Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Trumpet player who became principal trumpet at the Royal Opera House at age 21.
Eight records
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten
I thought we'd start with something jolly, a bit of music by Purcell, because A, uh, he writes beautifully for trumpets, and I'm a trumpet player, and b he's probably the best composer we've ever had in England. And also, I suppose I would have to finally get up in the morning on my desert island, and this would act very nicely as Rivali music.
Fidelio: Quartet (Act II)Favourite
I was in the Opera House for quite a few years and so I thought I'd have a bit of opera on my desert island and it's from Fidelio. It's the quartet. In the dungeon where there's a great uh hoo-ha We're going to have a murder done. It's very dramatic.
Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 11
Dennis Brain with the Philharmonia Orchestra
The reason I want to choose this record is that not just because I'm a brass player, but I think Dennis was the most staggering brass player of all time. And he was a marvellous chap to work with and to talk to, a very, very modest man. And he did do something else, other than play the horn superbly well. He played the organ, and he played it very kindly at my wedding.
Sir John Betjeman with the Barrow Poets
I know the Barrow Poets. They are a group of musicians and actors who've entertained me and lots of other people marvellously for a long time. And the musicians of that group got together with Sir Don Betchman to make a record called Banana Blush. And there's a lovely little number on it, which is very nostalgic, called Business Women.
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453
Daniel Barenboim and the English Chamber Orchestra
Well, that's Mozart, and it's Barramboy and I've played a lot of Mozart with a lot of people, including, of course, Beecham... But in the what, the middle sixties, early 70s, Barenboim came on the horizon and I happened to be a member of the English Chamber Orchestra and it was this orchestra that he worked with mostly in that time and he did some fantastic work with the orchestra and often with Mozart.
Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Op. 47
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
That's a piece of string music by Elgar. Very nostalgic, very English. and conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt who I've worked with for more than 20 years and have had a great deal of pleasure working with that very fine English conductor and also it's played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra which I've also spent many years playing with.
Traditional, arr. Elgar Howarth
I suppose at some time on my desert island I would feel frivolous, and so I've chosen a frivolous ending to my choice of eight. And I'm afraid it's one of my own records. But not because it's us, it's it's to show the the humour that's possible with brass instruments. And this particular little tune is a Swiss peasant tune which was arranged for us engagingly by Elga Haarth.
The keepsakes
The book
George Grove
I've always thought if I had time I'd like to learn something about music.
The luxury
A magic barrel that provides an endless supply of champagne
I'd prefer champagne, but that little luxury would be nice. The everlasting supply.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Did you take it more or less for granted that you were going to play a brass instrument?
No, actually not. I heard a lot of brass instruments played, but I didn't really think much about it. I was more interested in playing a brass instrument for quite a different reason. There was a local bugle band, bugle drum band, when I was a kid that used to play on Saturday mornings and bash round the streets of South London. And I quite liked the noise. I fancied rather the bugle more than the drums. But most of all I liked the uniform. It was a sea cadet outfit and they had long trousers and I was in short trousers at the time.
Presenter asks
Did you do any professional playing while you were a student?
Yes, a lot. Everything from music hall jobs to uh symphony concerts. Uh we were very lucky. Lots of opportunities. It was the end of the war. There was a shortage of players, uh of all instruments, and um students who could uh play reasonably well got better jobs than they deserved.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
On our desert island this week is the trumpet player Philip Jones. Philip, how well could you take loneliness? Pretty well, I think.
Presenter
What would you be happiest to have got away from?
Presenter
Work.
Presenter
Well, there's quite a lot of work to do, I think. A different sort of work.
Presenter
Yes, actually. I suppose once I got on that island I'd find that, uh, as usual you don't escape work. It only just changes. Did you have any overall plan in choosing your eight records?
Presenter
Yes. First of all, I must say I found choosing eight an impossibility.
Presenter
I realize that I've not uh done justice to my own interests in music. Do you wanted about eighty? Yes, just about. Right. Well, you've got eight. What's the first one?
Philip Jones
Right.
Presenter
Well, I thought we'd start with something jolly, a bit of music by Purcell, because A, uh, he writes beautifully for trumpets, and I'm a trumpet player, and b he's probably the best composer we've ever had in England.
Presenter
And also, I suppose I would have to finally get up in the morning on my desert island, and this would act very nicely as Rivali music.
Presenter
Part of the overture to Purcell's The Fairy Queen, and it's the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britton. What's your second record?
Presenter
Well, my second record is a bit of Beethoven.
Presenter
Wait a bit. Well?
Presenter
Um I was in the Opera House for quite a few years and so I thought I'd have a bit of opera on my desert island and it's from Fidelio. It's the quartet.
Presenter
In the dungeon
Presenter
where there's a great uh hoo-ha
Presenter
We're going to have a murder done. It's very dramatic.
Speaker 4
I'll stalver.
Speaker 4
Professor Last Vision.
Speaker 1
I
Presenter
A little excitement from the second act of Beethoven's Fidelia, the performance conducted by Otto Klempere.
Presenter
What part of the country do you come from, Philip?
Presenter
But I was born in the West Country, in Bath. With the name Jones, I must be Welsh, though I deny it hotly.
Presenter
And I've lived all my life in London.
Speaker 4
And I've
Presenter
And there's a brass-playing tradition in the family? Yes.
Presenter
Both sides of the family, my father was a trombone player.
Presenter
and on my mother's side,
Presenter
Her brother at my uncle is a trumpet player who I worked with for many years in London.
Presenter
His father, my grandfather.
Presenter
was a trumpet player too, so lots of brass playing. So you took it more or less for granted that you were going to play a brass instrument? No, actually not. I heard a lot of brass instruments played, but I didn't really think much about it. I was more interested in playing a brass instrument for quite a different reason. There was a local bugle band, bugle drum band, when I was a kid that used to play on Saturday mornings and bash round the streets of South London. And I quite liked the noise. I fancied rather the bugle more than the drums. But most of all I liked the uniform. It was a sea cadet.
Presenter
outfit and they had long trousers and I was in short trousers at the time. From the bugle you switched to the trumpet? Switched to the trumpet, yes. I played the bugle and the trumpet at the same time. Bugle on Sundays, the trumpet the rest of the week. Where did you study? At the Royal College of Music.
Presenter
Did you do any professional playing while you were a student?
Presenter
Yes, a lot. Everything from music hall jobs to uh symphony concerts. Uh we were very lucky. Lots of opportunities. It was the end of the war. There was a shortage of players, uh of all instruments, and um students who could uh play reasonably well got better jobs than they deserved. Well when you were only twenty-one you became principal trumpet at the Royal Opera House.
Presenter
Yes, that's true.
Presenter
While I was still a student I had spent a season at the Royal Opera House playing Wagner on a special instrument, the bass trumpet. There was no bass trumpet player to be found and I learnt the instrument and offered myself for audition and got the job.
Presenter
And that was in 1947. And in 48, when I'd finished my studies at college, I went to Covent Garden as fourth trumpet in the orchestra and bass trumpet to play the ring operas of Wagner and all those things. And then I became the first trumpet in the next season. How long did you stay with that orchestra? Well, I left in 1951, so I did four seasons, really. What do you remember as the great occasions?
Presenter
Oh, I think one of the greatest was when Cliver came Eric Cliver.
Presenter
He came to the opera house.
Presenter
To do first of all Rosen Cavalier, which was an opera we'd played a great deal, and it was an eye-opener to see Clyper at work on this piece. A most wonderful musician and a very clear way of beating and controlling what is a very difficult score orchestrally and of course getting the singers to sing very well. What's your third record?
Presenter
Third record is Schubert.
Presenter
From the third symphony in D of Schubert, The Slow Movement, played by one of my ex-orchestras, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham.
Presenter
Part of the slow movement of Schubert's third symphony, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. One of your orchestras, Philip.
Presenter
Your favourite Sir Thomas Beecham story, please.
Presenter
I don't remember good stories very often, but there w there was a very nice occasion.
Presenter
I had a phone call one day at lunchtime and it was Sir Thomas Beacham on the phone from Paris.
Presenter
And I was a little astonished, of course, and he said he was recording Carmen in Paris at that time, and he wasn't satisfied with the way the trumpet calls were being played.
Presenter
in the first act of Carmen, in the barracks scene.
Presenter
And uh he wanted me to record them in London.
Presenter
And he had a definite idea of the tempo.
Presenter
And so he said, Just hold on, and I'll play you what they've done for me here.
Presenter
And over the telephone from Paris I heard the trumpeter playing excellently, this trumpet call at a certain tempo, and I tried to remember that, checked it, and also pitch, which was rather important, the actual pitch. And then I went off to Abbey Road and recorded those two trumpet calls for the French record of Carmen the Satonus.
Presenter
The sequel to that is that I years later heard that record and the first call is the English or the French trumpeter and vice versa the second call. So in fact they've muddled it up anyway.
Presenter
I wonder if he noticed. I doubt it.
Presenter
You've been with all the London orchestras, haven't you?
Presenter
I played first trumpet in all the London orchestras and I stayed with most of them for quite a time. And the BBC? And the BBC, yes.
Presenter
A lot of overseas tours, surely? Mm, stacks of touring all round the world. Where do you remember in particular?
Presenter
Lots of places really. I think the most staggering was Japan recently, but that wasn't with an orchestra. It was with my own ensemble.
Speaker 4
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
Staggering because the the reaction of the audiences was so enormous to our concerts. We were rather like pop stars there, which was very funny. It's a classical man.
Presenter
You'll spend most of your time now teaching. You're not with an orchestra at the moment.
Presenter
No, I suspect I will never be with an orchestra again. I've done my time in the orchestra scene. You're now here to the Wynn School at the Royal Norton College, Manchester. Are you enjoying that?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Philip Jones
You enjoyed it.
Presenter
That's right. Uh head of the bangers and blowers I call myself. Is there a lot of good banging and blowing coming your way? Are you excited by what's going on?
Philip Jones
Oh yeah.
Presenter
Mm, I've got about uh seventy-five students and uh it's a very lively department. I'm enjoying it very much.
Presenter
Let's have record number four. What's that? Well, it's a brass record. It's Dennis Brain.
Presenter
Playing the Strauss Horn Concerto number one. And the reason I want to choose this record is that not just because I'm a brass player, but I think Dennis was the most staggering brass player of all time. And he was a marvellous chap to work with and to talk to, a very, very modest man. And he did do something else, other than play the horn superbly well. He played the organ, and he played it very kindly at my wedding.
Presenter
So let's listen to Dennis playing the horn.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Bye bye.
Presenter
The closing passage of Richard Strice's first horn concerto, The Philharmonia Orchestra, with Dennis Brain.
Presenter
Now, Philip, twenty-five years ago you formed the Philip Jones Brasse Ensemble. What were you setting out to do, and why did you form it?
Presenter
I was setting out to um
Presenter
To attack boredom, I discovered that as a trumpet player in an orchestra, I was going to spend most of my time sitting listening to everybody else playing the tunes and just joining in the loud bits. And I thought that that was going to be a bore if I was going to do that for the rest of my life, so I thought I'd better get some tunes written for brass instruments. Yes. Which is why I formed the brass ensemble. Really? You were pioneering brass chamber music?
Presenter
Yes, um we didn't have anything like that here at the time. I had heard a group from Amsterdam on the radio, um, a quartet.
Presenter
from the Concertgebau Orchestra, and they played some intriguing old Dutch dances and some modern twentieth century Dutch music written specially for them. And I thought, well, uh if that's possible for the Dutch, why not the English?
Presenter
And that gave me the first idea that we could do something with brass instruments by themselves. It must have been fascinating digging out old works which hadn't been played for many years. Oh, it was. It was very interesting. And I mean, the the most uh enjoyable part of that was that there were so many people interested that were not brass players interested in offering me um pieces. The Baines brothers for instance, um Anthony and uh Francis and Christopher, all three of them very keen on wind music and produced me lots of lovely old music in the early days.
Speaker 1
And
Presenter
You've found some gorgeous old fanfers.
Presenter
Oh yes, yes, fanfares. Well that's brass music isn't it? And a great deal of church music. Yes. And a lot of specially re composed pieces. Yes, we of course as we developed, so um naturally I got ambitious and wanted more and more pieces written for us especially and uh we gradually built up a whole repertoire. Yes, which has been recorded, most of it. How many discs has the
Speaker 1
Uh
Philip Jones
Is
Presenter
Brass ensemble made nowadays. Well, we are over twenty now. It's quite a lot.
Presenter
What about the trumpet as an instrument? Where are the best ones made?
Presenter
Well, of course it depends who you are. If you're a German, you might say in Germany. Um if you're a Frenchman you might say in France but as an Englishman I say in America.
Presenter
Yes. Any point in having a vintage one, or do you want the newest and latest?
Presenter
Vintage is not a good idea from ordinary playing point of view. Being a brass instrument, it does corrode, it does wear out slowly but surely, doesn't um appreciate as a stringed instrument. It deteriorates, and so therefore, if one is keen, one's likely to change one's instruments fairly often.
Presenter
Good service record number where have we got to? Number five.
Presenter
Record number five. Well, I think that's rather an odd choice for a musician. I know the Barrow Poets. They are a group of musicians and actors who've entertained me and lots of other people marvellously for a long time. And the musicians of that group got together with Sir Don Betchman to make a record called Banana Blush. And there's a lovely little number on it, which is very nostalgic, called Business Women.
Philip Jones
From the geyser ventilators Autumn winds are blowing down.
Philip Jones
On a thousand business women.
Philip Jones
Having baths for Camden Town.
Philip Jones
Wastepipes chuckle into runnels, steams escaping.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Philip Jones
You're there.
Philip Jones
Morning trains through Camden Cutting Shake the Crescent and the Square Sir John Betcherman with a musical backing business with
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's go straight into your next one.
Presenter
Well, that's Mozart, and it's Barramboy and I've played a lot of Mozart with a lot of people, including, of course, Beecham.
Presenter
who's famous for Mozart. But in the what, the middle sixties, early 70s, Barenboim came on the horizon and I happened to be a member of the English Chamber Orchestra and it was this orchestra that he worked with mostly in that time and he did some fantastic work with the orchestra and often with Mozart.
Philip Jones
Daniel Baremboim as
Presenter
Soloist and conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, Kirkel 453.
Presenter
Philip, what are your qualifications as a as a practical castaway? I notice you've list your hobby as skiing. I don't think that's going to help you very much. Presumably not. No.
Presenter
Could you look after yourself? Build a shelter? I would be pretty bad, actually. I mean, I'm practical when I have to be,'cause I'm an extremely lazy fellow, really. I can actually screw a screw into a wall and things like that when I'm really pushed. So yes, I would build a shelter.
Presenter
Anything useful like fishing?
Presenter
I did fish when I was a young lad. Supposed to be relaxing. Yes, I'd fish. You look very relaxed. It obviously worked. Try to escape.
Presenter
No.
Presenter
No, I don't think so. I just enjoy being there quietly.
Presenter
Listening to what? Record number seven.
Presenter
That's a piece of string music by Elgar. Very nostalgic, very English.
Presenter
and conducted
Presenter
by Sir Adrian Bolt who I've worked with for more than 20 years and have had a great deal of pleasure working with that very fine English conductor and also it's played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra which I've also spent many years playing with.
Presenter
The closing passage of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt, which brings us now to your last record.
Presenter
Well, I suppose at some time on my desert island I would feel frivolous, and so I've chosen a frivolous ending to my choice of eight. And I'm afraid it's one of my own records. But not because it's us, it's it's to show the the humour that's possible with brass instruments. And this particular little tune is a Swiss peasant tune which was arranged for us engagingly by Elga Haarth.
Presenter
And it's called the Cuckoo, and it's really for four of the five uh quintet members, and the fifth member, our tuba player Fletcher, plays the cuckoo by managing some dexterity with his hand.
Presenter
The Cuckoo by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble.
Presenter
It's a quintet, is it an ad hoc group?
Presenter
No, indeed not. You're all the all the same chaps, all the same. Always the same, yeah. Right from the beginning, twenty five years. No, no, not twenty five years, but with the this this group's been together about ten years.
Philip Jones
Always the same.
Philip Jones
No, no, not
Presenter
Anybody from the beginning.
Presenter
Just me.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
If you could take just one disc of the Huplatus.
Presenter
Or I'd take the bait home, the Fidelia. One luxury to take to the island with you.
Presenter
Well, luxuries are frivolous, aren't they? So I suppose I'd take something quite useless. I always remember I went to a show once, a a Sunday evening conjurers' show.
Presenter
And apart from sawing a lady in half and all that sort of thing, the the trick that I remember best was he produced an empty barrel and showed us this empty barrel. He then pasted uh paper over the ends of the barrel.
Presenter
took out of his pocket a bung, stuck it into the paper, and it magically stayed put, and poured from the empty barrel some excellent glasses of guineas.
Presenter
He then drank it, and members of the audience were asked to invite it up to the stage to drink it, to prove it.
Presenter
Well, I wouldn't have the Guinness, I'd prefer champagne, but that little luxury would be nice. The barrel. What a good idea. The everlasting supply.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Not barrow
Presenter
and one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.
Presenter
Ah. Well, as I've always thought if I had time I'd like to learn something about music, I'd like to have the Grove Dictionary of Music. You shall have it, and we'll arrange for it to be replaced with a new edition when it comes out. And thank you, Philip Jones, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you for asking me. Goodbye, everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio forward.
What do you remember as the great occasions [at the Royal Opera House]?
Oh, I think one of the greatest was when Cliver came Eric Cliver. He came to the opera house. To do first of all Rosen Cavalier, which was an opera we'd played a great deal, and it was an eye-opener to see Clyper at work on this piece. A most wonderful musician and a very clear way of beating and controlling what is a very difficult score orchestrally and of course getting the singers to sing very well.
Presenter asks
What were you setting out to do, and why did you form [the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble]?
I was setting out to um To attack boredom, I discovered that as a trumpet player in an orchestra, I was going to spend most of my time sitting listening to everybody else playing the tunes and just joining in the loud bits. And I thought that that was going to be a bore if I was going to do that for the rest of my life, so I thought I'd better get some tunes written for brass instruments.
Presenter asks
Could you look after yourself [on the island]?
I would be pretty bad, actually. I mean, I'm practical when I have to be,'cause I'm an extremely lazy fellow, really. I can actually screw a screw into a wall and things like that when I'm really pushed. So yes, I would build a shelter.
“I suppose once I got on that island I'd find that, uh, as usual you don't escape work. It only just changes.”
“I discovered that as a trumpet player in an orchestra, I was going to spend most of my time sitting listening to everybody else playing the tunes and just joining in the loud bits. And I thought that that was going to be a bore if I was going to do that for the rest of my life, so I thought I'd better get some tunes written for brass instruments.”
“Being a brass instrument, it does corrode, it does wear out slowly but surely, doesn't um appreciate as a stringed instrument. It deteriorates, and so therefore, if one is keen, one's likely to change one's instruments fairly often.”