20 Home to Edinburgh

Stepping from the sleeper in Waverley Station, I was greeted by the early morning smell of  breweries - an old familiar Edinburgh aroma I had not experienced for years.  I was home. The deal had been done and I was The Scotsman’s latest music critic.

Since 6am seemed too soon to head for Davidson’s Mains, where I would be temporarily residing with  an old school friend while searching for a new house,  I decided to climb the steps of the Fleshmarket Close to The Scotsman’s back door and find my way to my new room - formerly occupied by my predecessor Christopher Grier - for  a spot of settling in.

The Evening News - which, when I left Edinburgh in 1959 had been my old alma mater the Evening Dispatch - was already stirring.  My room, one floor higher, awaited me, with the erratic Eric Blom edition of Grove’s Dictionary and every book in the Master Musicians series neatly arranged in the bookcase. A metal cupboard contained a stack of LP records which Christopher had left for me to review. On my desk was a reading light, an in-tray, a large empty diary, and the morning edition of The Scotsman.

Years later, following the same process, I would climb the steps from the London sleeper after a trip abroad, open the door of my office, and find Peregrine Worsthorne of the Sunday Telegraph sitting at my typewriter writing an article before departing  for London. He had been given permission to use my desk in my absence, though it was a shock to see him at that time of day  sitting drinking a coffee from the Melitta equipment I had by then installed in the room.

Meanwhile, back in the 1960s, I sat at the music critic’s desk for the first time, opened the drawers, slid my fingers over the typewriter keys, and set to work. None of The Scotsman’s editorial staff was yet on duty, so after typing a few notes  set off along the corridor to explore. A few steps down from my room lay the empty sub-editors’ room leading straight through to  the offices of Alastair Dunnett and Eric Mackay, the senior editors. Off to the right were the leader writers’ cubicles. Nearby lay The Scotsman’s elegant wood-lined gentlemen’s toilet, and further along the corridor the reporters’ room with its array of files.

It was still a quite  old-fashioned newspaper office, though the scene of many a news-break and many a merry jape. One day, taking a group of visitors into into the  reporters’ room and finding it a scene of journalistic badinage, Dunnett announced “And this is the disreputable side of the paper.”

For the moment, however, it was as empty as everywhere else. Sauntering back to my room, I planned my day, which would include  a sentimental lunch at the nearby Cafe Royal and an  evening of Telemann by an Edinburgh orchestra in the YMCA Hall, off Princes Street - not much of an event with which to launch my career as The Scotsman’s music critic, I felt, though I  was cheered by the sight of Robert Crawford, old friend and sterling composer of chamber music, sitting near me and reviewing the performance for the Glasgow Herald, which at that time had no staff music critic and would not recruit one for a further two years.

After the concert I had two hours, until  midnight, in which to write my review - in those days The Scotsman was slack with its deadlines  - and  strolled back to the paper gathering my thoughts. As I knew from past experience, most Edinburgh concerts - perhaps most concerts everywhere - were neither good nor bad. The problem lay in finding something sage to say about them.

Today I would be more generous to Telemann than I was on that early occasion. But the next night I faced something more challenging in the  Scottish National Orchestra’s  weekly concert at the Usher Hall. My seat was the one that had been traditionally occupied by Christopher Grier, in the back row of the grand tier. Despite tradition I instantly disliked it and my first action was to change my ticket. Having the overhang of the upper tier so close to my my head did not strike me as acoustically advantageous. So I moved forward a few rows and found myself beside Hans Gal, a somewhat peppery member of the university’s music faculty who had escaped from Vienna and settled in Edinburgh at the time of the Nazi takeover.

A composer of somewhat Richard Straussian persuasion, he had backward-looking tastes and would never become a buddy. But he gave me a grumpy welcome as we settled down to hear Alexander Gibson, who had recently succeeded the dreary Hans Swarowsky as the orchestra's musical director, conduct Debussy and Bizet. The performances were lightweight, better heard from my chosen seat than from further back.

My new career had begun, though it would be some time yet before Gibson displayed his mettle and bowled  me over with the way he conducted - of all unpromising works - Gounod’s Faust in Glasgow. It was my  first experience of Scottish Opera, which Gibson had founded a few years previously, and I was startled by its impact. Something was happening in Scotland and I was exhilarated to feel that I was going to be its chronicler.

27 November 2014