved right. The first wonderful brew I had was in a small bar for where some reason I was the only customer. There was a saucer of little green things on the bar, so I casually grabbed a couple, chewed, and quickly swallowed them. That night it was Elgar’s Second Symphony. How I managed to breathe, let alone play, with my throat burning as if the Spanish inquisition had been at it with Brillo Pads, I don’t know. The lights in my brain were definitely going out all over Mexico that night, I remember. Barbirolli, with his own problems, was probably the only person who noticed nothing amiss.
I nearly remember the end of a riotous lunch with the wonderful Bob Blackburn in a hillside restaurant outside Santiago (with a certain amount of bottle-throwing). It was Bob who told me one of the best jokes I’ve ever heard. After an attempt to sober up the next day Ted Kilfoyle introduced me to Port and Brandy as a pick-me-up. The wife of the British Naval Attaché had invited the section principals to lunch at their residence and we were given avocado with sour cream, I remember. She had been a close friend of Sir Edward Heath, the well-known part-time conductor, himself a friend of Moura Lympany who had chosen eight of her own recordings to accompany her on her desert island, thus beating Elizabeth Schwarzkopf by one.
We played Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem during the tour, and the very special Jim Diack came along to make up its six horns. I trust I may be forgiven if I mention him introducing me to the best Gin Tónicas I have ever tasted – made with freshly-squeezed lemon juice. I remember thinking the imported Schweppes tonic to be of a higher quality to the one we had in England, unless that is a figment of my imagination.
After the concert in Buenos Aires, I was taken out the next day to an estancia in the countryside, by a man who had been at the previous night’s concert. After lunch, which consisted of the best steak I have ever eaten in my life, we sat back with our coffees, and I told him – he was quite sozzled by this time – about my recent beer and chilli pepper (about half a million on the Richter Scale) experience in the German bar. He pointed across the room to an innocent-looking diner and said to me “See him? – he’s a Nazi – probably a brewer”. I asked him how he could tell, and he called out to him and asked in a loud voice “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” The other man ignored him, so he repeated the question and the poor chap said “No”. Not to be put off, to my intense embarrassment mine host launched loudly into a couple of verses of the Horst Wessel song. I finally dragged him out of the restaurant before we were assaulted. The other alcohol-associated memory is of my introduction to Tequila. I believe I’m not the only member of my family to have enjoyed, under licensed premises, the company of my fellow players in South America.
There were two soloists with us on the trip. One was the famous Beethoven expert, and Dennis Brain’s friend at the RAM, Denis Matthews. I remember him lecturing at college. He recalled the time he was on a British Council tour in I think Nairobi, where he went to practise on the piano they had provided for him. He saw that the keys were very dirty and asked the general factotum in the hall if he would clean the instrument. When Matthews came back a short time later, he found the man using a high-pressure hose to wash it down. The other occasion related to a time when booked to play the Grieg A Minor Concerto, he unavoidably missed the rehearsal. On the platform, he sat down, got comfortable, and nodded to the conductor. Instead of the drum roll announcing the pianist’s first entry in the Grieg, he heard the single short chord preceding the start of the Schumann. So, he played the Schumann. At least someone had given him the right key.
The other soloist on the tour was Jacqueline du Pré. Only tangentially connected with beer, the best moment of the tour for me, and one I shall never forget, was when she asked all the brass section to a party in her room very late at night. Most accepted the invitation, and about four of us sat on her bed with the others distributed around the large room, all drinking beer from the bottle. There she was, propped up by pillows, holding court. She joined in with the jokes and laughed the whole time. She was 23, and this Croydon High School girl had only five more years before she was forced by illness to give up playing the ‘cello. She was just about the most charming and naturally talented musician it has been my privilege to work with. The Elgar became a quite different piece of music in her hands. Listen to her two extraordinary recordings and then walk the length of the Malvern Hills on a summer’s day.
