SYMPHONY
IN D, OPUS 32 BY DONALD FRANCIS TOVEY
A
Record Producer’s Diary By Peter Shore
Some BMS members may
remember my articles in the BMS Journal
Volume 19 (1997) on Donald Francis Tovey’s
opera "The Bride of Dionysus."
At the time of those articles I had
compiled a concert suite from the opera
lasting about 35 minutes. The years
rolled by and I kept working on the
opera until I had completed the transcription
and printed out the score and parts
of the whole opera using Coda’s Finale
notation programme.
A good friend of mine,
BMS member Paul Shoemaker in America,
had purchased a copy of the handwritten
score of Tovey’s Symphony in D in 2003
and had started the process of transcription
using Finale. Paul is also a regular
reviewer of Classical CDs on the Musicweb
site. I suggested that we join forces
to speed up the process, knowing how
long it had taken with the opera. Paul
had nearly completed the transcription
of the 1st movement when
he passed all the material over to me
and by the spring of 2004 the whole
symphony had been transcribed. The only
job left was to find an orchestra, conductor,
recording company etc. etc. interested
enough to perform it! Seriously, the
transcription work is the easy part.
Persuading people that it is worth performing
and listening to is the difficult job!
Musicweb had published
an
interview with Robert von Bahr,
the owner and founder of BIS Records
in Sweden. In it Robert said that the
real stumbling block, still, is the
exorbitant fees that some publishers,
luckily not all, are asking for letting
someone take a huge risk in recording
works that they don't always know themselves
that they have. He went on to say that
not being content with cashing a large
part of the copyright fees we (the record
companies) pay upon selling the CD,
they want to have a huge fee for sending
the materials (scores and parts) to
us for the recording, materials that
often are in such a condition that the
recording has to be postponed or even
cancelled. I called on Robert at BIS
headquarters outside Stockholm just
before Easter 2004 and showed him the
Tovey material and told him I was not
interested in collecting exorbitant
fees but giving the record buying public
a chance to hear Tovey’s music.
Some months passed
before Robert Suff, BIS’s chief producer
contacted me and told me that they had
a considerable backlog of recordings
and it would be some time before they
could turn their attention to Tovey.
Robert suggested that I contact Martin
Anderson of Toccata Publications in
London who was planning to start a new
record label, Toccata Classics, to record
lesser well-known works and composers.
This was after I had been in England
in June to visit family and Paul Adrian
Rooke, conductor of the Hitchin Symphony
Orchestra. Paul had written an article
in the March 2004 newsletter about his
work transcribing Rutland Boughton’s
opera "The Queen of Cornwall"
onto the computer using the ‘Sibelius’
software. I wanted to see his working
methods and compare working with Coda’s
Finale notation software and Sibelius.
Paul very kindly invited me to his home
in Hitchin and showed me the work he
had carried out on ‘The Queen of Cornwall’.
He mentioned that the Hitchin Symphony
Orchestra were planning to give their
75th Anniversary Gala Concert
at the end of November with a performance
of Rutland Boughton’s Reunion Variations
for orchestra in two versions. I asked
if they were planning to record the
concert and suggested that they get
in touch with my old school friend,
Tony Philpot, who had been a senior
sound supervisor and manager of the
BBC TV music studio but was now working
as a freelance sound engineer. Tony
was contacted and booked to do the recording
in November. By this time I had been
in contact with Martin Anderson and
we had agreed to meet in November when
I would be in England to help Tony Record
the Hitchin Symphony Orchestra gala
concert.
Martin and I met in
his apartment in Westminster on a wet
November afternoon and I showed him
examples of the scores of Tovey’s symphony
and the opera. Martin immediately rang
up a conductor he knew who was asked
if he might be interested to record
Tovey’s music. I returned to Sweden
and a flood of emails began pouring
across the North Sea. Martin had planned
to record works by the Swedish composer
Hilding Rosenberg and a deal had been
made with the Malmö Opera Orchestra
in southern Sweden. But Martin couldn’t
find any music by Rosenberg which hadn’t
already been recorded and which he liked.
So he suggested recording the Tovey
Symphony instead. The orchestral director
in Malmö didn’t know anything about
Tovey and didn’t like the idea although
the orchestra had recorded Frederic
Cliffe’s symphony with a British conductor
[Chris Fifield - also a MusicWeb contributor
- review].
Reluctantly Malmö changed their
minds, as the orchestra was already
booked. Then the conductor changed his
mind and said he couldn’t conduct Tovey.
Then Martin got in touch with the conductor,
George Vass who said he had a spare
week at the end of May and would be
only too happy to conduct the Tovey
symphony.
George Vass studied
at the Birmingham Conservatoire and
the Royal Academy of Music under such
eminent musicians as James Blades and
Paul Patterson, and made his professional
conducting debut at St John's Smith
Square, London at the age of twenty-two.
As artistic director of the Regent Sinfonia
of London he appeared at many of the
United Kingdom's premier concert halls
and festivals, including the Queen Elizabeth
Hall and Purcell Room on London's South
Bank. He was principal guest conductor
with Amsterdams Promenade Orkest from
1985 until 1988, having made many guest
appearances with groups including Konzertensemble
Salzburg, Joyful Company of Singers,
London Mozart Players, Bournemouth Sinfonietta,
Schola Cantorum of Oxford and Oxford
Orchestra da Camera. He has also broadcast
for BBC radio and Channel 4 television,
and in 1999 conducted at Symphony Hall,
Birmingham for the first time.
George Vass has held
the post of artistic director to the
Presteigne Festival of Music and the
Arts since 1992. He is also currently
artistic director of Orchestra Nova
and serves the Bushey Symphony Orchestra,
Canterbury Chamber Choir, Finchley Choral
Society and St Albans Choral Society
as music director. After successfully
planning and programming the 2004 Hampstead
and Highgate Festival, George Vass was
appointed artistic director shortly
afterwards.
I received a call from
George who was in the middle of planning
the 2005 Hampstead and Highgate Festival
and after a long chat realised we had
at last found our conductor. Malmö
was not at all pleased with the change
of conductor as well as the composer.
But agreements had been signed so they
reluctantly decided to go ahead. It
was the middle of April and the orchestra
wanted the parts for rehearsal. So I
loaded my car up with music and drove
the 630 kilometres (392 miles) from
Stockholm to Malmö. I had arranged
a meeting with Per-Ola Nilsson the orchestral
director and Stefan Klaverdal the recording
engineer at the Opera House in Malmö.
Stefan Klaverdal is my elder son’s best
friend and I have known Stefan and his
family since he was six years old. Stefan
studied composition and music production
(tonmeister) at the Music Academy in
Malmö and already has a long list
of compositions to his name. The meeting
with Per-Ola was successful and leaving
the parts for the symphony and the opera
with the music librarians Stefan and
I visited the church near the opera
house where we had planned to do the
recording. What I discovered was that
a railway tunnel was being built directly
under the church and not only would
we be constantly interrupted by intermittent
blasting but that large lorries carrying
debris would be rumbling past the building
day and night for the next two years!
The opera house could not be used because
it was closed for maintenance work until
2006. Somewhere had to be found and
quickly! Somebody mentioned that the
opera orchestra had recorded Björn
and Benny’s (of ABBA fame) musical ‘Kristina
of Duvamåla’ in the orchestral
studio of Swedish Radio in Malmö.
One of Stefan’s teachers on his music
production course was a sound engineer
with Swedish Radio and a telephone call
to him confirmed that the studio would
be available for hire for the dates
we required. I drove the 630 kilometres
back to Stockholm with a sigh of relief.
Two weeks before recording
was due to start I received a phone
call from Per-Ola. The orchestra had
been rehearsing the music in advance
(that's dedication for you!) and had
come across some mistakes in the parts.
Some quick phone calls to the various
section leaders and I realised that
I had quite a lot of work ahead of me
to correct and reprint the parts in
time for the session. Most of the problems
seem to be in the Horn parts.
Sunday, 22nd
May. The alarm wakes me at 4 a.m.
and by 5.30 I’m on the road driving
the 630 kilometres/392 miles to Malmö.
I arrive there just after lunch and
book into the hotel just down the road
from the opera house. The hotel is in
the middle of renovating the ground
floor and the lobby, so it is an obstacle
course over building debris, and builders
to the lift. George will be arriving
at the central railway station in the
evening having flown from London via
Copenhagen. After a rest I meet up with
Stefan and we discuss the microphone
set up and other technical details for
the following day. Fortunately all the
orchestra’s stands, chairs and music
had already been set up in the studio
the previous Friday so there would be
no delays in getting started. A 20 minutes
walk from the hotel got me to the station
and then another short walk to the studio,
which was closed. George rang from Copenhagen
so I went back to the station to meet
him. I had seen pictures of him on his
web site so he was not difficult to
find when he stepped off the train.
The previous evening he had been conducting
the final concert of the Hampstead and
Highgate Festival and as well as being
festival director he had been getting
up at 6 a.m. to study the Tovey scores
(that's also dedication for you!). A
taxi back to the hotel, and a quick
meal where we discussed plans for tomorrow
and then an early night.
Monday, 23rd
May. I’m up early and meet George
for breakfast. The sessions will be
between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day
but I have to be in early to help Stefan
rig the mikes and get the rest of his
equipment set up. George and I arrive
at the Swedish Radio centre where Stefan
is already loading his gear into the
service lift to take it to the studio
(studio 7), which is on the 3rd
floor. Stefan had told me that the reason
we had no difficulty hiring the studio
was because it was not used very often.
The plan had been to install a digital
system into the control room but as
is often the case budget restraints
had put a stop to that investment for
the time being. I had expected to find
the control room empty, but is was a
fully equipped analogue studio with
a large MCI mixing desk and a battery
of outboard equipment. We placed a table
in front of the mixing desk and Stefan
set up his digital equipment, which
consisted of a rack of analogue/digital
converters his MAC PC, screen, a small
mixer, keyboard and mouse plus a power
amplifier and monitor speakers. It just
shows how quickly things can become
obsolete! We went down into the studio
to start rigging the mikes. Everything
was ready for the orchestra but round
the edges of the studio it was packed
with pianos, mike stands, tubular bells,
tarps, boxes, chairs etc. It seems they
hadn’t had a proper clearout in years.
Under one of the tarps we found a conductor’s
podium, which George was glad to make
use of. At 9 o’clock the orchestra began
to arrive. The Malmö Opera Orchestra
is a young orchestra and many of the
players knew Stefan from his time at
the music academy. By 10 o’clock we
were ready to start and I introduced
George, Stefan and I and told them about
Tovey and my family connection to him
through my grandmother who was his first
cousin. This was a tense moment as it
was the first time the orchestra and
we had met each other. George immediately
turned to the first movement of the
Symphony, raised his baton and we were
off. While Stefan began setting the
balance in the control room I sat down
next to George with Tovey’s handwritten
score in front of me. Now the music
that I had heard so many times coming
out of the speakers of my computer began
pouring over me creating a wave of emotion
that only a living, breathing orchestra
can produce.
Malmö
Opera Orchestra conducted by George
Vass with producer Peter Shore in Studio
7, Swedish Radio Malmö May 2005.
Photograph by Stefan Klaverdal.
We had decided that
the first day would be devoted to rehearsal
and sorting out problems in the score,
which turned out to be a wise decision.
It soon became apparent that there were
problems in the Horn parts. The horn
players were reading what was written
but it didn’t sound right. Not everything
was wrong but enough to be disturbing.
I asked them to do their best and I
would check their parts against Tovey’s
hand written score and make the corrections
in time for tomorrow’s session. George
was busy sorting out the balance between
the sections and getting the strings
to phrase the way he wanted. He was
concerned about Tovey’s tempo changes
in the slow movement, which didn’t make
sense and that he couldn’t consult with
the composer who had been dead for over
60 years. George is used to working
with living composers and sorting out
problems with them on the spot.
I saw Per-Ola Nilsson,
the orchestra director standing by the
door to the control room listening to
the rehearsal with a big smile on his
face. Well, I thought, at least we don’t
have to worry there. During the lunch
break I went into the control room and
began listening to the test recordings
Stefan had made during the morning session.
I could hear that there was plenty of
work to do but that the orchestra was
beginning to understand Tovey’s musical
language. George had wanted to break
up each movement into short takes but
we decided to record each movement as
a whole and then do short takes for
editing purposes. The rest of the afternoon
was spent fine-tuning the orchestra
and by 4 o’clock we had run through
the symphony as well as the orchestral
excerpts from the opera, so we called
it a day. George and I were soaked in
sweat so after collecting the horn parts
George and I walked back to the hotel
for a well-earned rest before going
out for a curry. Back at the hotel I
realised that I had a lot of work ahead
of me checking through the horn parts,
which kept me busy until 1 a.m.
Tuesday, 24th
May. The alarm wakes me at 6.45
a.m. and by quarter past I am down in
the dining room for breakfast. I plan
to be in the studio by 8 o’clock in
order to enter the correction I have
found onto the computer and print out
a new set of Horn parts. George is already
having his breakfast together with our
orchestral leader, Tomas Gustafsson.
I have no idea he was staying at the
same hotel. It turns out that Malmö’s
orchestral leader is off sick with a
broken leg and Tomas was called in at
the last moment. Normally Tomas is the
orchestral leader of the Royal Opera
Orchestra in Stockholm, which is better
known as the Kungliga Hovkapellet. The
Kungliga Hovkapellet is one of the world’s
oldest active orchestra’s and can trace
its origins back as far as 1526 during
the reign of King Gustav Wasa. I recognise
Tomas from a performance of Verdi’s
Requiem in a church in Stockholm where
I was singing in the chorus and the
Kungliga Hovkapellet was the orchestra.
Things are really looking up.
Arriving at the studio
Stefan and I sort out the Horn parts
(we think!). The problem seems to be
that in the handwritten score the first
and second horns are written together
on one stave and the third and forth
horns on another. I have done the same
thing when I transcribed the score onto
the computer. When it comes to printing
out the parts the instruments have to
be separated. It is during this process
that something has gone wrong (probably
my fault!). Horns are transposing instruments
in F. That is in order for them to play
a concert C the part has to be transposed
up a fifth to a G. It is also customary
for the horn parts to be written without
a key signature, so all accidentals
have to be included. In the process
of separating the parts the transposition
hasn’t taken place and a plug-in in
the program, which is supposed to include
the missing accidentals hasn’t worked.
The first horn player is from Denmark.
Danish is a mixture of Swedish and Germany
sounding as if there is something stuck
in one’s throat (sorry Danes!). I have
lived in Sweden for over 30 years but
still have difficulty understanding
the Danes. I understand his frustration
but we have difficulty communicating.
The second horn player (Swedish) has
given up communicating all together.
George wants to get
started so I totter up the stairs back
into the control room and we do a complete
take of the first movement. What a difference
from the previous day. The orchestra
is really beginning to understand Tovey’s
music. During the take Stefan and I
are following the score and making notes
of anything we aren’t satisfied with.
After the take we have a discussion
with George over the talkback and decide
which sections need to be redone. This
is the modus operandi we adopt for the
rest of the recording. By lunch time
the first movement is nearly finished.
Catarina Ek, the press
officer for Malmö opera comes into
the studio to take pictures and do some
interviews. We are all feeling under
pressure but with a smile and a lot
of patience Catarina gets her pictures
and interviews. There is a daily Classical
music news programme broadcast on Swedish
Radio called ‘Mitt I Musik’ and I had
thought of getting in contact with the
producer of the programme in Malmö.
She, Meta Alm, contacted me first. She
had been in a meeting just down the
corridor from the studio and heard orchestral
music she didn’t recognise and came
into the control room to investigate.
I was only too happy to be interviewed
for ‘Mitt I Musik’ the following day.
Conductor
George Vass rehearsing with the Cello
section Malmö May 2005. Photograph
by Stefan Klaverdal.
After lunch we finish
the retakes on the first movement and
start on the second movement, the Scherzo.
By 3 o’clock and with 22 takes on the
hard disk the Scherzo is finished. George
decides to spend the last hour rehearsing
the last movement with the strings.
He knows there are some difficult passages
and wants the strings to be prepared.
Just as we are about to leave the leader
of the basses points out that they have
the contra bassoon parts for the last
movement instead of the bass parts,
and one of the viola players is missing
a page.
Wednesday, 25th
May. We arrive at the studio at
8.30 in order to print out the missing
parts and are confronted with another
problem. We normally only have 6 viola
players. One has reported in sick with
back trouble and another has to take
her daughter to the hospital. Per-Ola
has been trying to find replacements
but viola players are hard to find.
George says four players are not enough
and decides to use the morning session
for rehearsal and take an early lunch.
During the lunch break Meta Alm interviews
me for the afternoon’s edition of ‘Mitt
I Musik’. Stefan provides a short extract
from the first movement to be included
in the programme. After lunch we now
have five violas and can begin recording.
The extra rehearsal has made all the
difference. But this is the longest
movement in the symphony and it takes
the rest of the afternoon and 36 takes
to complete it.
George is impressed
by the high standard of playing. Tovey’s
contrapuntal writing requires accurate
phrasing and good balance and the orchestra
is very receptive to George’s instructions.
Tovey was a pianist and what might seem
simple on the piano can be extremely
difficult on a brass or woodwind instrument
that occasionally needs to take a breath.
The piccolo player continuously has
to transpose down an octave because
Tovey has written above the instrument’s
range or its just too penetrating. We
are very lucky that she is such a fine
player. An ink blob in the handwritten
score has found its way into the clarinet
parts as a note and has to be removed.
After the session George
and I walk back to the hotel for a rest.
We have decided to take the train across
the bridge to Copenhagen to drink a
glass of real Danish beer. We walk down
‘Stroget’ the main pedestrian thoroughfare
in the centre of Copenhagen stopping
occasionally for a drink. It’s a warm
sunny evening and George remarks on
the bustling live in Copenhagen compared
to the empty streets in Malmö.
We finish the evening in a pub with
a jazz duo playing old standards and
elderly couples dancing to their heart’s
content. Back to Malmö and bed.
Producer
Peter Shore, engineer Stefan Klaverdal
and conductor George Vass in the control
room of studio 7, Swedish Radio Malmö
May 2005. Photograph Stefan Klaverdal.
Thursday, 26th
May. We are back in the studio by
10 o’clock and start work on the slow
movement, ‘Canzona Dorica’. It is the
shortest but by no means the easiest.
George considers that Tovey’s changes
of tempo from Adagio to Largo Maestoso
to Andante and back to Adagio are interrupting
the flow of the music and decides to
keep relatively the same tempo all the
way through. More wrong notes turn up
in the Horn parts (surprise!). More
ink blobs have turned into notes and
even the violas and cellos are finding
mistakes. I have discovered that wrong
notes are more noticeable in slow movements.
There is a lot of starting and stopping
but we are getting there. The final
section has the divided violins con
sordino playing semi quavers and demi
semi quavers sempre staccato e leggiermente,
accompanying the woodwind and horns.
We guess that Tovey wanted a shimmering
effect in the strings but it is proving
difficult to get. There is a similar
passage in the opera ‘The Bride of Dionysus’
when Ariadne and Dionysus appear hand
in hand out of the mist, which seems
to work better. It is proving difficult
to play this passage without the violins
speeding up and leaving the woodwind
behind. 40 takes later we’ve got it
the way we want it and Stefan has plenty
of material for editing. We had originally
decided to include the Prelude and two
other orchestral excerpts from the opera
but have decided only to record the
Prelude. George rehearses the Prelude
and we call it a day. These four days
have taken their toll on the orchestra
and they have worked so hard.
Friday, 27th
May. It’s the last day and the unknown
faces we met on Monday have become familiar
and friendly faces despite what we have
put them through. George rehearses the
Prelude from the opera and then we take
a coffee break. During the break Stefan
and I pop across the road to buy some
bubbly wine. Then we start recording
and after six takes we have everything
we need. I ask the orchestra to humour
an old man and give me one more complete
take to round everything off. The tension,
stress and emotion of the past few weeks
suddenly catch up on me and I burst
into tears. This wonderful, beautifully
crafted and vibrant music can now be
enjoyed by all and not suffer the fate
of so much music left to collect dust
hidden away on library shelves. Everybody
assembles in the coffee room and I propose
a toast to the orchestra, George, Stefan
and last but not least Tovey who made
it all possible. We go back into the
studio and I help Stefan to pack up
his equipment while George settles into
an armchair exhausted and promptly goes
to sleep! George Vass is a magnificent
musician and conductor. His warmth and
bubbling sense of humour pervades everything
he does. His skill as a conductor goes
to the heart of the music and brings
out the best in the musicians he works
with. Having himself been an orchestral
player he knows what to say and when
to say it and that making music with
an orchestra is a communal activity
of which the conductor is only a part.
In the evening George
and I drive to the nearby city of Lund
to hear a performance of Frank Martin’s
Mass for ‘a cappella’ choir in the Cathedral.
The choir is Lund’s Vocal Ensemble who
has won much acclaim as well as many
international choral competitions under
their conductor Ingmar Månson.
Stefan, our engineer is one of the basses
and it is a fitting end to a fantastic
week of music making.
I’m back in Stockholm
and the emails are flying back and forth
across the North Sea as I try to put
together a biography and notes on the
works we have recorded for the CD booklet.
Martin Anderson with over twenty years
as a publisher knows his job and like
any good editor is worth his weight
in manuscript paper. Stefan has started
wading his way through all the takes
and the results sound promising. There
is still plenty left to do but a dream
has come true. Donald Francis Tovey
was regarded by his peers as a ‘musician’s
musician’ and does not deserve to be
remembered only as the author of ‘essays
in musical analysis’ but as an outstanding
British musician and composer in his
own right.
Peter Shore 2005
The CD is due for
release in October
A shortened version
of this article will appear in the BMS
Newletter.
