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Sir
Arnold Bax Website
EDITORIAL
October
1, 2008
Vernon Handley
An Appreciation by Richard R. Adams
Music lovers around the globe have good reason to
mourn the passing of Vernon Handley, but Baxians have even more than
most. Not since Sir Henry Wood has Arnold Bax had so devout and
sympathetic a champion, and at present it’s hard to imagine anyone
matching Tod’s advocacy of Bax, although I obviously hope I’m wrong
about that. Certainly there are other conductors working today who
have shown some interest in the composer but none who can match
Tod’s experience in living with the music and innate understanding
of how best to convey Bax’s intentions to an orchestra. Tod’s love
affair with Bax began when he was a young teen when he first read
through the score of Garden of Fand ‘in his armchair’, as he
liked to say, and that experience was so overwhelming for him that
he became a Bax addict for life, and from there his love of British
music started – but it began with Bax.
Tod’s career was extraordinary, and while we all
regret he didn’t earn the international fame and fortune (or that
pesky knighthood) that he so obviously deserved, we can all be
certain that Tod’s place among the immortals is secure precisely
because he chose a career path that allowed him to stand out from
all his contemporaries and achieve a mastery in repertoire that no
other conductor could match. His close identification with British
music meant that he wasn’t invited to record the symphonies of
Beethoven or Brahms despite his being a brilliant interpreter of
both composers; but that also allowed him to focus his energies
where they were most needed – in performing and recording neglected
repertoire that needed his level of interpretive genius to fully
come to life.
Handley was not alone in giving great
performances of Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Holst but there was
something about his performances of those composers that just
sounded more authoritative to my ears. His Elgar, in particular,
was always so vital and yet he never shied away from the darker,
more troubling emotions to be found under the surface of that
music. Likewise his Vaughan Williams and Delius were extremely
sensitive but always sharply focused. He brought a ferocious
intensity and brilliance to the music of Malcolm Arnold and Robert
Simpson and affectionate warmth to the music of Moeran and Finzi.
His Beethoven, Dvorak, Brahms and Prokofiev all had these same
qualities, and I hope the BBC has performances in their archives of
Tod in these composers so that this side of his talent can become
better known; but we must all be so glad that he recorded so much
British music in performances that I suspect will rarely if ever be
matched.
But it is for his interpretations of Bax that I
am writing about him now. While he would never admit to having one
favourite composer, he is on record as saying no other composer
“held his attention” or continued to reward him as much on repeated
hearings as Bax, and he frequently cited Bax’s Sixth Symphony as his
favourite of all symphonies. Perhaps his devotion to Bax was
partially driven by his frustration at the composer’s neglect and
the oft-repeated criticisms about Bax’s being a “meanderer” – a
charge that never failed to raise Tod’s temperature. But when asked
what it was about Bax’s music that he loved, he would always refer
to its enormous range of mood and colour and the brilliance of Bax’s
forms. In fact, he used to say that Bax was if anything better than
Elgar or Vaughan Williams in his handling of form because he was
more original, and it was his desire to make this known that made
him so determined to record the symphonies.
I was very fortunate to get to know Tod and
correspond with him regularly for several years. I first met him in
2001 when I interviewed him for this web site at his home in
Abergavenny. I remember how nervous I was to be meeting my
favourite living conductor and I expected to stay with him for only
an hour or so as I had heard he didn’t like to give interviews. As
soon as I arrived at his home, he came rushing out the door and
approached me with a huge smile and a very energetic hand shake.
I’m sure he sensed I was nervous so he put me at ease by walking me
around his garden and asking me about my trip from East Anglia,
where I lived at the time. We went into his home and I set up my
tape recorder but he said he first wanted to talk off the record so
we could get to know each other better. He asked what drew me to
the music of Bax and why I was so enthusiastic about British music
in general. I could tell he very pleased to be talking with someone
who shared his same passions and understood the greatness of Bax’s
music. I ended up staying with him for an entire afternoon and the
interview he provided was as personal as it was thoughtful. I
remember at the time he said it was very important for him to get
his thoughts on Bax down on paper and I know he viewed my interview
as a chance to do that. When we first met, there were no plans for
him to record the Bax symphonies and he expressed real anguish that
he’d likely never be able to.
That was in November 2001. Then sometime during
the first week in January 2002, I came home to find a very excited
message from Tod on my answering machine. He told me I needed to
call him back that evening because he had some very exciting news.
I hadn’t expected to hear from him again following our interview and
I couldn’t imagine why he was calling me, but I called him back and
caught up with him right after dinner. “You’ll never believe how I
spent my day,” he said. “I’m here in Manchester and I’ve been
rehearsing the BBC Philharmonic in Bax’s Third Symphony for a
recording that’s going out with the BBC Music Magazine. And we’re
doing Tintagel too,” he continued. “You should have heard
the orchestra…with a little rehearsal they really got the idiom down
and everyone was impressed with how tight that first movement
sounded; you know, that Third Symphony is a masterpiece. Bax does
things in that symphony that are as great as Beethoven,” and on he
went. What continues to amaze me about that conversation was just
how excited and happy Tod was to be recording Bax’s Third Symphony –
so much so that he had to call someone and share the news, and I was
the lucky recipient of his enthusiasm….a honour I’ll always
cherish. Tod mentioned during that conversation that the producers
Brian Pidgeon and Mike George were so excited about the performance
that they would try to persuade the BBC to allow Tod to record all
the Bax symphonies for Radio 3. Well, we all know what became of
that.
I continued to correspond with Tod and attend
several of his Bax recordings as well as meet with him again in
Abergavenny for a follow up interview. I had the very sad
experience of seeing Tod right after his Munich car accident that
left him crippled for the rest of his life. He was there to conduct
a concert performance of Delius’s Village Romeo and Juliet
with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and to this day I’ll never know
how Tod got through that performance, for the accident, that had
killed his driver, had occurred only days before. I spoke with him
after the concert and he looked positively ashen-faced. He was in
enormous pain and he kept repeating over and over how much he wanted
to get home. He was never quite the same after that accident
although he continued to record and conduct performances that, if
anything, only increased in intensity and concentration while his
body slowly gave out.
Little needs to be said about Tod’s actual
recordings of Bax other than say their success surprised even him.
We have Chandos and the BBC to be thankful for their support of Tod
and especially for their willingness to following up the symphony
set with two glorious discs of tone poems. Had Handley’s health not
been so poor last autumn, we’d now be looking forward to a third
volume but alas, there is to be no more Bax from Tod and I suppose
that’s what I’m finding so difficult to accept as I contemplate his
passing and the huge void it creates. It remains to be seen if
Chandos or other labels will continue their advocacy of Bax’s
orchestral music and I have to believe that in time they will, for
if Tod’s recordings did anything, it was to show the universality of
Bax’s music and its ability to effect the uninitiated. Music of
such power and originality will outlive even its greatest proponents
and I know for a fact this is the way Tod would want it.
For me there is a very select pantheon of great
conductors, and in the British section belong Sir John Barbirolli,
Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham. I feel no hesitation
whatsoever in now including Tod Handley in that esteemed company,
for if anything, his contributions to British music surpass the
achievements of those other great men. He left a discography of
nearly 150 recordings – the vast majority being of British music and
an astonishing percentage of those being premieres. That he put as
much care, love, devotion and attention into a short piece by
Benjamin Dale as he did into a Brahms or Beethoven symphony is what
made Tod so beloved by his legions of fans and all the musicians he
worked with. We were lucky to have had him for as long as we did
and so now is the time to listen to his greatest recordings and
celebrate his life. Let’s hope his integrity and total abhorrence
of the more superficial and trendy aspects of a musician’s career
forever shines as an example to all young conductors who desire to
follow in his footsteps.
Richard
R. Adams
A very special "thank you" to Tindaro Pennisi for the sketch of Vernon Handley
used above.
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