PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH

 

The remarkable Bob O'Reilly

The nose preceded him, a pointer, a landmark, out of true, superimposed on a battleground of a face where the years had settled their differences. The eyes were pouched. The hair flowed. He could have been the prow of a ship, or a bantam-weight boxer past his prime. He was capricious, energetic, virtually sleepless; dedicated, cricket lover, admirer of surgeons, idoliser of Henry Irving, cook, raconteur, showman; a lovely man to hear about or talk about, or talk to or listen to: Sir John Barbirolli ( 1899-1970), conductor of the Halle Orchestra, Bob O'Reilly to his World War 1 sergeant-major, Giovanni Battista Barbirolli to his mum, luv to his housekeeper, J.B. to his friends.

I decided; in 1969, to write a profile of Barbirolli without consulting him at all. The words were to come from friends and associates and from a private tape recording made at a dinner where he ate well, drank well and spoke the better for it. Barbirolli had been appointed conductor laureate for life by the Halle10 months earlier, having fIrst joined the orchestra in1943. He was 69,

Here, then, is Barbirolli, who began his career as a cellist.

Michael Kennedy (see footnote), writer and music critic, Daily Telegraph - Many a time after a concert I have seen him seemingly exhausted, Then someone will mention a part of the work he has played. He springs out of his chair; revived, and vibrant -'Did you hear that wind playing (poke in the ribs)? You 'll not hear wind playing like that anywhere in Europe (finger shaken in your face), And the strings -do you know how the fingering goes in that fast bit in the scherzo (seizing his nearest neighbour's forearm to use as a cello)? Well, that takes some doing, let me tell you, ,

A musician -

He's a dictator. He's no mug. He never tires. He drinks up applause and has a gift for fanning it up: the shuffling walk, a little stumble as he reaches the rostrum; all highly dramatic, you see? Great nerve, Most people would hesitate to take Viennese waltzes to Vienna. They are a
nightmare to play, the way he carries on. He is small but grows large on the box. When he is conducting I have literally had the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

Another musician -

His face always has a slight anonymity to me. He does try to look distinguished. He has this way of not wearing his teeth. I think he probably likes to look a bit haggard. I remember playing in London when he got the Mahler medal and I said, 'What's the betting he puts his
teeth in to get this?' We all agreed that he did not. He has a sort of croaking speech as if he does not really want to admit that he speaks English (he was born over a shop in Bloomsbury, London: Italian father, French mother).

Sir Neville Cardus -
                   

He goes into the music more than any other English conductor since Beecham. He tends to get slow. He is so much in love with every phrase that he wants to caress; like stroking a girl's hair and forgetting that she has got a face or legs. He would have been an artist as a cricketer or
making boots or as a surgeon. He would have conducted an operation so slowly because he would have loved doing it, you see? He treated me to a very good claret and, without thinking, I took out a cigarette. 'You know,' he said, 'that cigarette with this wine is blasphemy.' He does not mind being sentimental. He is not vain, not at all. He sees himself in a sort of mirror.
                   

Close friends and staff -

He was in the habit of conducting at Belle Vue, Manchester, and it was usually cold. On one occasion he went and it was warm. He congratulated an attendant, who said, ' Ah well, sir, we have some very iare and valuable animals here now.' He is not practical in the way a man can be. He would not fix a light bulb. But he has got up in the middle of the night and done some washing. Or he has cleaned the silver. He likes cleaning dirty silver.

(His office was on the ground floor of a large house in Salford. He and Lady Barbirolli. the oboist Evelyn Rothwell) had a flat upstairs.)

You can go up there for a morning's work and end with a lot of anecdotes. Or he will disappear during letters and arrive in the kitchen. 'Have I shown you how to do pork fillets?' he will say.That kind of thing often happens.

 He often does a nine-hour rehearsal and is up again at the crack of dawn. He usually has one big meal a day, around 11 at night. At mid-day he might have a sandwich. His drinks are whisky and Campari. When he discovered I had a grandmother in her nineties he would either write her a personal letter for her birthday or send a card and a basket of fruit. He never met her. He said, 'I'll go and see her when she is a hundred.' But she died. His memory is incredible. He sleeps badly but can cat-nap readily. He'll smoke heavily, then suddenly stop. My dog often disappears upstairs and when I look for him I find Sir John feeding him on bread sticks. I read him a three-page letter once and he fell asleep. 'Go on, go on,' he said when I coughed. He remembered the second line so that is as far as he got. He goes up the steps quicker than I can. I thought he needed a rest and arranged two free weeks at the beginning of this year. I did not really do him any good. He does not like holidays. Nearest thing to a holiday is to do leisurely concerts in Italy.

His favourite TV programmes have been Steptoe and Son and Bootsie and Snudge. He likes thrillers and biographies and has a lot of medical books. He gave me a book to read in Houston (Texas) on kings of England and how they died. He does his own shopping on tour, poking about sometimes in areas where customers should not go.

He is kind, lovable, very humorous. We have lots of fun. You could smack him many a time and there you are.

On himself and others -

We were rehearsing the third act for Falstaff which begins with a very lovely, delicate scene in Windsor Forest, and we had a full complement of wind and brass. The third trumpet was ill,so they brought me a local one, a Scot. And he was really -Pooh! Oh dear. I had a very bad corn and conducted in a slipper and in the end I just let go at this poor chap. At the interval I saw him advancing towards me. I thought: I'll face him in the cause of Verdi. 'Excuse me, sir,' he said, 'your feet are troubling you, aren't they?' I said, 'Very much so.' He said, 'Well, I'm not really a trumpet player; I'm a chiropodist.'

He came to my hotel with a little box in which he had the most revolting collection of ingrowing toenails and other things he had extracted with great skill.

I was the youngest member of the Queen's Hall Orchestra at the age of 16. In the Tannhauser overture there is that tremendous passage -dum, whoom, dum; goes on for hours. And at a rehearsal Sir Henry Wood made this remarkable statement: 'Me parts have let me down. Never happened to me before. ,

I am getting to be an old gentleman. I can say what I like now. There are very few critics left who love music. Sibelius, Elgar- it is rather funny that they should try to denigrate these great people.

The chorus at Covent Garden, 97 per cent Welsh, would congregate around the stage door and they loved to discuss singing. One said, 'What did you think of the tenor (a guest singer for Rigoletto)? 'Oh, lovely voice, beautiful phrasing, moves well, got nice hands; pity you can't hear him. ,

We were in Leeds in one of the old theatres where they have lovely pillars but you can't see the stage. A very fine mezzo-soprano was singing her last performance in Aida. Came the dramatic words, ' Aida, where art thou?' and in the hush, a toilet flushed by the side of the stage. We all tried to pretend it had not happened.
                                                                  

The BBC at one time gave a series all about Bach cantatas and a wonderful violinist named Arthur arrived at King's Cross and took a taxi. 'Driver,' he said, 'I'm rather late -BBC,Maida Vale.' The driver said, 'Are you one of them people taking part in Bach cantatas?' 'Yes,'
said Arthur. 'Well,' said the driver, 'you can bloody well walk.'"
                                                       .
(Daily Mirror executive): We picked Barbirolli up late at night and gave him a lift in our car. He said to the driver, 'Do you
come to hear my orchestra?' and the driver replied, 'To tell you the truth, Mr Barry-bowly, I
much prefer a bleedin' pint. ,

Demonstrating the cello -

Of course, you've got to move your bloody elbow.

Footnote: Michael Kennedy, then editor of the Daily Telegraph in Manchester, provided me with the private tape of Barbirolli - an act of generosity rarely found in newspapers. I described him, at the time, as a critic and Neville Cardus as a distinguished critic. Neither was named. Kennedy asked who the distinguished critic happened to be. My mortification was complete. Ignorance, sheer ignorance, had prevented me from describing Kennedy similarly. A lovely and honourable man, still writing, I am glad to say.

 

 

 

Geoffrey Mather © 2004

3 March, 2007