Richard Armstrong

Richard Armstrong0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Richard Armstrong0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is a conductor, musical director of the Welsh National Opera, Richard Armstrong.

Presenter0:37

Have you ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe, Richard? Not quite. I've sometimes got pretty close on various holidays and things, but with the life that I lead generally it's uh rather far removed. You have eight discs. Would you prefer to have discs or scores?

Presenter0:54

It's a very difficult question. Inevitably as a conductive one has a fairly large repertory.

Presenter1:00

One h carries an enormous amount of music in one's head, which I suppose one can listen to at choice, as it were. I think for the purposes of the island the records would be very, very acceptable. Good. Do you play records a lot?

Presenter1:16

A fair amount, though I must say at home I do enjoy silence when I can get it. What's the first one? The first record is an introit sung by the monks at the Abbey of Solemn in northern France. I once had the opportunity to stay there for a period of just over a week and to attend all of the offices, which meant a very early start and not too late a night. How did that come about? I was just outside Paris on a work camp, a sort of international voluntary service thing, digging ditches and God knows what to build a retreat house. And I knew about Solemn and through a contact there I managed to get an invitation to go to stay there. It was a glorious experience and the sound of those monks I mean over a hundred people singing in the most magnificent unison is a sound that I shall treasure forever.

Richard Armstrong1:29

Yes.

Speaker 41:40

How did that come?

Speaker 42:12

Ye are your love in your business.

Richard Armstrong2:13

Yeah,

Richard Armstrong2:27

No yeah.

Speaker 42:35

Within ourselves,

Speaker 42:51

In this impression,

Speaker 42:58

We greatly amen.

Presenter3:09

An introit for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost sung by the choir of the monks of the Abbey Saint-Pierre de Solemn.

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What part of the country do you come from, Richard? I was born in Leicester, and I lived there until I was eighteen. Not a Welshman? Not a Welshman.

Presenter3:26

A lot of music in your family? My mother and father both sang a lot in local choirs of various kinds. I'm one of three children. My sister and my brother both love music, but neither of them actually makes music. When did you start taking an interest? How early?

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I think I was six when I started to play the piano. I remember being shown the notes at home and getting up very early the next morning and playing.

Presenter3:51

And uh the piano was my main instrument for a long time. I think

Presenter3:55

I really learnt on my own for quite a few years probably three or four years until I started having piano lessons as such.

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Did you go to a musical school?

Presenter4:05

Yes, I did. I was very, very fortunate in the school I went to in Leicester, the Wiggiston School.

Presenter4:09

And uh in my later teens, before going for university, they in fact paid for me to have outside music tuition. I had three wonderful teachers, an organ teacher, a piano teacher and a teacher in Harmony and Counterpoint, who gave me a a really wonderful foundation. What was the first opera you saw? Do you remember? I think it was the Barber of Seville at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester, performed by the Karl Roser Company.

Presenter4:33

And um

Presenter4:34

Sad to have to say that it did put me off opera for quite a number of years. It was a bad production, was it?

Presenter4:40

Certainly as a child, I don't know how old I was I should think I was twelve or thirteen. I found little to admire. I hated the singing, and I found the conventions of opera, as came across to me in that performance, to be quite unacceptable.

Presenter4:55

As a schoolboy, what was your ambition? Did you think that you were going to take up music professionally, or had you got other ideas? Church music became my great love, really, and I became an organ scholar latterly, going to Cambridge. I had always wanted to be a cathedral organist and had seen my future in that way. Which college were you in in Cambridge? I was at Corpus Christi College. Let's have your second record.

Presenter5:18

My second record would be Beethoven's string quartet. I never forget hearing the Amadeus quartet in Cambridge, playing Opus fifty nine, number two, and particularly Norbert Brynin's solo playing The Last Movement.

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The opening of the fourth movement of Beethoven's string quartet, opus fifty nine, number two, played by the Aberdeer's quartet.

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Tell me about your other occupations in Cambridge. Obviously, whatever music was going, what else did you do? Well, music was a, I suppose, a full-time occupation. I was the only music student in the college and was expected, therefore, to organise the musical life of the college, which was terrific. I also ran the college choir. I did a limited amount in university music generally, but I mainly confined my activities within the college. You weren't called upon to participate in Footlights or anything of that sort? I very occasionally did go and play the Joanna at the Footlights and had various friends and even wrote the odd musical at the time that I was there. Did you? But my activities were mainly within the college itself.

Richard Armstrong7:05

You weren't called

Richard Armstrong7:16

I do.

Presenter7:21

Record number three. What's that? I think the one satisfying project of my academic life in Cambridge was helping my tutor Philip Brett in preparing a new edition of the Forty Part Motet by Thomas Tallis, and scrubbing around the British Museum in various places, finding whatever sources there were.

Presenter7:40

I find it a magnificent piece, a very modern piece for its time, and the sound structures that Tallis builds with his eight five-part choirs simply miraculous. And I hope on my desert island that the sound quality and the number of loudspeakers and things that I'd have will do some kind of justice to this wonderful monument. We shall do our best to oblige. Which part of the work shall we hear? We can't hear it all.

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I think if we pick it up from the final respice to the end, we get a very good idea of the piece's sound spectrum.

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The Closing Passage of the Forty Part Motet by Thomas Tallis

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The Cambridge University Musical Society, conducted by David Wilcox.

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So, down from Cambridge, what next? You nearly joined the BBC, didn't you? I did indeed nearly join the BBC. Having uh finished my Cambridge career and not got a job, I was rather in the doghouse with my college, I think. At that time it was thought really not on to be going down from Cambridge without employment. And a few people got working on my behalf. Anyway, I applied for a job at the BBC as a music producer on Radio 3. I was interviewed by William Glock and Gerald Abraham.

Presenter9:50

and given a job, and I did actually receive the contract. On the day I was due to sign the contract I received a telephone call.

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From wonderful man Jimmy Gibson, who was the head of music staff at Covent Garden then, who asked me if I would be interested in auditioning for a place at the London Opera Centre as a trainee repetitor.

Presenter10:12

I'd never heard of the London Opera Centre, but I thought, well, the possibility of continuing in live music was too good an opportunity to miss. So I did just that, and Covent Garden gave me a bursary, and I ended up at the London Opera Centre. A converted cinema in the East End. Yes, amazing place, the Troxy. Still there. A lot of talent down there. Yes, indeed. Who do you remember particularly from your days? The major students, I suppose, of my year were Josephine Bastow and Kirita Kanawa. Well, that's not bad.

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What did you put on? What uh productions were you concerned with?

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In those days we did excerpts rather than whole pieces because there were a number of students naturally who all had to be catered for. The first thing I ever conducted there was the finale of second act of the Seralio of Mozart, which is I suppose my real conducting debut. How long did you stay there? I was there for one year. So then to the Royal Opera House itself? I was very lucky then to be given a job at the Opera House, yes, where I remained for nearly three seasons. On the music staff, that meant what, to coach, play out rehearsals? Prompting, conducting off-stage harps in corridors or whatever, anything that had to be done in that way. Now prompting, that opens up vistas. You're standing in that dusty little box in the front of the stage with your head poking out. It must be the most unhealthy spot really in the UK, I think the prompt box, the Covent Garden tiny thing. Always all the dust from the stage gets swept down. You sit there in a very tight little box. How does the prompter work? Does he sing along with the singers or does he keep slightly ahead? You're basically giving the words for most of the lines ahead, usually giving them in a rhythmic way so that it's quite clear when the singer has to sing. And often in some particularly difficult pieces, giving hand signals as well as to when to sing, when not to sing, or correcting a singer who may have gone wrong with a series of policeman-like signals. It's quite a difficult job.

Presenter12:16

And uh to prompt a very difficult opera can be very rewarding indeed. It's also a position of very, very great privilege. You're right under the nose of the singer at the moments of greatest stress. You know when the singer's having an easy time, you know when the singer's in trouble, and you can see how they cope. And uh I learnt a vast amount from sitting in the prompt box. I'm told that in some Italian opera houses the first thing a singer says is not who is the director of this opera, but who's going to be in the prompt box. That's right. I think the system in Italy is generally that the singers aren't very bothered about the conductor at all. They relate only to the prompter. I've sat in the prompt box myself for many performances of Italian opera at the La Scala when I was over there on a visit doing some coaching.

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And for simple things like

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the Duke's aries and rigoletto or whatever, unless you actually say cuesto cuella rhythmically before the entry, they won't sing. So there's got to be a very good rapport between conductor and prompter. You could have quite a lot of fun if you wanted to. There was one occasion that I do remember my own experience is the Covent Garden Hour is prompting the magic flute. And there's a duet for two of the priests at the beginning of the second act. And there'd been a particular joke going on in rehearsals and early performances between the two singers concerned over particular pronunciation of one word. And we came to the last performance of the flute. And I suspected that the joke was going to be put into practice in this performance. I couldn't bear it, so I turned the lights out of the prompt box and just put my head down. At which point the singers looked at the prompt box, saw that I'd collapsed, and the last two phrases of the duet were never sung before.

Presenter13:57

How much conducting could you do? You you conducted rehearsals occasionally? Yes, occasionally for rehearsals, but um not any conducting at all as such. And of course Covent Garden is quite rightly no place for a conductor to have to learn his job.

Presenter14:12

And then you had the opportunity to be assistant to the musical director of Welsh National Opera. Who was the musical director in that time? It was Jimmy Lockart, who had been a member of the music staff at Covent Garden when I worked there. When he moved to Wales, he asked me if I'd be interested in going down there to help him and to assist him.

Presenter14:30

And so I left Covent Garden, went to Wales. I'd never seen the WNO at all.

Presenter14:35

I went on the promise of two performances to conduct and the bargain was that if I showed no talent in those performances then I got no more conducting. And so off I went to Wales to make my debut in the marriage of Figaro conducting on the pier at Ryl which is actually where my first performance was. And you got through your two performances and you're still there so. I'm still there. Which year was it that you joined? I joined in December 1968. My first conducting performances were in January 1969. And when did you take over as MD? I became musical director in the summer of 1973. And at that time I gather you were 30 years old, which is very young to be boss of a national opera company. It was terrifying and of course in so many ways I didn't have the qualifications at all.

Presenter15:26

But the company is at that point in the middle of being reorganized, expanded, and I'd begun the work with Jimmy Lockhart and the board felt that it was important that the work continued in the way in which it had begun, rather than having somebody else come in who might wish to do it and approach it in a different way.

Presenter15:46

What's your fourth record?

Presenter15:48

My fourth record would be The First Piano Sonata by Michael Tippett. I adore his piano music. I think the piano sonatas are glorious. I've never been able to play them at all. They're always far too difficult.

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And uh I'd love to hear the first sonata played by Margaret Kitchen.

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The closing passage of Tippett's first piano sonata played by Margaret Kitchen.

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Now, the Welsh National Opera Company, or the Welsh National Opera, as you like to call it.

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When and how did it start? It started just after the war with really two amateur choruses, one based in Cardiff and one based in Swansea, who wanted to sing opera. And they got together, formed a wonderful chorus and invited people to sing with them and orchestral players to accompany them. And it built from that. And I think the first

Presenter17:38

I think it started with Cavan Pag in 1946 and built up through the fifties into the particularly special tradition of reviving of course a lot of the early Verdi operas which hadn't been heard in this country for donkeys years. Now when did the company become professional? How did that happen? Was it a gradual growth? It was a gradual growth agreed with the Arts Council to try and

Presenter17:59

Build on routes that already existed and build another permanent company which would be able to tour major opera product in England as well as in Wales. The first moves were made in 1968 when a nucleus of a professional chorus was founded in the spring of 1968. And until 1973, the professional chorus and the amateur chorus sang alongside one another. And even now, there are still a number of people in our professional chorus, as it now is, who began as amateur singers with the company.

Presenter18:34

You have to play mainly in England, of course.

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We work on a 50-50 basis really. We play in five major cities in England, which have the biggest theatres. But for some thirteen, fourteen weeks of the year, our work is also confined to Wales, where we try and provide opera of varying scales, either to the bigger theatres or the medium-scale theatres, the university theatres, the modern theatres in Wales, or also church halls or very small theatres which exist. And you give a very welcome annual season in London nowadays? Yes, we enjoy our London season enormously. Do you go abroad?

Presenter19:11

Yes, in recent years we've been to Lisbon, to Wiesbaden. Eighteen months ago we did a major tour to East Germany. We played in East Berlin, in Dresden and in Leipzig.

Presenter19:23

You had a bad fire a few years ago, I remember, which wiped out a lot of productions. That must have been a sad blow. The fire at the time was an enormous blow. It was, I think, in nineteen seventy five. It left us with the sets for, I think, only two productions.

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It was a real body blow at the time.

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We managed to make do either with black curtains or by borrowing odd sets from various other companies who were very helpful to us. And over the last five or six years we have been able to build up a new and fresh repertory. I think in retrospect the fire was a great help to us. It made us think of things afresh and to do everything new. But at the time it stretched us very, very considerably. In its lifetime, how many operas has the Welsh National presented? I haven't a clue.

Presenter20:09

At the moment we're putting on usually some six or seven new productions in a year and our total repetitive for each season is between twelve and fourteen operas. I know that you've conducted thirty-five of that statistic helps.

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Now the the repertoire of the company ranges from what to what? The earliest opera that we've done has been Poppaire of Monteverdi.

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Though our repertory essentially concentrates on the

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From the mid-nineteenth century too.

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the present day. The tradition of the company has been very much big chorus pieces, the big romantic pieces. And it's this that we've tried to build on, capitalize on in recent years. And within the last two or three years with a particular emphasis on the twentieth century, which we found it enormously gratifying, and most recently quite a lot of Czech opera as well. Yes, th there is a bias towards Janacek isn't it. There is indeed, yes, we had a major project alongside Scottish opera to present the five major operas of Janacek, which is just about to come to

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Fulfilment.

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Let's have record number five.

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Record number five will be Semyanacek.

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The second string quartet.

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The Janacek Quartet playing the opening of the Janacek string quartet, number two.

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You've um put on Tristan and Isolda. You're going to tackle the ring?

Presenter22:37

Yes, we are, I feel that any major opera company.

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Isn't a major opera company unless it has a ring cycle. It's something that has to be tackled. It's also a challenge that the company needs.

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particularly the orchestra.

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We're looking forward to it enormously. And our ring cycle we shall begin in eighteen months' time, putting the operas on in order at approximately six monthly intervals. So we'll build it up as a series.

Richard Armstrong23:06

Yeah.

Presenter23:08

What about Welsh opera? The only one I've ever heard is is called Blodwyn and that that was a recording. Are there any others? I mean tell me Bloodwyn.

Richard Armstrong23:15

Although

Richard Armstrong23:16

Very famous pleasure.

Presenter23:18

Last year we in fact presented three new Welsh operas, WNO, a commissioned opera by William Mathias, The Servants based on a libretto by Iris Murdoch,

Presenter23:30

A new and completely original piece by John Metcalfe, young Welsh composer, that was a chamber opera, without chorus, a small orchestra of twenty or so players. And we also promoted performance of um a new opera by Alan Hoddinott, which he wrote for the Northern College of Music, Trumpet Major, which we brought to Cardiff for performances there.

Presenter23:50

There hasn't been a a tradition of opera composition in Wales, I think because there wasn't until recently an opera company as such. How many of the company are Welsh speaking? Could you put on a a chamber opera in Welsh?

Presenter24:05

We could, but I think we wouldn't. I think there's a feeling in Wales that there are still not enough Welsh speaking people for a project like that really to be worth while. We do sometimes do a concert in the National Eisdfod of excerpts in which everybody does sing in Welsh.

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but otherwise we sing either in English or in Italian German.

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You've had some distinguished guest stars with the company.

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We have indeed.

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And most recently, we've been very thrilled to be associated with Elizabeth Serdestrom, who sung in Janacek's Macropolis case with us some three years ago, who will be returning to the company this spring to sing the title role in Katyo Kabanova, and who we've been absolutely thrilled to have among us. She is, I suppose, the major exponent of these roles and the Janacek repertory, and we're very, very thrilled to have her with us.

Presenter25:03

And uh on that account I'd love to have something sung by Elizabeth Serderstrom with me on the desert island. What, for example?

Presenter25:13

We recently recorded the four last songs of Strauss and uh I'd like perhaps to hear the second song.

Speaker 426:10

Oh, sorry, I'm not sure.

Presenter26:20

September from the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss, Elizabeth Soderstrom with the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by.

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Yourself.

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Let's go back to your own career. Obviously, as well as working with the company, you have occasionally spread your wings outside it.

Presenter26:40

I saw you conducting Benjamin Britton's Billy Budd at Cotton Garden the other day, for example.

Presenter26:44

Since the establishment of the W and O has become more fixed, I have begun to travel more in the last two or three years, to undertake a certain number of opera engagements elsewhere and concert work. Opera work is of course terribly time-consuming, you can't really rehearse and put on a production in under three weeks.

Presenter27:02

And so the amount that one can do in a year and still do a serious job within one's own company is relatively limited. But uh I've enjoyed my travelling enormously.

Speaker 427:10

Yeah.

Presenter27:16

I worked with the English National. I've done several of the Janacek operas with Scottish Opera.

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I've recently been in Berlin doing Peter Grimes in German, the new production there at the Cormische Opera. I've recently also been in Amsterdam conducting Elektra.

Presenter27:31

What about the concert hall, Richard? Do you find that as satisfying without the the visual?

Presenter27:36

Aspect and excitement of opera? The approach is of course so totally different, whereas opera requires lengthy rehearsal. Very often for concerts one's doing concerts on one or two rehearsals. So that requires a complete uh turnabout in in one's thinking. I love the concert hall. The thing that strikes me always first and foremost, and that most of my experience has been in opera, is how short concerts always are. I never really feel that I've done done an evening's work.

Speaker 428:01

I never really feel

Richard Armstrong28:02

Yeah.

Presenter28:05

What do you like to conduct in the concert hall?

Presenter28:08

Really the the big romantic pieces or or twentieth century music. My palate is pretty wide ranging within that sphere, but I tend not to conduct much before Beethoven.

Presenter28:23

Record number seven. Michael Tippett has become one of my really favourite composers. It was a huge thrill to do his opera The Midsummer Marriage and to attract big audiences to it and see the piece firmly established as the masterpiece that it is. I would love to hear his second symphony.

Presenter29:34

The opening of Michael Tippett's second symphony of the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davies.

Presenter29:41

Richard, have you done any camping out at any time? Yes. I've certainly lived in some pretty rough conditions. I don't much care about luxury. You were a Boy Scout or something of the sort. Well, I wasn't. I was never very good at tying knots, and still am not.

Presenter29:55

I do get around a bit. I love getting out into the country.

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And generally I live a a fairly frugal life, I think. Where do you live, by the way?

Presenter30:04

Well, I live partly in London and partly to the west of Cardiff, in the country, in a very old house. Done any fishing? Not really. I tried to fish when I was eleven or twelve. I got rather bored by it then, but uh I'd certainly have another go. Do you know anything about navigation?

Presenter30:19

Nothing at all. Or sailing? Nothing at all.

Presenter30:22

Well stay where you are then and we'll do our best. What's your last record?

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One of the great joys of recent years has been to get to know Reginald Goodall, the great Wagner conductor, and to be able to play a part in setting up some of his, I think, most exciting performances.

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I would very much like to have his recording of Tristan and Isolda, and um I think particularly something from the third act, the great monologue of Tristan, sung so wonderfully, I think, on this recording by John Mitchinson.

Speaker 331:23

Or Jesus.

Speaker 331:53

Yeah.

Speaker 331:54

Yeah.

Presenter31:58

An excerpt from the last act of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde John Mitchenson with the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by Reginald Goodall.

Presenter32:08

If you could take only one disc of the H you played us, which would it be?

Presenter32:12

It would be Tristan. Tristan. And one luxury to take to the island, one thing of no practical use. Well, if I promise not to fit an outboard motor, could I have a grand piano?

Presenter32:24

No, you can have an upright piano. We can't let you have a. This is an old story, but you can live quite comfortably under a grand piano. If you insist. I'm sorry. And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already tucked inside your upright piano. Well, I don't know whether this would be a a transgression, but um one of the things that has slipped latterly has been my piano playing. It would be an ideal opportunity to brush it up.

Presenter32:50

And I think for those purposes I'd love to have the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven. Might that be possible? That's arranged. It's in the piano stool. And thank you, Richard Armstrong, for letting us hear your desert island. Goodbye, everyone.

Richard Armstrong33:12

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