Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty six, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

A castaway has been described as probably the most successful of the new generation of British conductors. He's the music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis. More than that, he's probably the only castaway that we've interviewed so far who actually owns an island. Andrew, tell me about this island. Where is it? It's in Georgian Bay, which is the Canadian bit of Lake Huron. And it's about 120 miles north of Toronto, so it takes me a couple of hours to get up there, and then 40 minutes by boat. And really, it is very, very secluded and cut off. I have no telephone, no electricity. This is the hideaway, is it, from the hustle and bustle of your job? It's actually, I think it's the best thing I ever did. I bought the place in 1980, and it's been really great for my sanity.

Andrew Davis1:01

The hustle and bustle of your jobs.

Presenter1:09

general uh peace of mind.

Presenter1:11

Let's go back right to the beginning now of your life. Was there ever any doubt that uh you're going to do anything other than the music?

Presenter1:19

I don't think so. I suppose for a brief time when I was at school and I was really into Latin and Greek, I thought I'd be a classics master, but not much employment for classics masters anymore, are there these days? But I suppose really from the age of two. Well, my mother tells me I was singing before I was talking and I obviously loved music immediately. So I started to play the piano when I was about five. What about the family? Was there any sort of stimulus from the family? Was it a musical family? Well, my parents both loved music a lot. My mother used to play the piano and my father sang in the church choir, sings in the church choir, I should say, still. And they were very supportive of me and all through my career they have been. They love it.

Presenter1:55

Let's have a first choice to music.

Presenter1:57

Well, the first record I've chosen is uh of the great uh organist Helmut Walker.

Presenter2:03

Playing the fantasy in G minor by Bach on the organ of the church in St. Lawrence Kirk in Alkmar in Holland. And I've chosen this because I spent two months in 1963, just before I went up to Cambridge, studying and living actually in the house built onto the church. So the sound of this organ has very happy memories for me. I also remember the cold, because that was a very cold winter in 1963, and I used to go into this freezing church and this little tiny electric fire trying to keep my feet warm as I was practising. So I have very fond memories of the sound of this instrument.

Presenter3:36

Andrew, you went first of all to Watford Grammar School for your secondary education. Was there much music there? Did that uh help your career at all? Yes, it helped me a great deal because there were ha happened to be two masters at the school, neither of whom was the music master, although the music master was also very active, but uh there was a classics master who was crazy about the orchestra and a maths master who was crazy about the choir. So we had two very

Presenter4:00

Lively institutions there. We actually did several broadcasts with the choir. I remember taking part in a recording of Vaughan Williams Hodier in Maidervale 1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra when I was about eleven years old with the school choir. And that was a very exciting event for me to actually see a symphony orchestra for the first time, really, close to. What followed Watford then? What was the next step? Well, I had the year in which I went to Holland and continued studying the organ in St Albans with Peter Hereford. And then I went to Cambridge as organ scholar at King's. And I spent the next four years working every day in the chapel with that wonderful acoustic and with a wonderful choir under the guidance of David Wilcox who taught me

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Really a great deal. He's probably the biggest influence on me of anybody. What I learned from him was what I call the habit of perfection, you know, the fact that never for a second when he was working there with the choir and with the organ was there any

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the hint that anything less than perfection would be accepted.

Presenter4:55

And I think that was a great training for me. Were there other people that you met at your time at Cambridge who influenced you?

Presenter5:02

Yes, Thurston Dart, who was the professor of music there, also I studied harpsichord with him a little bit. I remember having a talk with him about what I was going to do in my last year. He he said, What are you going to do with your life, Mr. Davis? I said, I'm going to be a conductor, just like that, you know, darling And he said, Come and have sherry So I went to his his house and we drank lots of gin and uh he told me what I should do to become a conductor and some of it I

Presenter5:27

Took no solves on it, I ignored. What was it that gave you the urge to be a conductor at that time? I mean, was there any sort of specific moment? Was there sort of blinding flash that was a matter of music? Well, yes, I think there was really, because it was uh the first time I actually picked up a stick and conducted an orchestra, I felt it was a way of making music that I

Speaker 45:34

Well, yes, I think there was.

Presenter5:42

could do that I had a natural aptitude for, and I really did fall in love with it instantly the moment I picked up the stick, which was not that early. I suppose I was twenty or twenty one before I actually conducted a symphony orchestra. I became the assistant conductor of the University Music Society Orchestra and did a few concerts there. And then I went to Italy to study.

Presenter6:01

Let's have another choice of record.

Presenter6:03

Well, I've chosen, of course, a recording of the King's College Choir that was made during my time there, and I'm playing the organ on this record. It's music by Herbert Howells, part of the Magnificat from the Collegium Regale service, the King's College service that it was composed for the for the choir of King's College, Cambridge.

Speaker 47:00

As it paused in the burning king.

Presenter7:13

Andrew, you mentioned that after Cambridge you went to Italy. What happened there? Well, I had an Italian government scholarship to go and study with Franco Ferrara, who was one of the greatest teachers. He died last year. And he was a remarkable man. And actually, I think what Italy did for me was salutary because, you know, I'd spent four years in the cloistered world of Cambridge and very terribly British choral tradition. And to be exposed to that totally different view of life that the Mediterranean people have was wonderful. And I learned a tremendous amount from Ferrara, who was a great instinctive kind of musician with tremendous passion. And that was.

Presenter7:48

Really, a as I say, a big kind of change of emphasis for me and something that did me a lot of good. I'm interested in the process of learning how to be a conductor. I mean, I mean, how did it teach you?

Presenter7:57

Well, we would stand up in front of a rather dreadful orchestra once a week and and sometimes he wouldn't say anything, and it was quite maddening at times. You'd we'll turn around him and say, What's the matter? Why isn't this going better? and then and you'd have to sort of grab him by the arm afterwards and say, What should I do differently? But he was just a great inspiration be and he actually didn't conduct a lot himself because he was an extraordinary man. He'd uh he had some kind of nervous disability that meant he would he would actually faint if he conducted for too long. He would have been one of the great conductors along up there with Toscanini if he'd been able to conduct throughout his life. But he had a way of just breathing life into the music that I've seldom seen. Just the way he'd raise his arm for an upbeat was so incredibly full of power and electricity. It was it was really magnificent. What happened after Italy then?

Presenter8:46

Well then I came back to London and I spent two years doing various things of playing continuo, harpsical alm continuo with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the English Chamber Orchestra and other groups that I worked with over that time. I also did some proofreading for Schotz when I was really hard up, which is also interesting because I proofread several pieces by Michael Tippett, who has always been one of my very favourite people and composers. He's a really very, very great man, I think. So that was a sort of privilege in a way. And then in 1969, which was a year after I came back from Rome, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra had a seminar for young British conductors which I took part in, and that sort of was the first really impetus for my conducting career and they invited me back and I subsequently became principal guest conductor there for three years. So I have a very

Presenter9:31

Strong affection for that orchestra and that city. Another choice of record. Well, this happens to be the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Elgar is one of my absolutely favourite composers, and the Dream of Gerontius, I think, is one of his greatest works. And the tenor on this recording is Richard Lewis, who was the great Gerontis for many, many years. And I had the great fortune of actually doing the piece with him five or six years ago, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. So to hear him sing this piece, I think, will bring back all kinds of wonderful memories for me.

Speaker 310:05

Finthos hortis, silentos acaios, de profundis or ter is

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I don't think

Speaker 310:20

The Odex Wales are a champion.

Speaker 310:33

Family.

Speaker 310:35

I believe and truly God is three and God is one.

Speaker 310:47

And thy magsta cannot julie and a hold and take and bire the song

Presenter10:53

Or the tail

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Andrew, looking back on your career, was there one moment in time you can put your finger on and say that was the moment it started happening for me? That was the breakthrough. Yes. I think most conductors have to have something like that because there has to be some opportunity that comes your way and you seize. Because obviously if you're a pianist you can go around and audition for people or anything else, but if you conduct you need an orchestra, right? So it came for me in October 1970. First of all, I I applied for an audition and I got the job as assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow. I went and lived in Glasgow for two years and had a wonderful time at that orchestra, wonderful group of people, beautiful orchestra, and they taught me a great deal. Just after I'd actually been offered the job and but before I moved up to Glasgow, the BBC called me and Sir William Glock, who was then of course the controller of music, had been present in my audition and and a conductor fell ill for a performance of uh

Presenter11:57

Piece called The Glagolitic Mass by Janacek in the Royal Festival Hall. And I took over. I I had like two days to learn the piece before the first rehearsal, which absolutely terrifies me now. I suppose then, you know, when you take your opportunities as they come along, and it was successful, and that was really what launched my career, coupled with the two years I'd had in Glasgow as a sort of basis for getting a repertoire under my belt, so to speak. So the Janacek Glagolitic Mass has a very

Presenter12:22

A strong place in my affections for another reason, also, because that was the first piece I ever conducted in Toronto. In 1973, the then conductor of the Toronto Symphony Karel Anchal, the great Czech conductor, died, and the orchestra was looking for a replacement. I went there in May of 74 and conducted this very piece. They offered me the job about a month later, and I began as music director in Toronto in 1975. And of course, I've been there ever since. So my next record is in little doubt. You guessed it. It is indeed.

Andrew Davis12:51

This is a good little dev.

Speaker 412:52

Yeah.

Presenter12:55

The Janacek Glagolitic Mass, conducted by Carol Ancel with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter14:01

Andrew, after your debut, it could be said that your rise was meteoric from that point on. With within five years you've conducted every major British orchestra. You'd also made your New York debut as well. Did you ever imagine that it was going to be like that?

Andrew Davis14:09

Good.

Presenter14:13

No, and at the time it was rather terrifying, you know, because one always has the feeling, Am I ready for this? you know, but you can't say, Well, ask me again in five years' time So I remember vividly my first experience of the New York Philharmonic, who have actually a terrible reputation for being conductor eaters, you know, and I knew that when I went there. So the first rehearsal

Presenter14:32

The back of the second violin section were practically sort of lying down in their chairs, looking terribly bored.

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So I thought, what do I do about this? Do I tap the the stand and say, come along, gentlemen, wake up? No, no, just get on with it. And every orchestra with any new conductor, any unfamiliar face to them, whether he's young or old, but especially, of course, when he's young, they want to be shown that the person knows what he's doing. So, really, it's a question of just getting on with it. And sure enough, within half an hour, they were all sitting up and we were making some nice music. And since then, I've developed a very, very warm relationship with that orchestra. They like my Britishness, I think. It's funny. How do you handle them?

Speaker 415:09

Yeah.

Andrew Davis15:09

Yeah.

Presenter15:10

With a lot of humour, actually. They respond to that very much. I generally speaking, when I work with any orchestra, I don't like to be the old-fashioned sort of martinette. It's not my personality, and I don't think these days it necessarily gets the best results either. And so I always have a good time with them. Several of them of the orchestra have told me that I remind them of Sir Thomas Beecham, which I take as the highest possible compliment. Of course, he was another man of great well, he was a man of great humour and fun. He had fun making music, and I think that's something that I like to do too. I think music is something that's so intensely enjoyable. I feel so incredibly lucky to be doing this as a way of earning my living and living my life that I think one should always be conscious of that and really en enjoy music making. And this is the philosophy that you've taken with you as music director in Toronto then? This approach to it that it is fun. I mean, what specifically have you done? Can you give me an example of your approach?

Speaker 415:57

But

Presenter16:04

Yes, I think music must be enjoyable for everybody. I there have been a few particularly eccentric occasions that I've taken part in. We do a lot of schools' concerts in Toronto, and I do always one a year, and I enjoy them immensely, and I think they're very important to instill that sense of fun and enjoyment and love of music in young people. A lot of children's concerts can be boring unless they're handled very well. So I've done crazy things like I dressed up as Bach once for a programme of Bach in the tercentenary year. And on one occasion, I did a performance of the Carnival of the Animals, in which I actually dressed up as a lion, which went down, of course, wonderfully with the children. And the orchestra enjoy that too. I mean, I think orchestra members love to enter into the spirit of those things. Was there any conflict at all when you first went to Toronto? Was there any problem in readjusting to their way of thinking, their way of promoting music? Well, I mean, I was intensely embarrassed, as any true Englishman would be, at all the sort of hype that went on when I first arrived. I was the latest superstar, so my face was coming out of stars in brochures, which I all thought was terribly tasteless. Actually, we've become a little more sophisticated in our presentation of music. They have an Andrew Davis sweatshirt. Oh, of course. And an Andrew Davis coffee mug and all those things.

Andrew Davis17:18

Those things Yeah.

Presenter17:20

I thought it was sort of funny, but uh I got used to that very quickly. What I found a little more difficult to adjust to is the North American concept that uh a music director has to be God, you know, the music director always has to be right. And let's face it, that ain't necessarily so. That was the hardest thing I had to sort of steal myself to in a way. How much in that situation that you're in, I have been in for the past ten, eleven years. How much does the the orchestra therefore become the family with you? Oh, very much. I have an incredible

Presenter17:49

Affection, both musical and personal, for all of them. I mean, it is like a family. Well, you know, they say a relationship with an orchestra and a conductor is like a marriage, but you know, the husband and the lover and the son sometimes. It's a very complex relationship, but very beautiful. I must say that the 11 years I've spent in Toronto have given me more pleasure and more relish in life than anything I've ever done, I think. I believe this tour that in fact, you're leaving, aren't you? Yes. I'm leaving in 18 years, two years away, yes. Why is that?

Andrew Davis18:16

Yes, sir.

Andrew Davis18:17

Eighty eight.

Presenter18:20

Well, I will have been there thirteen years, and really it seemed the time to move on, perhaps take my career in in slightly different directions. Actually, I hate the word career. You know, what does it mean? All I really hope is that I continue to make better and better music

Presenter18:33

impart more enjoyment of music to more people. So I will be sort of diversifying a bit. I'm keeping my house in Toronto and certainly I'm keeping my island because I'll never, never, ever give that up because it's such a special place to me. But uh I'll still be working in Toronto for about a month a year and I'll use Toronto as my base for North America and I'm going to be doing more opera.

Presenter18:52

So I'm looking forward, as I say, to diversifying. I'm also going to take four months off immediately after I leave Toronto to maybe read a little and maybe compose a little. I'm I do like composing, but it's a very time consuming business.

Presenter19:05

Let's have another choice of breakland under.

Presenter19:07

Well, my next record is the Toronto Symphony in a recording of Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, which we made about two years ago. And this is a record I'm very proud of. Strauss is a composer I feel very close to. Most of my operatic work has been with Strauss's operas at Gleimborn and the Maiden, at Covent Garden. And this, I think, is one of Strauss's very greatest orchestral pieces. And I'm very, as I say, I'm very proud of this recording because I think it shows the orchestra at its very best.

Presenter20:32

Our Castaway is the music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis. Andrew, you've travelled, of course, all over the world with the Toronto Orchestra. What have been the imperishable memories of the the trips that you've made?

Presenter20:45

We've made, as you say, quite a lot of tours. I remember a tour at the end of my first season, which was very beautiful, because we went all through Eastern Canada, which gave me my first taste of how what a beautiful and incredibly varied country it is. And then in'seventy eight, the most memorable trip of all was our trip to China.

Presenter21:01

And the country, of course, has only recently emerged from the Cultural Revolution at that time. And the sort of incredible eagerness, the sort of

Presenter21:11

The hunger that they had for music at that time was very, very moving to witness. And of course, we saw all the science who went to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs and all those things and ate wonderfully well. But my most vivid memory probably is of the third concert we did in Peking, which was in an 18,000-seater stadium, and the place was absolutely jammed with this great mass of blue Mao jackets. Of course, now they actually have much greater diversity in the way they dress, but it was an extraordinary sight. And to be performing some of the Marla Knarben Vunderhorn songs with Maureen Forrester, the great Canadian contralto, was really remarkable. And that especially, I think, seemed to strike a very responsive chord in them. It wasn't much awareness of the kind of music you were playing there.

Speaker 421:53

There's much more.

Presenter21:56

As far as we could make out, probably that was the first time any Mala had been played in China, which is a r remarkable thought.

Presenter22:03

And it was, as I say, an extraordinary experience. And one really can't describe the feelings that one has. Did you play any of their music? We played a little actually, Maureen Forrester sang a wonderful little song called Naniwan, which is about a village on the Long March, which was a tremendous hit with them. They absolutely loved it, especially when she got the words wrong. I mean, she spent weeks getting this extraordinary Chinese language into her tongue. And then instead of saying then the army came and the flowers blossomed, she said something like then the army came and the flowers withered. And they all cracked up. They all burst out laughing.

Speaker 422:35

But yeah.

Presenter22:35

But actually they gave us a lovely little piece of Chinese music which we then played in in Canada a couple of times when we came back. We've also of course done a big European tour before. We were here in uh in eighty three. Uh but the tour that we're in the middle of now I think is our most important so far. Edinburgh Festival, the proms.

Presenter22:55

And uh do you have a favorite audience?

Presenter22:58

Yes, the prom audience. Really? Oh, yes. Well, of course I remember being a promenader myself, queuing up and listening to concerts when I was, you know, twelve, thirteen years old.

Presenter23:08

Of course they're sometimes crazy before you start to play and after you play. But it's the most attentive, rapt audience that I know. It's a real thrill to play for. Do they have a pet name for you?

Presenter23:18

Well, they used to call me Goldilocks, but I think my hair has got a little darker and I've also got a beard, of course, these days, so I didn't quite fit the category then.

Presenter23:25

Let's have another choice of music.

Presenter23:28

Well, once again, uh this is the Toronto Symphony. This is our most recent record, uh, recording of the Planets. And uh I think if the Strauss showed the orchestra in its voluptuous mood, this shows the orchestra in its very brilliant virtuosity.

Presenter24:44

Andrew, I'm going to ask you a seemingly silly question. If I were a Martian, always assuming they didn't have conductors on Mars, and I came down and met you and I asked you what you did, how would you describe what a conductor does?

Presenter24:56

Well

Presenter24:58

This is a funny question.

Presenter25:00

Condata's primary function, of course, is to keep the orchestra playing together. You know, you have a hundred people, there's no way they can play together without following somebody. So basically keeping the ensemble together is the first

Presenter25:10

After that, of course, it becomes more hard to put into words because what what a conductor does then is really to pull these hundred people of diverse musical tastes and backgrounds into something that makes a cohesive whole. How you do that is very hard to explain because if you watch different conductors they all have vastly different techniques. Some of them are very flamboyant, some of them hardly move at all. But it's really it comes from the hands, it comes from the face, it comes from the eyes. But it's really a sort of spiritual psychic force, if you like, that you can't really say you can't look at a person and say, oh yes, he's doing that, that's why it's coming out like that way.

Presenter25:50

Who have been the conductors that have most influenced you? Who'll be your heroes then? And why? Well, I think I have two big heroes in the conducting world. Uh one is uh Sir John Barbara Rawley.

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whose work I admired.

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because he brought to music a kind of love and a passion that's uh very, very rare. It's as though every detail of the piece of music was cherished with him, and that's a very, very special quality. I didn't see a lot of him because uh you know he died quite a long time ago now.

Presenter26:23

But every time I did go to see him work, and I w also went to some of his rehearsals with the Halley Orchestra, I found this incredible psychic force that comes out of him, but with such an intense love of the beauty of the music that he was doing all the time, that I think is very, very rare. And who else?

Presenter26:43

The other conductor that I admired stupendously was Klemperer, who was very different in a way, and I I admired Klemperer

Presenter26:51

For his, how should I put it, his architectural qualities, the way he could build a huge structure, he'd conduct a a symphony lasting over an hour, and somehow when it was over it seemed to have lasted no time at all because that sense of of progression through the work was so incredibly strong that time really stood still with him. I mean he was one of the great architects of music. His Beethoven, his Brahms are absolutely incomparable.

Presenter27:18

Another choice of record.

Presenter27:20

Well, since we've been talking about Barbaroli, I've chosen his recording of uh Mahler's Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter27:28

He actually conducted Marla

Presenter27:31

Really, only relatively towards the end of his life, and he gets out of the Berlin Philharmonic only towards the end of his life, relatively, and they developed a very strong uh relationship. And I think this emerges on this recording. It's not perhaps the neatest Marla 9 recording that there is, but it is a recording that shows this quality that I've been talking about, this intensity of feeling all the time.

Presenter28:53

Andrew, in the the lifetime that you've spent in music, what gives you most enjoyment?

Presenter29:00

I think every concert I do.

Presenter29:02

Sometimes one's terrified, sometimes one's confident.

Presenter29:05

It's f funny, sometimes one isn't even feeling like it. You know, you get up and you think, Oh my god, I gotta go to conduct a concert tonight and then you walk out on stage and then something really magic can happen for no reason. I mean, you may be feeling physically tired, but it's that sort of unpredictability of making music, and of course any recreative art

Presenter29:22

Is extraordinary because no two performances are ever the same. So you're always exploring, always looking for something new. Maybe not consciously, but your subconscious is always looking for new depths, new angles, new beauties in the music that you're doing. I mean, that's why I say I think I'm so incredibly lucky to do what I do, because every day is something new and wonderful. What kind of music don't you like?

Presenter29:42

I hate the orchestral works of Liszt. I'm sorry I say that because it happens to be a centenary of his this year. Why? I don't know I just find the music sort of sentimental and awful.

Presenter29:53

That's my only pet aversion. I think the piano music is remarkably fine and and beautiful.

Presenter29:59

And there are certain composers I think I don't conduct that well. I mean, I don't think I conduct Bartock very well, for instance. So I I sort of don't do very much. But by and large I like to do as big a repertoire as I can. And are there are there certain pieces that you've not avoided, but you you've sort of put off in your career? Yes. In fact, my last record is is one such piece. It's the Beethoven Messe Solemnis.

Presenter30:23

And I've sort of been saying to myself, Well, I've for a few years I've saying, Well,

Presenter30:26

when I'm forty, maybe I'll do it when I'm forty two and I'm saying maybe when I'm forty five, maybe when I'm forty five, I'll be saying when I'm fifty, because I think it's such an incredible m monument to attempt to scale. So I'm I'm going to take Klempa's recording with me so that when I'm rescued from the desert island uh I shall be ready for it finally.

Presenter31:43

Well, Andrew, when I'm on your on your desert island, you've already chosen, in fact, the record that you'd uh choose to survive of the eight you've uh you've picked, and that's the one we've just heard. Yes, the big seven. What about the book? What book would you take with you?

Presenter31:55

Well, you know, I was thinking about this a lot, and should one take Proust, but really that's a bit too heavy going. And I've thought of other sort of serious things, but I a book I've never read and I've always wanted to read is Gulliver's Travels, and I think that will certainly keep me occupied for a few hours. And what about the the luxury object? I think I'd like to take my collection of uh apostle spoons, which I've been building up over the years. And they're something that gives me intense pleasure just to to look at and to touch and to feel, and to admire the craftsmanship of uh these great silversmiths who are working.

Presenter32:29

Two, three hundred years ago. And Andrew, you're already so practised at living on on islands. I mean, do you think you would enjoy living on this desert island?

Presenter32:37

For a little while.

Presenter32:39

Not for too long. Will you survive it?

Presenter32:41

I think I'll survive reasonably well. I mean, uh about two weeks ago on our island in Georgian Bay we actually ate a meal which consisted of a fish that we caught that day, some chanterelle mushrooms we'd picked in the woods, and some beans that we'd grown ourselves on on the island, so I don't anticipate too many problems in that direction. Andrew Davis, thank you very much indeed.

Andrew Davis33:07

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