23 6|9
NEWS
OBITUARIES
Sir Charles Groves
SIR CHARLES GROVES,
who has died aged 77, was a
versatile conductor but he
will always be associated with
British composers past and
present, whose work he consistently championed — tak| ing over from Sir Adrian
| Boult
as
their principal
advocate.
Yet he was also the first
British conductor to direct all
the Mahler symphonies with
the same orchestra, the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic. He
did the same for Shostakovich, and he had a wide experience of opera.
A bulky, bearded, benevolent figure on the rostrum, he
could become very angry and
he fought for causes in which
he believed.
When the Bournemouth
Municipal Orchestra was
threatened with extinction in
1954, he sold raffle tickets in
| the street. The raffle raised
£14,000, enough to save the
orchestra and see it reconstituted as the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra under
new management.
|
In 1973 Groves protested
vehemently against the
‘‘exorbitant fees’’ charged by
some professional musicians,
and he practised what he
preached — his own conducting fee at the time was a few
hundred pounds compared
with the thousands charged
by some of his overseas colleagues. Some would say that
he consistently undersold
himself and that this is the
reason why he is comparatively poorly represented in
the gramophone catalogue.
Charles Barnard Groves
was born in London on March
10, 1915. His father was killed
in the First World War and
his mother died when he was
just 10.
Young Charles was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral
Choir School and then went to
Sutton Valence School in
Kent. In 1933 he entered the
Royal College of Music to
study piano and organ.
While a student, he was
choral accompanist for Toscanini’'s BBC rehearsals of
Brahms’s German Requiem.
This led, in 1938, to a post at
the BBC as chorus master of
the music productions unit;
he often worked with Boult
and the BBC Symphony
Orchestra.
In
1942
Groves
was
appointed assistant conduc| tor of the BBC Theatre
Orchestra and the next year
| he became conductor of the
| BBC Revue Orchestra.
From 1944 to 1951 he was in
Manchester as conductor of
' the BBC Northern Orchestra.
| While there he married, in
|
|
1948, another member of the
BBC staff, Hilary Hermione
Barchard.
In
1951
Groves
was
appointed conductor of the
Bournemouth Municipal
Orchestra, remaining in the
post until 1961. He visited
Australia for the first time as
a guest conductor in 1950, and
South Africa in 1957-8.
On leaving Bournemouth,
Groves
went
to
Welsh
Groves: bulky, bearded, benevolent champion of British composers
National Opera as musical
director from 1961 to 1963,
but the post in which he
attained his highest reputation was that of conductor of
the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which he
held from 1963 to 1977.
During his time there he
conducted the first performances of many new British
works — notably Maxwell
Davies’s Second Fantasia on
an In Nomine of John Taverner, which had been
thought unplayable. Groves
also broke a lance on behalf of
several unfashionable English Romantics such as Bax.
He also helped many young
Benign and jovial
presence at the Last
Night of the Proms
soloists and fostered talents
in his own field in the Liver-
pool conductors’ seminars.
He conducted the largescale choral works of Delius
and Elgar, later recording the
former’s A Mass of Life and
the latter’s Caractacus. He
was instrumental in the
revival and recording of other
early and neglected Elgar
choral works, such as King
Olaf, The Black Knight and
The Light of Life.
Groves conducted a revival
of Delius’s opera Koanga in
London in 1972 and later
recorded it.
In 1967 he combined his
Liverpool
post
with
that
of
associate conductor of the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. London, too, benefited
from his enthusiasm for English music when he conducted
performances of Havergal
Brian's ‘‘Gothic’’ and Ninth
Symphonies in 1976.
In one of his last concerts as
chief conductor in Liverpool,
Groves conducted Mahler’s
Eighth Symphony in the
Anglican cathedral, as he had
done in his first season —
memorable occasions both.
His dramatic approach
augured well for his appointment as musical director of
English National Opera at the
Coliseum in succession to Sir
Charles Mackerras, but this
proved to be an unhappy episode in his career.
When he arrived in 1978,
industrial trouble in the company affected rehearsal time
for productions. The critics
were anything but kind to him
and in addition he had several
bouts of ill-health.
In November 1979 he
announced that he was withdrawing from the post and
handing over immediately to
Mark Elder. Happier experiences in London in the 1970s
were his benign and jovial
presiding over the Last Night
of the Proms.
Groves was twice nominated as ‘‘Conductor of the
Year’’ by the Composers’
Guild, in 1968 and 1978. He
was a diligent, effective and
proud chairman of the council
of the Royal Northern College
of Music from 1975 and on
several occasions conducted
the students’ orchestra.
His firmness and tact in
committee smoothed over
many an awkward situation
when cuts and economies
were being considered. He
was adamant in his refusal to
countenance any lowering of
musical standards.
Groves toured Australia
again, most recently in 1987,
and besides his concert
appearances in London was a
regular guest conductor in
Liverpool and Manchester.
For some years he conducted
the final concert of the Leeds
piano competition.
He had a triumph in Manchester in 1988 when he conducted Tippett’s The Mask of
Time after preparing the
Hallé Choir for more than a
year. His conducting career
ended in February of this
year, when he had a stroke
while rehearsing the Manchester Camerata in Crewe.
Groves was always a reliable conductor, but when a
work really took hold of him
Manner concealed
a sensitive nature
easily wounded
he was capable of a deeply
moving and enthralling inter-
pretation, as in Elgar’s The
Apostles on many occasions.
A devout Christian and a
passionate
follower
of
cricket, Charles Groves’s
bluff manner concealed a sensitive nature, easily wounded,;
nor was he free from the insecurities and sense of inadequacy which afflict many conductors, particularly those
like him who are humbly
devoted to the art of music.
He was appointed OBE in
1958, CBE in 1968 and knighted in 1973.
He is survived by his wife, a
son, Jonathan, who was his
agent,
and
two
Mary
and
Sally,
daughters,
the
latter
well-known in music-publishing for her work for contemporary composers.