Barry Griffiths [pictured, left] recorded Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, André Previn conducting, for Telarc.
Sad news: violinist Barry Griffiths – leader of the BBC Northern, Royal Philharmonic and English National Opera Orchestras – has died at the age of 81.
That’s sad news. Barry was one of the great leaders, who could clothe a pertinent opinion in such a way that one was both charmed and chastened, going away having learned something more about how to relate to musicians. I was a fledgling producer back in the mid-1980s when he was leading the RPO. Something was repeatedly not together, and after several unsuccessful takes I attempted to explain via the talkback to the studio not only that we needed the passage again, but exactly WHY it was not together. I went into great, convoluted detail, realising only after I’d expended excessive verbiage that everything out there in the studio had gone quiet. I looked up, through the glass in Abbey Road Studio 1 to see what had happened, and Barry was grinning back at me, miming that gesture of hand-rotating-above-the-head-the-other-rotating-in-front-of-the-stomach. It was a lesson quickly learned. Keep it brief and to the point, Keener.