STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH 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

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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 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  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.

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This was in the 1920s, wasn’t it? In 1923 you played the Bach Chaconne at . 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

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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. But doing only solo work and not orchestral work  like the majority of my contemporaries at that time went into cinemas and learned to read playing eight hours a day  so my musical reading did not develop, so I was a poor reader. Later on  considerably later on  when I was invited to lead the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra with which I’d played concertos on various occasions, my reading meant that, in addition to the twenty-nine hours a week that we did, I had to take home the next day’s program  much of which was played unrehearsed  and swot it up at night. Sometimes I did eleven hours’ playing a day, which is a bit strenuous, but it taught me to read somewhat late in the piece.

Does one have to make a conscious decision, sooner or later, about the kind of musician one wants to be?

LS: I think one  any soloist has to be an exhibitionist, like I am (laughs), and I think they all think it’s been marvellous to go round the world, earn enormous fees playing to packed houses  but this, of course, would take the sour grapes. But it’s really not an ideal life  not that I’ve ever had that sort of a life. But, true, they see the world. They get to know – in the old days, the railway stations  nowadays the airports, the hotels, the halls and the post offices where they collect their letters. But they get big fees, they have enormous expenses and it’s not an ideal life, far from it. As I see it, the best way is to be a ‘utility fiddler’ (laughs)  to be able to play, get up

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and enjoy playing solos, to play to lead a quartet, to play in chamber music and to be a useful orchestral player and to teach. And then, with many irons in the fire, one can have a varied and, in my case, I find, a very happy life.

What would be your advice to young musicians today?

LS: Work hard, learn to read and learn to play chamber music with other people. Solo work’s grand fun, but chamber music, I think, is the best fun of all because then you’re one of a team, and you have your moments of glory where you get the tune and then you subordinate yourself to your colleagues, and I think that’s one of the finest experiences in life, playing chamber music with a good team.

It’s difficult for a solo virtuoso to sing in a choir. Is it the same in the orchestra for a musician whose previous experience has been as a soloist?

LS: Well, one has to be able to read and although, as in the case here with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra, most symphony concerts  subscription concerts  have five three-hour rehearsals, in London, that’s far from the case, and many of the orchestras, such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, of which I was a foundation member under Sir Thomas Beecham, have at most two rehearsals for a concert. So one needs to be able to read, and also one has to be reasonably conscientious but to realise that even the best orchestral players don’t always play every note perfectly. So you don’t have to lose any sleep if, in some very hectic passages, one or two notes are not quite there. So that goes against one’s solo instincts.

While you were at Bournemouth the War broke out. What effect did it have on your career?

LS: The orchestra of 61 was cut down to 35, and the city fathers, in their wisdom, decreed that no symphony music was required during the War. So then Richard Austin resigned and I resigned also, and I did  oh!  many hundreds of concerts for the what was then called the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts  a big mouthful. We abbreviated it to CEMA, C-E-M-A, which later on became the Arts Council of Great Britain. And I did concerts there in hospitals, in air raid shelters sometimes with the bombs dropping outside, and many in canteens in war factories. I even gave one concert down a coal mine, and I had to stand (laughs) in the deepest part of it not to break my bow on the roof, being tall. And it was very

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hectic, but I think very worthwhile, because it did tend to distract people’s attention from the horrors of war.

It was much more than entertainment, wasn’t it?

LS: Oh, definitely. In fact, it was looked upon as of national importance, and that gave me a reservation from other forms of active service.

After it was all over, what then, Mr Fairhurst?

LS: Then  of course, I had been living, actually, in the New Forest in a little village called Burwood, fourteen miles north of Bournemouth, from 1937 till 1941, when I resigned from the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra. Came back to London. I was in due course invited to join the staff of the Royal Academy of Music as one of the violin professional examiners there, and during which I had the pleasure of hearing Beryl Kimber as a student, one of the most outstanding students  of course, she’s so well-known in South Australia now. And I became, as I mentioned, a foundation member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Sir Thomas Beecham, and we did a season at Glyndebourne and Edinburgh Festival, re-formed my trio with Reginald Paul, with whom I toured South Africa in 1923, and a very fine cellist, John Moore, and we did lots of broadcasts and lots of recitals for music clubs all over the country. We did a lot of concerts for the Arts Council in the London County Council schools’ lecture recitals. Then I did a lot of freelance recording and film orchestral work  in other words, as my wife called me, I was a ‘utility fiddler’, which I think is very useful. (laughs) Then Professor Bishop invited me to come out here the same year Lance Dossor came to South Australia, to the Elder Conservatorium, where I came in 1953.

You’ve never regretted this decision?

LS: No. It was sad breaking up the trio, breaking up my association of 30 years with Reggie Paul, and one misses many things out there, but it’s marvellous to have oranges and lemons growing in one’s garden (laughs) and to have space to breathe, and it’s so crowded over there.

You spent fifteen years in the Conservatorium, and they must have been full and rewarding ones, but it seems that your retirement has been even busier. It must even come as a surprise to some to know that you have retired.

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LS: Well, I suppose I’m working 50, 60 hours a week now (laughs) very happily. When I  as soon as I retired, Henry Krips asked me if I would join the South Australian Symphony Orchestra  which he’d been suggesting for quite a long time, when I retired  which I did and where I play very happily 24 hours a week, and the Elder Conservatorium Junior Orchestra that I had conducted for the fifteen years I was there was being faded out as they were going more tertiary in their educational scheme, and so I formed the Norwood Junior Orchestra. I had, for a couple of years before I left the Con, been conducting the Norwood Symphony Orchestra, a bunch of very keen amateurs that had been put on the map by Gabor Reeve’s excellent stewardship and conductorship for three years. I took over the Norwood Symphony Orchestra and then the Norwood Junior Orchestra. Most of them came with me when I retired  when I was retired  and we formed the Norwood Junior Orchestra, thanks to the city fathers giving us opportunities to rehearse and to play in the Norwood Town Hall. Then Mr George Hooker, who is the head of the new School of Music for the Adult Education, which has recently changed its name to Further Education, asked me to go along and join on a half-time basis the Flinders Street School of Music  where I now am  and take the Norwood Junior Orchestra with me, which now calls itself the Further Education Symphony Orchestra.

We haven’t talked about the changes in music itself, Mr Fairhurst. How do you feel about modern music?

LS: ‘Modern music’ is often misused to refer to dance music or jazz, but I know you refer to it as music, avant garde music. Some of it I find interesting, some of it incomprehensible, some of it is hard to take as a genuine emotional expression. For instance, the electronic music and the other music of Henk Badings I find wonderful. Henk Badings was out here in 1961 and ’62, I think, and I played the very first performances with Noreen Stokes of a number of his works: his viola sonata, his first and third violin sonatas, and various solos with organ, both on violin and viola. And also I enjoy enormously his electronic music because it has a musical brain behind [it], but some of the so-called ‘music’ of the particularly modern people I fail to understand. Messiaen I think is beautiful. Bartók is fine.

What about people’s appreciation of music? You must have seen this change.

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LS: Oh, vastly. When I was a youngster and started playing, the average concert  this was in, of course, pre-broadcasting days  the average concert consisted, it had to have, two halves, two identical halves of the program. It started with a solo by the accompanist to which nobody at all listened, they just talked, and then the concert  for their ideas  began. And it has to have a soprano, a contralto, a tenor and a bass or bass baritone, and an instrumentalist  those that I knew, of course, it was a fiddler, when I was there  and usually ended with an entertainer or a conjuror and, with the exception of the introductory piano part, that was repeated again in the second half. Well, now people are much more  generally speaking  have better taste. They can listen to a greater amount of music from one person without having to have a change of person to  through boredom or change of instrument, and the general appreciation of music has gone up enormously – I think to a great extent thanks to broadcasting of the worthwhile stuff, and also thanks to the improvement of the gramophone.

Well, it’s no good just listening to a musician’s voice  unless he happens to be a singer  so we’re going to play for you part of Mr Fairhurst’s encore at his farewell recital on his retirement from the Conservatorium in 1968.

LS: (Sound of stringed instrument being tuned) London music publishers have the very pleasant habit of sending complimentary copies of new works or new transcriptions to those they consider the most outstanding exponents of the particular instrument or voice for which it was written. A friend of mine had a copy also, (audience laughs) and he thought, ‘This is a very lovely Bach tune. It’s most suitable to play at my friend’s wedding in a fortnight’s time,’ which he duly did. After the wedding, somebody kindly translated for him the German title of the Bach cantata from which it comes: ‘Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe: I stand with one foot in the grave.’ (audience laughs) Possibly that was not very suitable for the wedding, but I can think of nothing better than on this occasion. (audience laughs) However, I’m keeping the other foot out as long as I can. Violinists are often maligned as doing nothing but playing transcriptions. This is a transcription of this very lovely Bach tune by Harvey Grace transcribed for the fiddle and arranged for the fiddle and disarranged for the viola by me. (plays tune)

END OF TAPE: END OF INTERVIEW.

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