Thanks to Edward Clark for the prompt.
I interviewed Sir Colin on several occasions, and it was always a pleasure; indeed he was my first interviewee (1994) and he could not have been friendlier or more welcoming. At that time we talked about Sibelius, Bruckner and Tippett; later about Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, about his Staatskapelle Dresden recordings of Mozart Symphonies (I was writing the booklet note for their boxed reissue), he also told me that Beethoven’s Missa solemnis was for him the greatest music, and that he loathed background muzak in supermarkets. At the Tippett Rose Lake recording sessions (Andrew Keener/Tony Faulkner) he asked us what we thought of his reversing the middle movements of Bruckner Seven. I ventured to remind him that in a radio interview he’d said he based his decision on Bruno Walter doing similarly in 1922. “Oh, I made that up!”, he replied and laughed. Happy memories.
Gosh – that long ago? Great conductor – I only realised it quite late in his life: a War Requiem at the Proms, in which he made the shortest possible break between movements – the cumulative effect leading to the Libera Me was utterly overwhelming. The concentration this brought to the score and the performers – soloists, chorus and orchestra – was palpable and deliberate, as the emotional tension in the work remained and grew: the great G minor chord was shattering.
Then I began to listen to his recordings differently, and he always convinced me.