In 1953 a young Scottish composer, still in his teens, made one of his first visits to Covent Garden for the controversial premiere of Benjamin Britten’s coronation opera Gloriana. The performances, attended by the poshest and least appreciative of audiences, were a famous fiasco, from which the work - a masterpiece - took years to recover, but John McLeod, for one, never forgot the music.
Two years ago, around the time of of his eightieth birthday, he was in the process of producing a fascinating bundle of works, in which his inspiration was showing notable new developments. One of them was a substantial Guitar Fantasy on themes from Gloriana, written for the gifted young guitarist Ian Watt to play at the Aldeburgh Festival, over which Britten had presided for most of his career.
For McLeod this has been a creative period, marked last week by the award of the CBE in the Queen’s ninetieth birthday honours. The thought of a forthcoming trip to Buckingham Palace to meet Her Majesty is pleasing him greatly. Though the award, he admits, has come as a surprise, he has encountered the Queen twice before, first at her coronation itself when he was Clarinettist No 25 in the RAF band which marched seventeen miles to pay tribute to her, and then in 1983 when she visited Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh on its 150th anniversary and he, as music teacher, composed an anthem for her.
By that time, as a music critic and friend, I had got to know him and was aware of his high ambitions on behalf of Scottish music and musicians in general. He had conducted the Perth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a celebrated performance of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Chabrier’s glittering Marche Joyeuse in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall Proms. As conductor of the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (the only conductor I have ever heard who stripped the orchestral accompaniment from And With His Stripes in the annual performance of Messiah) and, in John Currie’s absence, of the progressive John Currie Singers, he might have developed a career in quite different directions. But composing music was his challenge and that, after Peter Donohoe played his Piano Concerto at the Perth Festival (he wishes Perth would repeat it sometime), that was the way he went.
In recent years his music has gone in strikingly new directions, making it more and more interesting to listen to. He is not a composer to rest on his laurels. His Edinburgh home, which he shares with his wife Margaret, a distinguished piano adjudicator and examiner, resounds with to the strains of her Steinway and his Bechstein, though he remains a clarinettist at heart. But vitality his Fifth Piano Sonata, another product of his eighties, has gleamed around the world in performances by Murray McLachlan, its Scottish exponent (hear it on You Tube).
What next? From the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, after his recent tribute to Carl Nielsen entitled Out of the Silence, has come a commission for a viola concerto for their principal viola, Jane Atkins. Viola concertos, among which Walton’s stand high, though McLeod has an affectionate memory of Edmund Rubbra’s, long dead and gone, are rare and special compositions. McLeod says he sees the instrument as a source of energy in the middle of the orchestral strings, just as his beloved clarinet holds a similar place amid the woodwind (Brahms’s two poignant clarinet sonatas can also be played by viola).
Not for nothing was it Purcell’s, Bach’s, Mozart’s, Dvorak’s and Britten’s personal instrument of choice. So McLeod’s concerto will be a work to look forward to. He has time, two years yet, in which to write it, which will leave him space for other surprises. Meanwhile I send him, as Scotland’s senior composer, my congratulations on becoming a CBE.
16 June 2016
Two years ago, around the time of of his eightieth birthday, he was in the process of producing a fascinating bundle of works, in which his inspiration was showing notable new developments. One of them was a substantial Guitar Fantasy on themes from Gloriana, written for the gifted young guitarist Ian Watt to play at the Aldeburgh Festival, over which Britten had presided for most of his career.
For McLeod this has been a creative period, marked last week by the award of the CBE in the Queen’s ninetieth birthday honours. The thought of a forthcoming trip to Buckingham Palace to meet Her Majesty is pleasing him greatly. Though the award, he admits, has come as a surprise, he has encountered the Queen twice before, first at her coronation itself when he was Clarinettist No 25 in the RAF band which marched seventeen miles to pay tribute to her, and then in 1983 when she visited Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh on its 150th anniversary and he, as music teacher, composed an anthem for her.
By that time, as a music critic and friend, I had got to know him and was aware of his high ambitions on behalf of Scottish music and musicians in general. He had conducted the Perth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a celebrated performance of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Chabrier’s glittering Marche Joyeuse in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall Proms. As conductor of the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (the only conductor I have ever heard who stripped the orchestral accompaniment from And With His Stripes in the annual performance of Messiah) and, in John Currie’s absence, of the progressive John Currie Singers, he might have developed a career in quite different directions. But composing music was his challenge and that, after Peter Donohoe played his Piano Concerto at the Perth Festival (he wishes Perth would repeat it sometime), that was the way he went.
In recent years his music has gone in strikingly new directions, making it more and more interesting to listen to. He is not a composer to rest on his laurels. His Edinburgh home, which he shares with his wife Margaret, a distinguished piano adjudicator and examiner, resounds with to the strains of her Steinway and his Bechstein, though he remains a clarinettist at heart. But vitality his Fifth Piano Sonata, another product of his eighties, has gleamed around the world in performances by Murray McLachlan, its Scottish exponent (hear it on You Tube).
What next? From the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, after his recent tribute to Carl Nielsen entitled Out of the Silence, has come a commission for a viola concerto for their principal viola, Jane Atkins. Viola concertos, among which Walton’s stand high, though McLeod has an affectionate memory of Edmund Rubbra’s, long dead and gone, are rare and special compositions. McLeod says he sees the instrument as a source of energy in the middle of the orchestral strings, just as his beloved clarinet holds a similar place amid the woodwind (Brahms’s two poignant clarinet sonatas can also be played by viola).
Not for nothing was it Purcell’s, Bach’s, Mozart’s, Dvorak’s and Britten’s personal instrument of choice. So McLeod’s concerto will be a work to look forward to. He has time, two years yet, in which to write it, which will leave him space for other surprises. Meanwhile I send him, as Scotland’s senior composer, my congratulations on becoming a CBE.
16 June 2016
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