Alexander Gibson

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

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Not

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There's no secret in the fact that you're a Scot. Whereabouts in Scotland do you come from?

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Politically I say I was born between Edinburgh and Glasgow. That is uh perfectly true. Uh but it was a little near to Glasgow. I was born in Motherwell.

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Are you a member of a musical family?

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Um I think I am. Um

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Not professionally, but you heard a lot of music. I heard a lot of singing going on because. My mother's father was a Welshman. I believe you learned to play four instrument.

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Well, if you can't the organ as a separate instrument.

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From the piano. I think one should. One has to use one's feet rather more.

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Yes, I

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Learn the piano and then learn the organ.

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Um I studied the cello.

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at the Academy of Music in Glasgow.

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And when I was called up

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Uh conscripted.

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I began to learn the clarinet for obvious reasons because I joined a military band.

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So you had musical opportunities during your four years as a National Serviceman?

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I had opportunities to make music, yes. Um I had opportunities to play in the band, which uh from from the point of view of my contribution on the clarinet was w w I would hardly have called musical. But um

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I did eventually get an opportunity

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To play piano concertos on various bandstands.

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When you were immobilized, you went to the Royal College of Music in London. Were you already aiming at being a conductor?

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Well, in in my heart of hearts, without telling anybody else, I had been aiming at being a conductor from my late teens, I think. There's a story that when they wouldn't let you into the conducting class because it was full, you retaliated by forming your own student orchestra.

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That is true.

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We formed an orchestra which rehearsed and eventually got a chance to make s some concerts.

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I think the first one was in Bedford College.

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Sir Robert Mayer encouraged us, gave us uh a little financial help, sort of thing he's been doing throughout his life.

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And later the college felt obliged to let you into the conductor's class.

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Well, I was then promoted or chosen by my fellow students to conduct the Royal College of Music Students' Association Orchestra, which rehearsed in the concert hall in Prince Concert Road, in the college itself, and gave concerts at lunchtime. And there was a rule that at that time nobody should lift a baton in the college unless they were an accredited member of the conducting class. So I was made to join the union, as it were.

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Right, you left the Royal College having collected a gold medal, then you finished your musical training abroad.

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Yes, and when I came back I was invited to audition for Saddles Wells as a repetiteur. Yes. Um and the the audition consisted of

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uh accompanying a full call of carmen. A pretty thorough audition. It was quite a thorough audition uh and I thought I had done very badly, but however, they they did invite me to join the staff, which I was rather pleased about. Was this really a job that

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just turned up like that or were you aiming at operating?

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Well, I'd always had a f a feeling for opera, right, from my school days, from uh singing in Gilbert and Sullivan, that kind of thing.

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But, uh, yes, I've I was quite convinced that I would want, if the opportunity arose, to work in opera.

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And it's easy to say it now having done it, but I really do think that this is the it may be the old traditional school, uh uh continental school for conductors, but it is still.

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The best way of uh in my opinion of uh providing the flexibility which is required.

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To be an all round conductor. Yes. And of course as repertoire you have to be good at languages, which you are.

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Um with the Welsh grandfather, was it? I I believe it said that you once addressed an audience in Welsh. Well, I was engaged to be an adjudicator at the Eistedford in Astrat Gunleis. Parry Jones was there too, and he didn't speak a word of Welsh, and they certainly didn't expect me to give my adjudication in Welsh. But a man whom I respected very much, John Edwards, coached me a little in the actual numbers of if you were going to give 50% to somebody or 75%. So 75 out of 100, 80 out of 100. He coached me in that and gave me a little set speech to start off with.

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And I was able to deliver this. And Mansell Thomas, who came onto the field that day, it's it takes place in a large tent and it was a very wet day and he was coming through the field in in gum boots and he suddenly heard things transmitted over the entire field and he heard

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In gold.

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Did it?

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what he recognized as rather correct Welsh and wondered now who could that be giving his adjudication and discovered that it was um

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As Guardsman.

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You didn't stay with the Wells long on that occasion. You joined the BBC.

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Well, the B B C Scottish Orchestra, as it was then called.

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were advertising for an assistant conductor. And I applied out of a sort of a feeling that I had been

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Brought up in Scotland, I had been educated there, and that I should try, but also that I wondered if I'd be good enough to get such a job.

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And uh

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Unlike being invited at Saddler's Wells, I had to compete for this one.

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And uh when I was offered the job I then had the problem of deciding whether

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I should leave Opera so soon I was have been scarcely a year there.

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But I was advised by

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Some of the conducting staff at Saddler's Wells at that time.

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Uh let

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When I had done my hundredth butterfly and my forty-ninth Boheme, I I might regret that I hadn't gone away to learn the other tunes, the symphonic tunes.

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But after a couple of years you went back to the Wales as a conductor and after a lapse of time as musical director. And then you were the first Scott to be put in charge of the Scottish National Orchestra. Yes.

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You took a little time off to marry a dancer from the Saddlers Wells Arc Ballet Company.

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Belly.

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Yes. She was in the quad de Balia of The Merry Widow, amongst other things. And Samson Delilah

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How long is it now that you've been in charge of the Scottish National Orchestra?

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Oh, well I went there in nineteen fifty-nine, fourteen years ago.

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Fourteen years. Gosh, it's as long as that. I haven't been counting. To how many countries have you taken them?

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Well, we've been to Norway, we've been to Germany, Austria.

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Switzerland, Holland.

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I think that's about it.