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STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 561/14 Full transcript of an interview with H. FAIRHURST On 13 October 1972 By Mary Rose Goggs Recording available on CD Access for research: Unrestricted Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library OH 561/14 H. FAIRHURST NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT This transcript was created by the J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection of the State Library. It conforms to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription which are explained below. Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge. It is the Somerville Collection's policy to produce a transcript that is, so far as possible, a verbatim transcript that preserves the interviewee's manner of speaking and the conversational style of the interview. Certain conventions of transcription have been applied (ie. the omission of meaningless noises, false starts and a percentage of the interviewee's crutch words). Where the interviewee has had the opportunity to read the transcript, their suggested alterations have been incorporated in the text (see below). On the whole, the document can be regarded as a raw transcript. Abbreviations: The interviewee’s alterations may be identified by their initials in insertions in the transcript. Punctuation: Square bracket [ ] indicate material in the transcript that does not occur on the original tape recording. This is usually words, phrases or sentences which the interviewee has inserted to clarify or correct meaning. These are not necessarily differentiated from insertions the interviewer or by Somerville Collection staff which are either minor (a linking word for clarification) or clearly editorial. Relatively insignificant word substitutions or additions by the interviewee as well as minor deletions of words or phrases are often not indicated in the interest of readability. Extensive additional material supplied by the interviewee is usually placed in footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page rather than in square brackets within the text. A series of dots, .... .... .... .... indicates an untranscribable word or phrase. Sentences that were left unfinished in the normal manner of conversation are shown ending in three dashes, - - -. Spelling: Wherever possible the spelling of proper names and unusual terms has been verified. A parenthesised question mark (?) indicates a word that it has not been possible to verify to date. Typeface: The interviewer's questions are shown in bold print. Discrepancies between transcript and tape: This proofread transcript represents the authoritative version of this oral history interview. Researchers using the original tape recording of this interview are cautioned to check this transcript for corrections, additions or deletions which have been made by the interviewer or the interviewee but which will not occur on the tape. See the Punctuation section above.) Minor discrepancies of grammar and sentence structure made in the interest of readability can be ignored but significant changes such as deletion of information or correction of fact should be, respectively, duplicated or acknowledged when the tape recorded version of this interview is used for broadcast or any other form of audio publication. 2 J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, MORTLOCK LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 561/14 Interview of Mr H. Fairhurst by Mary Rose Goggs, recorded in Adelaide on 13th October 1972 and broadcast on ABC Radio 5CL on 22nd October 1972 as part of the series ‘Now in retirement’. (Recording is of poor quality, in parts muffled or distorted) TAPE 1 SIDE A How early did you begin your musical career? LS: When I was seven and a half. Actually I started on a full-size violin, which I think was a mistake, but I was always an outsize pup I’m six feet two now but it was a strain. It’s much better to start on a smaller fiddle. Did you have the support and interest of your people? LS: Very much so. My mother was an excellent pianist not a professional, but a good enough pianist to play for my broadcasts for some years for the BBC, my first Wigmore recital and for concerts all over the country. My father, who was an artist and was a very indifferent cellist and fully aware of it, but he had some knowledge of strings and they helped me enormously, both of them. In fact, they taught me starting off on Ševcik method until I was ten, and then they looked round for the best teacher of the method in London, which I think they wisely chose, Sarah Fennings [?] who herself has studied in Czechoslovakia with the great Ševcik for four years. I went in 1922 and studied for a while in Písek, it was a little village about forty miles south of Prague, with Ševcik. Violin was a staple industry there. It was interesting in this tiny village to go along and hear perhaps Paganini’s Caprice coming out of one house and next they’d be doing some exercises and perhaps Brahms concerto from another. Ševcik used to walk round sometimes and at the next lesson if we’d been practising too fast or too carelessly we’d hear about it. It was really like a musical colony, I suppose, was it? LS: In a way, yes. Pleasant little village on the Otava, which is a river which later joins the Vltava of Smetana’s symphonic poem fame, and I managed my seven hours’ practice by about four o’clock in the afternoon, then I used to go swimming and canoeing in the river. 3 This was in the 1920s, wasn’t it? In 1923 you played the Bach Chaconne at the Proms. Now, you can’t have been more than twenty. It must have been rather exciting for you. LS: It was great fun. It was I enjoyed it enormously, and of course the Chaconne is unaccompanied, and Sir Henry Wood did not go off but sat in the middle of the orchestra and the orchestra stayed there also on stage whilst I played the Chaconne. After this, Mr Fairhurst, came a South African tour. LS: Yes, I toured South Africa in 1924 with a very famous singer Carrie Tub and a fine pianist, Reginald Paul [?], with whom I was associated for the next thirty years, until I came out here. Then there were more recitals in London when you came back lots of recitals. LS: Well, in 1925 during the year I gave three recitals in Wigmore Hall, and also did my first broadcast for the BBC in the old Savoy Hill studios. The number one studio had seven tons of padding round, so that if as soon as I started to play I said, ‘Good heavens, what’s happened to my fiddle?’ It muffled every possible sound, almost, because the microphones in those days couldn’t take much resonance. Later on I had a rather amusing incident. I used to play there quite often, to go over and play concertos in Belfast with the radio orchestra there. And part of the program was the early part of it was being recorded no, broadcast: they were live in those days. I found a nice little room that I could practise in and I started to practise. It had, I noticed, a loudspeaker at one end and a microphone at the other, and suddenly an attendant rushed in and said, ‘For goodness’ sake, this room should have been locked.’ They used that for adding resonance, in those days. (laughs) It would have been rather good if my practising had gone on top of the live program. What about the satisfaction of broadcasting? Is it more rewarding to play to a live audience or to play to a greater, invisible audience? LS: I think one doesn’t think so much of the invisible audience. It’s nice to have a live audience. The difference is, of course, that with an invisible audience, however many thousands or millions there may be, they are all in effect sitting in the front row, and so that the least scratch or cough is very noticeable, whereas it would not be, of course, in a public hall. Many of the older players who played perpetually in large halls, heard very close to, one heard too much of the mechanism – too much 4 bow scratch, too much left hand finger percussion and so on – and that had to be modified for broadcasting. You must have played with many wonderful artists and conductors. Who of them stand out in your memory now? LS: I played quite a lot with Leth Brushnov [?] at one time, who was a very famous pianist. I used to go round with him in England, parts of England, as a supporting artist and we did sonatas from memory, such as César Franck, and then, of course, I’ve played with many conductors when later on I went into orchestral work. To begin with, my long-suffering parents supported me until I was able to support myself by solo work, which was perhaps in retrospect not an ideal thing because, as a student, I was with Sarah Fennings, as I mentioned, privately, and then I went to her where she was a professor at Trinity College of Music for the benefit of the chamber music and the orchestra and the other subjects, and I suppose I read musically as well as the next.

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