Sheridan Russell

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

mister Russell, you come of a musical f

Sheridan Russell0:10

Family, don't you?

Sheridan Russell0:11

I suppose so, yes. Um I don't know that I would call them very musical. My grandfather, Henry Russell, uh was a composer. He composed um eight hundred songs.

Sheridan Russell0:23

Uh some of them are very well known, really. Still

Sheridan Russell0:26

Life on the Ocean Wave, which is the tune for the Marines, and uh Chair Boy's Chair, three chairs for red, white, and blue, and all that. But I

Sheridan Russell0:36

don't think of that as very musical.

Presenter0:39

Your father, also Henry Russell, was an impresadio.

Sheridan Russell0:42

Yes, he was. Um he went in for opera. He was director of the Boston Opera Company. Boston Opera Company, uh Cotton Garden, uh Australia, Paris, all over the place.

Presenter0:54

So this certainly gave you opportunities to hear the opera repertoire as a youngster.

Sheridan Russell0:58

Yes, it did, which is perhaps what's put me against it. I heard a lot of opera. I used to go uh two or three times a week when I was eight year old.

Presenter1:06

And of course you had opportunities to meet the great singers who were

Sheridan Russell1:10

Oh that

Sheridan Russell1:11

most. Uh the Melbourne's the Tetrazzinis, the Carusos, you know, they used to take me I was a little boy with a lot of long hair and they used to take me on their knees and give me sweets and uh make a fuss of me.

Presenter1:25

Did you have any ambition yourself to be a singer? None at all. What were your own musical ambitions?

Sheridan Russell1:32

I think I I just wanted to be a cellist. How did that start?

Sheridan Russell1:36

I was five at the time and my brother played the violin and I thought I'd go one better and play the cello, which was bigger.

Presenter1:42

Yeah.

Sheridan Russell1:43

Where did you study?

Sheridan Russell1:45

Where didn't I study? Um'cause I studied I started in Paris and then uh I was dragged uh across the ocean to to Boston and then

Sheridan Russell1:55

Back again to Paris and then to Italy, and then even I had a short spell in London at the Guildhall School of Music. Oh, now your very distinguished uncle was principal of the Guildhall. Yes, he was. That's probably why, I wouldn't say that, but that's probably why I got a scholarship. Yes, Sir Landon Ronald. That's right, yes.

Sheridan Russell2:17

Of course he was. He was a very good conductor and I suppose a good composer too. I mean it's not the sort of songs that I particularly want to hear myself. And his ideas of music, I mean, it stopped at De Bussy and Elgar. And I go a little further.

Presenter2:33

Mr. Roswell, you spent most of your youth in France, didn't you? Yes, I did. I was really brought up as a Frenchman. And you knew some

Sheridan Russell2:40

Great figures in French music.

Sheridan Russell2:42

I did, yes, because uh my mother uh knew quite a lot of them. She knew Foray and Dubusi.

Sheridan Russell2:49

and all the people of that generation

Presenter2:51

Mm.

Presenter2:53

You joined the Monte Carlo Orchestra as your first professional engagement. Yes.

Sheridan Russell2:58

Yes, I did, yes.

Presenter2:59

Now the same orchestra fulfilled quite a number of functions in the principality.

Sheridan Russell3:03

It fulfilled every function. It played opera, ballet, classical concerts, quite a lot of cheap music. One even played out on in the kiosk, outside on the terrace. Yes, very good experience. Very good.

Sheridan Russell3:22

Did you have a chance to do solo work in Monte Carlo? I did, yes. I played several concertos. I even played the first performance of the Elgar concerto in France.

Sheridan Russell3:31

How long did you stay there?

Sheridan Russell3:32

About ten years. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Sheridan Russell3:35

And then I decided to go to England and try my luck there.

Sheridan Russell3:40

I thought Michael.

Sheridan Russell3:41

would probably help me, but um

Sheridan Russell3:44

He didn't really think very much of my playing.

Sheridan Russell3:47

And um

Sheridan Russell3:48

decided not to help me, I suppose. He was quite right. Anyway, I I went on my own and I started in the usual way. In those days one played in cinemas. There were silent films? Silent films, yes, it was simply awful. A pretty growing job. Oh, it was simply awful. You arrived uh there uh at an

Sheridan Russell4:06

Cene Marseille in uh Camden Town and you had a um

Sheridan Russell4:12

You heard an organ playing for an hour and then you sat down and there was a whole pile of, well I wouldn't call it music, but I suppose sheets of stuff with music printed on it and it was really too awful for words. And you had the conductor, if you can call him a conductor, playing the violin and he would follow the film and from time to time raise his fingers and say three or two or one, which meant you played theme one, two or three, the hero or the villain or something like that. And then you went on back again to your horrible pieces. And when you got to the end of that pile at the end of an hour and a half, you sat there for an hour whilst the organ played again and you started again.

Sheridan Russell4:56

And then when you got to the end of that, um, you heard the organ again, and again you went through for a third time that thing, and you did that for six days running. It was really awful.

Presenter5:07

How long was it before you got off that treadmill?

Sheridan Russell5:09

Well, I didn't do it for very long. At the end of two months, I managed to get out of that sort of thing. And I used to play, you know, the pro in amateur orchestras. It was a little more fun, anyway. And then from there, I managed to get a little solo playing here and there. And I managed quite well. Within a year, I was really a proper soloist. You played in London and in New York.

Presenter5:36

New York at that time? Oh, I played all over the place.

Presenter5:40

And how long did this period of prosperity continue?

Sheridan Russell5:44

Oh, this went on for about seven or eight years, always with luck, such as, for instance, having my cello stolen. How was that lucky? Oh, that was wonderful, because first of all, the insurance gave me enough to live on for three months. And then, of course, I got a tremendous amount of publicity. It was in the days between the wars. And, you know, famous cellist, I wasn't, but never mind. Famous cellist loses wonderful cello and all that. And after a fortnight, people had forgotten. All they knew is that they'd seen my name in the paper and they used to say to me, Oh, you're doing very well. I read some wonderful criticisms of you.

Presenter6:20

Now, your career was going very well, but you suddenly decided to give up the cello about this time. Why was that?

Presenter6:27

I didn't think

Presenter6:29

Uh

Sheridan Russell6:29

I was really getting on very well. You know, I

Sheridan Russell6:33

I used to be a promising young cellist. Uh I stopped being young and I obviously wasn't keeping my promise. So I thought I'd better get it up. You know, thirty five, uh when you're thirty five you think it's really quite the end.

Sheridan Russell6:47

35 years later I think differently now. But I did then think it was the end and I better give it up.

Presenter6:50

But

Sheridan Russell6:55

Also, you know, there's awfully little um good music uh written for the cello, certainly in the concerto line. There's I mean think of the violinists and pianists who have Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and many others, and we haven't got anything like that at all.

Sheridan Russell7:14

Say what did you do?

Sheridan Russell7:16

I looked up advertisements and

Sheridan Russell7:18

found that uh somebody wanted a uh an Italian speaking person for director of a charity. So uh I applied for it and got it. In Italy. It was actually an English charity, but it was to work in Italy. It was to introduce humane slaughter.

Sheridan Russell7:36

Um into the Italian slaughterhouses. It sounds a very very taxing and and horrible task.

Presenter7:42

Yeah.

Sheridan Russell7:42

Yeah. Was rather awful and it did put me off uh eating uh what I call dead bodies forever. Yes, you've been a vegetarian ever since. Ever since, yes.

Presenter7:54

Uh this job went on until the war and you then you went back to Italy.

Sheridan Russell7:57

Uh

Sheridan Russell7:59

I went back to Italy. I was first of all in uh naval intelligence in England. And um then when we got into North Africa, I went to North Africa and uh then I started um as a British liaison officer with Italian partisans and went back to Italy. What happened to you after the war?

Presenter8:15

And

Sheridan Russell8:19

I decided I wanted to become a social worker.

Sheridan Russell8:23

So I came back to England and trained as a medical social worker. In those days, we were called armoners.

Presenter8:33

Now he also started a movement for the provision of original paintings in hospital.

Sheridan Russell8:38

Yes, I got rather tired of the uh

Sheridan Russell8:42

Copies that one sees, you know, those sort of posters. And I thought the real thing was so much better. So I got a few friends of mine, Epstein and Matthew Smiths and people like that, to lend me their paintings. And I stuck them up all over the hospital. And at first, I had quite a lot of trouble, but eventually it was approved.

Presenter9:03

Yeah.

Sheridan Russell9:04

It was going very well, so well that the Nafiel Foundation got interested and

Sheridan Russell9:11

have allowed us to start a thing called paintings in hospitals. And now we there we have money and we buy paintings, we lend them to hospitals for two years.

Sheridan Russell9:21

and uh they they circulate.

Presenter9:23

Yeah.

Sheridan Russell9:23

Round the pace.

Presenter9:24

How many hospitals participate in the scheme? 42 hospitals now. That's great. This is good for the patients and also good for the painters. It is, yes.

Presenter9:33

In the last few years you've given up your hospital work, you've gone back to the cello.

Sheridan Russell9:37

Yes. Um when I retired

Sheridan Russell9:41

I thought, uh why not go back to the Chero? Um I had in the past given uh a lot of advice to uh patients who were about to retire and telling them not to wait until uh they had their gold watch and and reception and then go home and have nothing to do. And I would try and

Sheridan Russell10:01

make them think of what they were going to do. So uh when I saw my time for retirement coming, I thought, well I better think too, and what sh what shall I do? And I decided I'd go back to the cello. And so I've become a professional cellist again and I now do uh chamber music for children.

Sheridan Russell10:17

which I find very interesting.

Sheridan Russell10:20

Carol Jenner's Unicorn Theatre for Children has allowed me to give concerts. We had our 21st concert last month and we have children from the age of five to fifteen who listen to really very good works. You know, I remember one mother coming up to me after a concert and saying, but I thought chamber music was something one turned off.

Sheridan Russell10:45

So I I was rather glad to to make her realize that this was not necessarily so.

Presenter10:45

Yeah.