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Antony Hopkins – a Personal Memoir and Obituary ANTONY HOPKINS – A PERSONAL MEMOIR AND OBITUARY (also published in BMS Journal) ysed the score in a revelatory way, play- When in 2006 I was planning a ing through all the principal themes CD of concertos for recorder (the cata- By John Turner, UK, July 2014 and pointing out relationships between lyst for which had been Elis Pehkonen’s them. His admiration for the brilliance “Bonnie Prince Charlie” concerto s with most musicians and music of the work’s construction and its sheer Over the Water), I wondered if we listeners of my generation, the inspiration have never left me, and I could include on the disc an orchestral nameA and mellifluous vocal tones of think of that lecture every time I hear a version of the Hopkins Suite, as we Antony Hopkins, who died on May 6, note of West Side Story. His own “low would have a string orchestra and a 2014, have been a part of my musical life” musical Johnny the Priest, about a harp (the disc would include pieces consciousness since my childhood. trendy Anglican vicar and a group of by Arthur Butterworth and Anthony Every weekend my parents used to take young layabouts, and set in the East Hedges which both needed a harp), me in our car on a trip to the Wirral London docklands, bears the clear and the work seemed ideal for such coast, or North Wales, or Derbyshire, influence of West Side Story but sadly an orchestration. It had been many and a highlight of the return journey failed to take off and lost money when years since those Talking about Music was to switch on the car radio and lis- it was produced in 1960 with no less programmes, and Antony Hopkins’s ten to the week’s Talking about Music than Jeremy Brett in the title role. It profile had faded from view—indeed programme. Each programme was a probably did not help that it was staged I was not even sure if he was still alive! sheer delight, as in a non-technical way in Wimbledon, and the plot was weak! I rang up my friend [music critic] he explained a piece of music and its A CD of the songs, recorded at the John Amis (they had been great chums secrets in a way that fired you with time, has recently been issued. in Morley College days). He confirmed enthusiasm to savour the work in full at the earliest opportunity. As a young recorder player sud- denly aware of the delights of contem- porary music for my instrument (the catalyst for which had been the Sonatina by Stanley Bate, which my parents initially thought horrid and discordant but which I defended stoutly as I had bought it myself), I acquired a copy of Antony’s delightful Suite for descant [soprano] recorder and piano and played it with my pianist mother on piano at our local music club. Sometime after he came to give a lecture at the local Lit and Phil [Literary & Philosophical Society, www.litandphil.org.uk]. I was not a member, so a family friend who was took my copy for him to autograph. I still have it, with the inscription in black ink, “Sorry to have missed you.” I first saw him in the flesh a year or two afterwards when he gave a talk in the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Man- chester, about Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story just before it crossed the Atlantic—he must have seen it in New York. He just sat at the piano, and anal- Winter 2014 American Recorder that he was, and gave me his telephone number. “Don’t say you got it from me,” Amis advised—as there had been a longstanding and unhappy rift between them (happily later mended). Amis later told me that Hopkins had been offended by his suggestion that every piece he wrote had been merely an elaboration of a simple scale, but a humorously barbed (and unnecessary) comment in a review by Amis may have been the last straw! So I rang Antony out of the blue. He agreed that the Suite would score well for recorder, strings and harp, but said he could not do it, as he had not written any music since a stroke in 1995, though he was still able to write brand new notes out of him. Again I mention of a 1944 Suite for recorder poetry. He suggested that I do the did the computer setting, and I have and piano (the well-known one dates orchestration, but I said no, as I was a performed this set on many occasions from 1952). When I queried this, he not a proper composer. Ultimately we with the soprano Lesley-Jane Rogers, was adamant that it was a mistake, as agreed that I was to send him a photo- always to the delight of the audience. he had only written the one recorder copy of the published score, and that he We gave the première of Three French suite, and it was the one I knew. would annotate this with his sugges- Folksongs in a lunchtime concert at the Shortly after I had cause to inves- tions for the orchestration—harp solo Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on tigate online the musical holdings at here, strings pizzicato there, etc. In fact September 12, 2008. Sheffield University Library, in con- he did this so thoroughly that I was Although Antony had more or nection with a proposed article for the able to process the score on the com- less disappeared from public view in journal Manchester Sounds on the com- puter straight off with ease, and I sent the later years of his life, he continued poser Phillip Lord, who had been a it to him to check through. It was duly as president of various local music soci- music lecturer at that University, and recorded and I gave the first live per- eties, including those in Berkhamsted, previously Aberdeen. Lo and behold, formance of this version with the Little Gaddesden and Luton, and what did I chance upon in the library Manchester Chamber Ensemble in he had retained his connection with of Sir Thomas Beecham (whom St. Mary’s Parish Church Stockport the local Women’s Institute, whose Antony later told me he never knew) on May 10, 2008, in a programme monthly meetings he attended to play but the manuscript of a Pastiche Suite which also included the première Jerusalem! On his 90th birthday on for recorder and piano by Antony of the Recorder Concerto by Alan March 21, 2011, the local WI had its Hopkins. The Special Collections Bullard. The Suite also featured in members out in force to greet him with Librarian said she would send a copy a memorial concert for Antony at a chorus in the garden. He rang and if the composer gave a letter of author- Berkhamsted School (his alma mater) asked me to give his 90th birthday con- ity. Antony was incredulous, but agreed on September 14, 2014. cert at the Berkhamsted Music Club, to supply the relevant authority. When Antony then said that he had and this included what may have been the copy arrived, bearing a dedication written a group of French-Canadian the first public performance of another to his old friend Walter Bergmann, he folksong arrangements many years ago recorder work, the Pastiche Suite for confirmed that it was in his handwrit- for the soprano Sophie Wyss, and these treble [alto] recorder and piano. I had ing and that he must have composed should really have had a recorder obbli- picked up for £2.99 several years ago in it, but he had no recollection of it gato, as birds featured prominently in an Oxfam shop a copy of his entertain- whatsoever. It is shortly to be the text. We came to the same arrange- ing and racy (but chronologically chal- published by Schott. ment—but here Antony actually com- lenged) autobiography Beating Time The birthday concert, to a packed posed new parts for my instrument, (1982), and I had noticed that in the house, was a very happy occasion, and and so I was very pleased to get some list of works at the back, there was in the interval Antony gave a long and www.AmericanRecorder.org Winter 2014 Hopkins Supplement 2 witty speech thanking the assembled crowd for coming— distinguished (what is now euphemistically called crowd- even if, as he strongly suspected, most of them had only funding—it works today just as it worked in the eighteenth come for the cake! He retained at all times a mischievous century!). Most of the recording was done at and with the sense of humour (letters to me were for example signed kind cooperation of the nearby Purcell School, to which Wolfgang or Ludwig or Gesshoo). At the time I pointed Antony had donated a large quantity of music. out to him that almost none of his music was available on On the disc there are several poems by Antony him- CD (with the exception of the Melancholy Song, which was self—the risqué one about Charlie the cellist’s spike attach- and remains a favourite of many sopranos). ing to the contralto’s dress under the embarrassed eye of Sir He agreed that I could organise a CD to celebrate Adrian (Boult, who else?) makes me guffaw each time I hear his birthday (www.divine-art.co.uk/CD/21217info.htm), to it. The poems were beautifully recited by Antony himself for include the Viola Sonata (played by Matthew Jones), which the CD in one-off takes, without any edits.
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