Vernon Handley (1930-2008) – remembered fondly as man and musician – conducts Elgar’s First Symphony with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Recorded on September 2, 1994, in Perth. [Reasonable sound if with a crackly background.]

Jan 8, 2022 | Videos | 8 comments

8 Comments

Andrew Keener on January 8, 2022 at 6:28 pm

Oh gosh, what an irresistible masterclass of the conductor’s art and humanity in music making there is here. Initial disappointment at the ubiquitous ‘conductor-cam’ soon disappeared, even if it would have been nice occasionally to glimpse players’ responses to this great Elgarian. Such technical clarity, elegance. How I miss him. I thought I knew the Vaughan Williams symphonies pretty well when I began producing his recordings of them in Liverpool, starting with no. 5 in the 1980s. But Tod taught me more about these glorious works than I could have imagined – structurally, emotionally, philosophically. His was a broad, passionate intellect. How fortunate I was to have recorded so much with him, including the symphonies of Malcolm Arnold and Robert Simpson. He was a ‘natural’ in the studio, trusting his producers and, with his unerring sense of structure, was able to record a ‘patch’ correction in such a way that inserting it into a larger take preserved a completely organic feel. Unlike some baton-wielders, he could correct, after listening back to a take, a great many faults of ensemble by saying the minimum before recording the next. I remember him declaring ‘Ah! I need my [shorter] Stravinsky stick for this movement’ after a rather rocky first take of the Scherzo Nocturne from Vaughan Williams’s ‘A London Symphony’. Foolishly I chuckled. He was deadly serious, and the wisdom of his words was born out by the virtually flawless next take. Such was the eloquence of his technique. Players held him in great affection and admiration. The last time I worked with him was with Natalie Clein in the Elgar Cello Concerto in Liverpool – I think these were his last sessions and he was clearly frail. He left us too soon.
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- canderson on January 9, 2022 at 5:19 am
  
  Thanks for your ‘Tod’ remembrances, Andrew. My very first recording session sit-in was under your watch (Tony Faulkner engineering), VH and the RPO setting down Simpson 5 for Hyperion. I felt I belonged. I was delighted to get to know ‘Tod’ through interviews and chats following rehearsals and concerts. Of course he is primarily associated with British music, but his enthusiasms ran wider than that: he gave the UK premieres of pieces by Hindemith and Martinů, for example, and his gallery of Great Symphonies included Honegger 5 and Prokofiev 6. I recall splendid LPO/RFH accounts of Beethoven 5 and Brahms 2. Col
  
  PS: VH rehearsing Bax’s Garden of Fand with the Ulster Orchestra, 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxL5kkkhEwQ
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Hugh Jones on January 9, 2022 at 7:46 am

Wonderful footage of a wonderful conductor.
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John Lill on January 9, 2022 at 3:49 pm

This certainly is a great rendition of an Elgar masterpiece by an admirable conductor. I was always so impressed during our 25 or so concerts by how pleasant and natural he was as well as his ability to confidently master a broad range of repertoire we tackled – from the standard, regularly heard concertos to Prokofiev 2nd and our initial CD recording of Arnold’s Field Fantasy. Tod remains sadly underrated.
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Donald Clarke on January 9, 2022 at 4:53 pm

I am not a musician or a music critic, but a longtime collector of recordings, and in my opinion Handley’s recordings of Elgar, Vaughan Williams (Tallis Fantasia), Tippett (Concerto for Double String Orchestra), and Simpson are the kind of recordings that, if you own them, you don’t need any others. I regret that although I lived in England for 25 years I never heard him live.
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Pete Sinclair on January 10, 2022 at 7:12 am

This is glorious footage of a master conductor.
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Peter Jenkins on January 10, 2022 at 4:19 pm

My ears quickly adjusted to the gravelly sound quality in the face of such a revelatory performance, my mind somehow managing to cancel out the audio defects.

While we don’t get even a glimpse of the orchestra, we do get a unique and extended view of Tod’s conducting, which I found absolutely mesmerising, even if the means by which he managed to work his magic ultimately remain a mystery.

Now to re-audition the EMI 5-CD box of Tod conducting the music of a range of composers, and not only English ones. And there’s his EMI recordings of the complete RVW symphonies and Job to revisit …. winter treats in store!
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pjl on January 11, 2022 at 12:38 pm

I was so lucky to arrive near Guildford in 1979 and find the GPO with Tod: and in 1980 he did one of my desert island pieces THE APOSTLES. There was also a special GERONTIUS with the great Kenneth Woollam and, of course VW and Bax. I remember a magical Dvorak 5: a piece I have only heard twice in concert. Famously he made one of Joyce Hatto’s few genuine LP recordings! His terrible accident near Munich (I think) in which his taxi driver died must have cast a shadow on the last years; he was on two sticks at the QEH for one of his last concerts. I was lucky to be in Liverpool in 1989 to hear him do two concerts with VW 5 and the Elgar violin concerto (Tasmin Little) in the cathedral. Earlier, as a teenager I saw him at the Halle doing Delius and in Stockport Town Hall with the BBC Northern do VW 9 & Berkeley’s St Teresa songs. I loved the fact that he said his two mentors for stick technique were Boult and Joe Loss!
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