3 Comments

1. 

   Andrew Keener on January 16, 2021 at 9:50 pm

   Oh, there’s another giant musical spirit gone. Another link broken with an era of great musicians of the last century – Benjamin Britten, William Alwyn, Sir Malcolm Arnold to name but three. His was the magical contribution to the classic Melos Ensemble recording of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro on a Oiseau-Lyre LP which saw me through school. Playing it before sleep only a few months back prompted me to write him an unashamed fan letter (alas, our paths never crossed in the recording studio). He courteously corrected me on the identity of the flautist on that recording (Richard Adeney, also much missed), and it was clear that his recollection of those early 1960s sessions was still remarkably clear.

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     canderson on January 17, 2021 at 11:12 am

     I too have an Osian Ellis anecdote, taken from an LSO rehearsal one Saturday morning in the Barbican, if now with no idea of the year, but it was me and Daniel Barenboim (waiting to do battle with Bartok No.1) as the audience. Pierre Boulez was conducting Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces. At one point Boulez stopped to inform Mr Ellis that he was under one of his harp notes. Ellis declined Boulez’s advice but went higher as instructed until the maestro said “that’s it”. Ellis now deferred to Boulez, smiling, as was Boulez, realising that he had been engaged in a good-natured tease – ‘let’s see if Pierre spots my deliberate wrong note’.

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2. 

   Robert Matthew-Walker on January 17, 2021 at 12:52 pm

   Hmmm – I also never met Osian but greatly admired his playing. Mention of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces and Pierre Boulez brings to mind a story that Osian would have liked very much. Sixty years ago, when Robert Craft began his series of recordings for CBS of music by the Second Viennese School, a disc was issued of an orchestral work by either Schoenberg or Berg in which the harpist was clearly playing from early printed parts. Those parts would have contained the retuning scales for the next passage or entry, which retuned scale would be printed several bars in advance to give the harpist time to make the necessary changes. In Craft’s recording, the harpist actually plays the retuning scale – quite a few bars before the retuned part was required – as if it were part of the music at that point! Needless to say, neither Craft nor John McClure (the producer) noticed it, and the record was duly issued to customary critical acclaim. I don’t think any critic noticed it.

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