Owen Brannigan

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 10:12

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? Our castaway this week is a singer, one of our finest basses, Owen Brannigan.

Presenter0:37

Oh, and how well do you think you could endure loneliness?

Presenter0:40

Well I think I would get on pretty well.

Presenter0:43

I can enjoy my own company quite well.

Presenter0:46

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Presenter0:48

Oh, well that, I'm not sure about that.

Presenter0:51

I'm quite happy as I am, really. Contented man. Yes.

Presenter0:54

Did you have any plans in selecting your eight records?

Presenter0:58

I found it very, very difficult because knowing so many friends who have made records, it was like making up a programme for a conference of singing teachers.

Presenter1:08

Well going back to the beginning, you have an Irish surname, but you were born in North East England. I was born in North East England of Irish parents. Yes. Whereabouts exactly? Annette's Ford, a little Calder just seven miles north of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Where I believe they've named a street after you. That's right, Owen Branningham Drive. Quite a long name. Do you come from a musical family? I think I do, yes.

Presenter1:30

My father was um fifty odd years the organist and choir master of the local church and

Presenter1:36

That's where I began my singing. How early in life did you decide you wanted to be one day a singer? Oh, I think from the day I began singing, from about six and a half to seven years old, I was a boy soprano. There was no particular inspiration. No inspiration, no.

Presenter1:49

What's the first record you've chosen? Well, I want to hear part of the overture from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.

Presenter1:57

Mozart's my favorite composer. I always imagined myself as a

Presenter2:02

operatic bass, even from my very early days singing Mozart. One of my favorite parts was to be lepero and Don Giovanni. And um I didn't do it in half measures in learning the part. I used to start at the overture so that I got the real feeling of what he should feel like. I used to imagine this man behind the curtain.

Presenter2:22

ready for the end of the overture and um I felt all his nerves and all his um

Presenter2:30

weight of the opera on his shoulders.

Presenter2:33

And that feeling.

Presenter2:34

Will I be here again?

Owen Brannigan3:35

Yeah.

Presenter3:38

The latter part of Mozart's overture to Don Giovanni, played by the Gleinborn Festival Orchestra conducted by Fritz Busch.

Presenter3:45

Well, that was some imaginings that did come true. And, indeed, you sang Lapparello many times with that orchestra and conductor.

Presenter3:53

Did you see a lot of opera as a childhood? Not much, no.

Presenter3:57

Um I remember my first opera was sort of present I got from my parents for winning a Priana Prize. If I got over ninety mark, I was promised.

Presenter4:04

An opera performance now is taken to Castlon Tyne.

Presenter4:07

To see the Carl Rosa in the Bohemian Gale, a night I never forgot.

Presenter4:13

Uh music wasn't your first profession, was it? You you you learned another job. Yes, I did. I was apprenticed to uh

Presenter4:19

The joinery trade, mhm, printed joiner in the village. Yes.

Presenter4:23

But uh there was music in your life as well. Yes, there was only music and woodwork.

Presenter4:28

Uh the church choir church choir, the male voice choir, blowing the organ, playing the organ.

Presenter4:35

Singing in quartets and what

Presenter4:38

Playing in the dance band even.

Presenter4:41

But I always wanted to play in a brass band.

Presenter4:44

You know, a brass band plays a very big part in

Presenter4:48

the festivities of a a local Congo village and I thought this was great stuff to do.

Presenter4:54

I always wanted to play the trombone.

Presenter4:56

The trombone player in the band, or one of the trombone players, was very, very healthy because each Friday night I went

Presenter5:03

To say is there a trombone going?

Presenter5:06

The secretary said, No, he's still playing it. So I never got a trombone.

Presenter5:12

But I must have

Presenter5:14

A brass band record on any island I go to

Presenter5:18

And of course, you can't have a brass-band record very well without the name of Mortimer on it, can you?

Presenter5:25

The one I've chosen is A Euphonium Solo by Alec Mortimer.

Presenter5:30

Who incidentally conducted a champion band last year when I sang with him twenty concerts.

Presenter5:35

And uh one of the songs I sang

Presenter5:38

Twenty times, at Alex's request, of course.

Presenter5:41

or the song that Alec plays with the euphonium.

Presenter5:45

On this record conducted by his father,

Presenter5:48

Drinking.

Presenter5:49

And Hattie, I bet, was in the band. Harry was there too, all the mortal.

Presenter6:23

Ferdinand's motorworks band with all the mortimers.

Presenter6:27

So, Owen, you were to join her by day and singing in the evenings. What was the next important thing to happen?

Presenter6:32

Well, I left the north of England and came to London to be a

Presenter6:36

The joiner and the singer.

Presenter6:39

Yes. Had you really studied singing, so I didn't know. You you just sung? I just sung, yes. So where did you study?

Speaker 46:41

No, I have

Presenter6:46

I studied at the Guildhall School of Music as a night student. After a hard day's work. After a hard day's work, every night. Every night of the week. Every night of the week, yes.

Speaker 16:52

Every night as we can.

Presenter6:54

This must have been pretty expensive with fares and tuition fees and all that. Oh, well I had a marvellous uh help from the firm I worked for who always saw that I was very near to Victoria Embankment. And um

Speaker 16:58

Uh

Presenter7:07

Actually I joined the opera class.

Presenter7:10

and became one of the chorus.

Presenter7:13

It was one of the pictures in my first opera, which was Ruddy Gore.

Presenter7:18

And Sir Lambdon Ronald came to one of the forums and said, I would like to hear on Monday morning the third picture from the Left.

Presenter7:24

That was you? That was me. And so from that I got a scholarship, everything paid. That was very useful. Yes.

Presenter7:31

When did you decide to give up your daytime job and be a full-time professional singer?

Presenter7:36

Well, I didn't have to decide. That was decided for me.

Presenter7:39

The directors of Saddler's Wells then, Joan Cross and Lawrence Collingwood,

Presenter7:43

heard me do some little broadcast and

Presenter7:46

Made me on the strength of that principal base of Saddler's Wells' opera. On the strength of hearing one broadcast. One broadcast, yes.

Speaker 17:50

Gone.

Presenter7:53

Well there you were, a professional singer at last, so I think this is the point to break off for record number three. What next? Well of course it must be my first opera ruddy gall.

Speaker 48:00

Pro Radio

Presenter8:01

And I would especially like to hear a great friend of mine sing in Vadigore.

Presenter8:05

George Baker. He recorded this in his seventy-ninth year, which I think is marvellous. He is actually eighty this

Presenter8:13

Now I'd like to wish him many, many happy returns.

Presenter8:17

and it was a great pleasure that I hear him sing.

Presenter8:20

His song in Radical.

Owen Brannigan8:26

My boy, you may take it from me, That of all the afflictions are cursed, With which a man's saddled and hampered and addled, A diff it in nature's the worst Though clever as clever can be, A frighten of early romance, You must stir it and stuff it and blow your old trumpet, Or trust me, you'll happen to chance.

Owen Brannigan8:44

If you're wishing the world of advance, your hermitage amount of enhancement You must turn it and stamp it or blow your own trumpet or tackle your habits and chance.

Owen Brannigan8:53

Now take for example my case. I'm a bright intellectual brain. In all London City there's no one so witty. I've thought so again and again.

Speaker 19:00

Okay, the Emigrant

Owen Brannigan9:02

I've a highly intelligent face, my features cannot be denied, but whatever I try, sir, I fail in adviser. I don't know. I'm modestly personified.

Owen Brannigan9:14

If you wish in the world to advance, For a minute's your mouth in hunts, You must study and step it and blow your own template or touch with your hammer that trumps.

Presenter9:23

George Baker singing one of the songs from Radigore, the Gleinborn version conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter9:30

Now, you were with the Saddlers Wells Opera Company for some years as principal bass, weren't you? Yes, I was. This was wartime by the way. This was wartime, yes.

Speaker 19:36

Yeah.

Presenter9:38

And they didn't have a London theatre at the time. No, no, we d came back later to Sadler's Wells. All that touring in wartime couldn't have been any kind of picnic. Very tough. Especially as um one became a concert singer, very much in demand at the same time, so one had to sing concerts in Hull and

Presenter9:55

Operand, Liverpool.

Presenter9:58

And after the war the company went on continental tours.

Presenter10:03

When did you leave Saddlerswell, that first time?

Presenter10:06

I left them immediately after the German tour. I left them three times. I think it's a good thing.

Presenter10:12

Well, since that first time, apart from returning to Saddle as well, on odd occasions, you've been mainly a freelance. Um you've sung at Kleinbourne and Covent Garden, you've sung oratorios and concerts.

Presenter10:23

and a lot of travelling.

Presenter10:25

Travelling is the main part of a singer's life.

Presenter10:29

And one has got to see that one.

Presenter10:31

travels easily and keeps one's health and

Presenter10:35

You've travelled abroad a lot, of course.

Presenter10:38

Well, let's have your next record. What's number four going to be? Number four is The Serenade to Music by Vaughan Williams.

Presenter10:45

There are sixteen singers on this, which to me represent the golden age of English singing. They were the great singers of the day when I entered the profession.

Presenter10:55

and I was very honored to think that they accepted me so willingly.

Presenter10:58

They all become great friends, and to take this record would be light taking.

Presenter11:02

As people take a photograph album with them, this would be a record album of the voices that I love.

Presenter11:09

Gave me great enjoyment.

Presenter11:11

On this particular section, who are we going to hear?

Presenter11:14

Well, of course I would like to hear Isabel Bailey.

Presenter11:17

Whom I sang so many times.

Presenter11:20

And uh then

Presenter11:22

I would like to hear the bass section.

Presenter11:24

With friends like Roy Henderson and Bob Easton.

Presenter11:27

and Norman Allen.

Presenter11:30

Norman.

Presenter11:31

A specially great friend of mine.

Presenter11:33

And um I wouldn't like to go to any island.

Presenter11:37

without a recording of The Great Voice of Norman Allen.

Presenter12:46

The Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music,

Presenter12:48

Recorded as a tribute to Sir Henry Wood in 1938 by 16 very distinguished singers.

Presenter12:55

some of which we heard on that exit.

Presenter12:58

Oh, and you've created quite a few roles in opera, haven't you?

Presenter13:01

Quite a number, yes, yes. Several of the Britain operas. Yes, four of the Britain operas, yes. It was by Malcolm Williamson and John Gardner. In a couple of the of the Britain operas he wrote parts specially for you. He did, yes, yes. Noah's Flood and uh Amidsummer Night's Dream.

Presenter13:16

And others.

Presenter13:17

Oh, more than swallowing Peter Grimes.

Presenter13:20

What are you up to now?

Presenter13:22

still singing new works and finding some old friends turning up again because Swallow and Peter Grimes which I

Presenter13:28

Sang the first night on June the seventh, nineteen forty five.

Presenter13:33

I'm singing on June the seventh.

Presenter13:36

In Prague.

Presenter13:38

In nineteen sixty five.

Presenter13:40

Yeah.

Presenter13:41

Have you any one big ambition still unfulfilled professionally?

Presenter13:46

Yes, I've always wanted to sing the part of Baron Ox and Rose and Cavalier.

Presenter13:51

It's been my fault that I haven't. I've been offered it at the wrong time or time didn't suit me or something. But now I find that I wished I had Sound Paranox. Yeah. Probably I still can do it yet.

Presenter14:02

What's your next record?

Presenter14:04

The next record of course is from the part of the world I come from. It's a tune that's played whenever I enter any sort of concert where there's a signature tune needed.

Presenter14:14

A song called Bladen Races.

Presenter14:17

The first line goes, I went to Bladen Races on the ninth of june, eighteen hundred and sixty two, on a summer's afternoon.

Presenter14:24

Well, in nineteen hundred and sixty two, Centini the song

Presenter14:28

I was able to broadcast it to the world from the festival hall.

Presenter14:31

which of course was a very great occasion.

Presenter14:34

I would like to hear the citizen's choir from concert.

Presenter14:37

I came down on an all-night bus and recorded this song.

Speaker 415:29

It's only the silent triple to-

Presenter15:41

Blade and Races, sung by the Concert Citizens' Choir. Ah, you've made a a big collection yourself of Tyneside songs, haven't you? I have, yes. Hundreds of them of all sorts. You've tracked them down in the villages yourself? Yes.

Presenter15:56

What's your next record?

Presenter15:57

My next record is A Work I Love, The Dreamer Grantius.

Presenter16:02

And I would especially like to hear the sanctus faultus from that sung by Hedel Nash.

Presenter16:08

who incidentally in my very early days was a great friend

Presenter16:12

Great help.

Presenter16:14

He actually sang a free concert in my village for me.

Presenter16:17

which is never to be forgotten.

Presenter16:19

And also.

Presenter16:21

I happened to sing in his last Dream of Grantes, The Three Choirs Festival.

Owen Brannigan16:27

Dave with joy

Presenter17:26

Hedel Nash with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and an excerpt from The Dream of Garantias.

Presenter17:32

Owen, how good a castaway would you be on this island?

Presenter17:36

Well in some ways I might be good from the point of view of reconstruction and uh building up I'd be all right.

Speaker 117:42

Yeah.

Presenter17:45

It's amazing what one can do about tools. I needn't have a hammer, I can make a mallet, I can find sharp-edged stones. I think it'd be very good from that point of view, but what would worry me would be the sort of...

Presenter17:57

Domestic part I'm not very good domestically at all. Can you cultivate? Can you get food? No.

Presenter18:02

Bad gardener. Can't fish.

Presenter18:05

Well, now you could construct a shelter and a house of some sort. Could you build a boat?

Presenter18:10

Oh yes, I think I could. Would you try to escape?

Presenter18:13

No, I wouldn't. I'm not adventurous. I'm not like that at all. I'll just stick it out at you. A boat for messing about in only. That's all. Yes. Let's have record number seven.

Presenter18:22

Well, I would like part of the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven.

Presenter18:27

Why? First of all, I've stand up with most of the

Presenter18:29

Great conductors of the day, that would be a great memory.

Presenter18:32

But also it would um remind me of some very

Presenter18:37

Tense moments of my past life when the bass is the first to sing in the choral part.

Presenter18:44

And uh we're usually made to sit there for the full four movements.

Presenter18:49

As time gathers up to the entry one begins to think that voice has left you, everything has left you. Not that I'd like to relive those moments again, but they would be very stark reminders of my very big performances. Out of all the performances you've sung, is there any particular one that you'll remember?

Presenter19:07

Yes, yes, there is. The first concert of the United Nations, which was given in Geneva, I I was chosen as the bass to sing in the Ninth Symphony.

Presenter19:17

And that became an even more tense moment because I was broadcasting it to not only to England then, but to the world.

Presenter19:26

Who's going to conduct on this record? The man who conducted in Geneva. Ernest Ansony.

Owen Brannigan20:17

Oh flow.

Owen Brannigan20:23

Mr. D

Owen Brannigan20:25

Peace at the

Presenter20:30

an excerpt from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Ernest Anseme conducting the Swiss Romante Orchestra, and the excerpt from the last movement leading up to the bass entry.

Presenter20:41

Now your last one, Owen. We haven't heard your voice yet.

Presenter20:44

No, and you're not going to either, because that's one of the things I d just don't do listen to my own voice, especially on record. Well, you made enough of them, you should be used to it by now. I'm not used to it now. What's your last record going to be?

Speaker 120:54

Uh

Speaker 420:55

Mm-hmm.

Presenter20:57

Well I would like to hear something from a work which has proved to be one of the greatest experiences of my musical life.

Presenter21:03

And that is Noah's Flood by Benjamin Britton.

Owen Brannigan21:09

For vengeance shall no more appear.

Owen Brannigan21:15

And now, farewell, my darling dear.

Presenter22:07

The closing passage of Benjamin Britton's Noah's Flood.

Presenter22:11

If you would have just one record out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

Presenter22:16

It would be the last one. Noah's flood. It would provide me with the spiritual side of things, the love of children and everything.

Presenter22:23

And one luxury to take with you. Well, I think that I'd have a trombone after all. At last. At last. And a tutor. Right. It's an ideal place to learn the trombone. Then, of course, I could come back and play duets with Walter Midgley, who sings duets with me as well. And there would be the greatest double act ever.

Presenter22:43

This I must see and hear. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. Yes, well I would like the complete works of G. K. Chesterton. All bound together. All bound together, yes. Right, fine. And thank you, Owen Brannigan, for letting us hear your choice of desert island discs. Thank you, Ron. It's been a great pleasure.

Speaker 422:52

Hold

Presenter23:00

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:08

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.