June Gordon, as Lady Aberdeen insisted on calling herself when conducting her choir, orchestra, and opera company, was one of Scotland’s most stalwart musicians, determined to present works - Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Bach’s B minor Mass, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Delius’s Mass of Life - others were intimidated by.
Haddo House Opera and Haddo House Choral Society, her two great Aberdeenshire creations, both flourished in her hands. Though her conducting technique had a certain rigidity, she tackled problems head-on. Whatever the challenge, she knew how to meet it. As a critic I admired her enormously, though well aware that she could be difficult.
The Haddo Hall, where most of her performances took place, was essentially a large wooden chalet, its walls hung with sledges, a sort of Aldeburgh Festival auditorium of the north. It was no surprise that Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears liked performing there - I heard them do Schumann’s Dichterliebe - but so did many other stars from farther south. Janet Baker sang there regularly. The conductor Andrew Davis, like June a dedicated Elgarian, was in early days a chorister in her performances of The Kingdom and The Apostles, done in a single weekend.
Leon Goossens was principal oboe in her orchestra. Experienced brass players took the train from London to act as reinforcements. Her husband, Lord Haddo, sang in the choir.
Haddo House, in rural Aberdeenshire, was not exactly easy to reach but the trip was invariably worth the effort. The first time I went there she had recruited Alexander Gibson to conduct Britten’s still new-minted War Requiem in the 1960s, though she felt, I suspected, that she could have done it just as well, if not better, herself.
Performers and critics in those days, including William Mann from The Times, were invited to stay at Haddo House - this was before it had become a National Trust property - and there were invariably interesting visitors, among them the Queen Mother on one occasion. Young Prince Charles came over from Gordonstoun to play in the cello section, and once left his royal toothbrush behind, as I myself did a pair of cherished silk socks, which were sent home to me in a plain brown envelope.
The night before a performance there was whisky in the library and on the day itself a sumptuous buffet lunch. As a critic I faced the problem of finding a phone from which to dictate my review without being eavesdropped upon. Performers congregated in the breakfast room the following morning, where with luck you might run into Britten and Pears, as I did the day after Dichterliebe, though talking to Janet Baker was no less welcome.
What has brought all this back to mind is the Edinburgh Festival’s forthcoming concert performance of Rossini’s last operatic masterpiece, William Tell, which the Turin Opera is presenting under Giananfrea Noseda’s expert conductorship at the Usher Hall next week. It will be a very special Festival event, though of course June Gordon did it in a full staging at Haddo years ago.
Though she was never an avant-gardist - Stockhausen and Nono were not for her - she was always prepared to conduct difficult classical rarities, as William Tell was and still is. So she did that vast four-hour masterpiece, as I remember, more or less uncut and made it work. Her taste in opera was admirable, but in terms of production she went by the book. A composer’s stage directions were there to be observed, not cast aside, and when Verdi wanted a horse in Macbeth she gave him one. At Haddo House this was not a difficult demand to fulfil.
Gloriana, which Scottish Opera has never staged , was her first big Britten production, with the splendid Judith Pearce as Queen Elizabeth. and her first Puccini was Turandot, with a row of severed heads as decor. June was one of Scottish Opera’s official advisers, and chided the company when it got out of hand, as it did when Alexander Gibson and Peter Hemmings were replaced by controversial successors. Though Haddo’s forces continue to flourish, June died in 2009. Her memory lives on.
22 August 2014
Your blogs aways bring back memories (although I hope soon I will not be the only commentator). Coming from Aberdeen and with a mother who with June was a Committee member of the RSPCC, I found myself at Haddo many times, not just to take part in the concerts and operas, but also the plays which she presented. Her husband, Major David Gordon as he then was (later to become Lord Haddo and just before his death the Marquess of Aberdeen), was a formidable Macbeth, if not quite in the class of his more professional colleagues (I, a rank amateur, was given the role of Fleance)!
ReplyDeleteA stauch supporter of Scottish Opera, it was June who persuaded the Queen Mother to attend a fund-raising Gala Performance of Peter Ebert's "Don Pasquale" at His Majesty's Theatre in the autumn of 1972. The theatre looked gorgeous, June having persuaded a local rose grower to donate 2,000 blooms to drape over the balconies and boxes, as indeed did Her Majesty.
The Lord Provost gave a reception afterwards in the City Chambers. After the Queen Mother had arrived, we sat down for a light supper. No sooner had we started, the doors to the Chamber were thrown open and in walked the lead tenor, Alexander Oliver, dressed in a long flowing cape that outshone the Queen Mother's dress. Sandy always liked to make an 'entrance'!