Charles Mackerras and Edinburgh
Charles Mackerras died ten years ago in July, aged 84. From 1952 to 2008, he conducted regularly at the Edinburgh Festival, and participated in performances in six consecutive decades - a record which is likely to stand for some time! Mackerras was also Conductor Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and one of his broadcasts with them - though not from Edinburgh - a Prom from 2001 is on Radio 3 on Thursday 13th August, with Alfred Brendel playing Mozart's Piano Concerto no 25. Mackerras's last appearance at the Festival was at Brendel's farewell performance in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 with the SCO at the 2008 Festival.
I can find no filmed record of Mackerras’s performances at the Festival or with the SCO. But here is a lovely clip of him conducting the SCO in the Haffner symphony, while recording his last CD with them. Very typical Mackerras, and one that brings back memories. I saw Mackerras often at the Festival, and at other concerts with the SCO. In this article I’d like to look at his contribution to opera at the Festival, and his orchestral work in Edinburgh, mainly with the SCO, in Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.
There’s no room here for a detailed biography, but even a quick look at his early life shows that his musical tastes were formed young. Born in the New York State to Australian parents, Charles Mackerras was brought up in Sydney, where he studied oboe and composition at NSW conservatoire, and then played in various orchestras and bands until emigrating to the UK in 1947 to study conducting. He had never seen an opera till he reached London, although as he explained on Desert Island Discs, “we were a Gilbert and Sullivan family.” A chance encounter took him to Czechoslovakia later that year, where, working with the Czech Philharmonic, he was first introduced to the music of Janacek. He returned to London to begin a long association with the Sadlers Well Opera Company, later English National Opera. By the early 1950s he was already an enthusiastic exponent of opera, especially opera in English, Gilbert and Sullivan (Pineapple Poll, his 1951 ballet score based on Sullivan’s music, was one of the first records my father bought for his new gramophone player!) and Janacek. He conducted the British premiere of Kata Kabanova in 1951, and throughout his career championed Janacek’s music both in the UK and in Czechoslovakia. He conducted the Glagolitic Mass with the Czech Philharmonic at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991. There’s no recording of that but you can find his performance with the same orchestra here in the link at the end of this article.
His interest in Janacek had been deepened by having access to the composer’s original scores, and increasingly, long before “authentic performance” became fashionable, he chose to go back to the original works and consider how they would have sounded when they were written. This was no fustiness in this approach: Mackerras combined it with a practicality about what was available – he enjoyed working with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and their mixture of modern and authentic instruments – and an enthusiasm about communicating the music to an audience
It has been fascinating to explore the many interesting written and audio resources which exist about Mackerras, but I was stumped in trying to access Edinburgh Festival programmes online. So I am very grateful to Caroline Donald, EIF's Head of Learning and Engagement, and Jill Jones, Head of Artistic Management for their help in providing me with a list of Mackerras's performances at the Festival. You can access the document below. From 1962 a recently discovered radio broadcast with the Polish Radio Orchestra of Shostakovich's 9th Symphony has been issued as a download or CD. If the extract in the link below is typical it will be worth following up. Mostly in this piece, I've focussed on his work in the 1900s and 2000s.
In 1991, Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and a cast of soloists, including Thomas Allen and Jerry Hadley, recorded Mozart’s The Magic Flute in the Usher Hall. There was no Festival concert with these forces, but two years later, with Brian Macmaster as Festival Director, Mackerras began a series of concert performances of operas in the Usher Hall, with the SCO and international casts. He began with the three Mozart Da Ponte operas, and Cosi fan Tutte with Felicity Lott, Marie McLaughlin, Jerry Hadley, Alessandro Corbelli, Gilles Cachemille and Nucia Focile, set the mark for tuneful, characterful performances with energetic tempos for arias. There was an element of staging – the singers entered and exited the stage at the appropriate points. Both the side front entrances, and the upper side doors – level with the back of the orchestra - were used. At one point Felicity Lott came in enthusiastically through an upper door, and started two beats early, immediately putting her hand over her mouth. Mackerras laughed and carried on. As often with concert performances I felt I understood the character interplay more clearly in this production than in any I’d seen before. There’s a link below to a radio broadcast of the original – thoroughly recommended. The voices are lovely – Mackerras always could pick terrific singers - and combine so well in the ensembles. Jerry Hadley, as Ferrando, who also sang Tamino and Don Ottavio, had one of the finest lyric tenors of the period.
The Marriage of Figaro followed in 1994 and Don Giovanni in 1995. These were very popular with Festival audiences, and, as far as I recall, well reviewed in the Scottish press, but were virtually ignored by the London media. Opera magazine at that time rarely reviewed concert performances, and the Independent’s preview of Figaro is typically sniffy:
“Le Nozze di Figaro (Usher Hall,15 Aug). This is a concert performance, for which Sir Charles Mackerras conducts a respectably worthy rather than glamorous cast - save the star presence of Carol Vaness as the Countess.”
In the Usher Hall memorial concert after Mackerras’s death, US soprano, Christine Brewer recalls how she was phoned by Mackerras about participating in the 1995 Don Giovanni. She was unsure how much he knew of her career to date, and attempted to convince him of her credentials and her suitability for the role. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, and arranged an audition (which she passed). Christine Brewer later played Leonora in the November 2005 performances of Fidelio in Edinburgh and London with the SCO as part of Mackerras’s 80th birthday celebrations.
Mackerras continued to conduct concert performances annually as part of the Festival for another ten years. Two more Mozart Operas, the 2001 Idomeneo, with Ian Bostridge and Lorraine Hunt Leiberson, and La Clemenza di Tito, in 2005 with Magalena Kozena as Sesto, stand out. But there was also a spirited Macbeth in 2003 with Violeta Urmana as Lady Macbeth. By this stage the London press had begun to take notice of these concert operas and John Allison in the Times remarked on “the power of this performance under this most vital of veteran conductors.” Canadian bass-baritone John Relyea, another Festival regular, was an imposing Banquo, but assumed that after his early demise he would not be required for the final applause. He reckoned without Mackerras, and after missing the first curtain call, he sheepishly appeared for an individual bow, clad in natty brown checked suit, to a few un-Usher-Hall-like wolf-whistles.
In 2004 Relyea returned to take part in Der Freischutz, one of the three Weber operas, performed as a season, with different conductors and orchestras. In conducting Freischutz, Mackerras got the pick of the three, and was praised in Tim Ashley’s Guardian review:
“At the centre of the evening, however, was the astonishing conducting of Charles Mackerras and Jonas Kaufmann's equally exemplary Max. Mackerras turned the score into a roller-coaster ride that lurched thrillingly from tension to stasis and back. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra's playing was electric. Kaufmann, meanwhile, presented Max as a potentially tragic figure - a man whose inner demons are infinitely more dangerous than the supernatural forces that assault him.”
Jonas Kauffman, it should be remembered was a regular at the Festival ahead of his international stardom. Although all the Usher Hall Mozart performances are available on Telarc CDs, there’s sadly no recording of Der Freischutz.
As the SCO’s Conductor Laureate, Mackerras was frequently seen in Edinburgh and Glasgow throughout the year as well as at the Festival. There was more than one critic who believed they played better for him than for anyone else. There were choral works, with the SCO Chorus – a Messiah at the Festival and Haydn’s Creation in 2006 come to mind, and a fine Mozart Requiem, in an edition by Robert Levin available on a Linn recording. I recall getting a late gallery standing ticket for a Mackerras choral performance at the Queen’s Hall. After the interval, a friend from the chorus stood beside me to listen to the Mozart Symphony in the second half. As we stood directly above Mackerras, we gasped several times as his conducting style, always energetic, seemed to approach a frenzy, as one hand turned the loosely bound pages of his score to and for for repeats, almost but not quite flying off the podium… I imagine that none of this was apparent to most of the audience. He always conducted with a score, believing that he should find something new with every performance.
In the last few years of his life, Mackerras produced three sets of recorded symphonies with the SCO. The Brahms set of 1997 were the first delivered by an “authentically” sized orchestra. They performed a series of the Symphonies at the 2003 Festival – see the Where’s Runnicles piece below for a review. I heard many of the Beethoven symphonies – presented as early evening single concerts in the 2006 Festival. Controversially Mackerras used the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus for the Ninth as he wanted larger forces. Reviewing the recording, Michael Osborne in the Gramophone, after first bemoaning the state of the Fringe, said:
Hearing Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony – just that, nothing else – at an early evening concert in the Usher Hall last August was both a joy and relief. A joy because the performance by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras was everything one could wish from mortal musicians; a relief because when it comes to comedy, Beethoven knocks spots off those ranting stand-ups who have become Edinburgh’s most fawned-over feature. Hyperion’s set is that early evening Beethoven cycle caught in recordings of remarkable intimacy and focus.
Mackerras’s two sets of Mozart Symphonies with the SCO are as good as any work he did with them, Symphonies 38-41 (2008) were described by the Guardian as “the finest set of Mozart’s greatest Symphonies to have appeared in years”. The ‘Building a Library’ podcast of January 2020 on Symphony 39 rated this recording a close second. The 2010 set of Symphonies 29, 31, 32, 15 and 36 were, if possible, even better.
The Haffner, Symphony 35, was in the last programme Mackerras conducted in Edinburgh. By early 2010, he knew he was very ill, as did the members of the SCO. I was in the front side stalls in the Queen’s Hall, so I could see him conduct. He sat in the high stool , which he often used then, and sat with his eyes shut and hands scarcely moving to conduct the Mozart, while the SCO played on with their usual conviction. After the concerto which followed, Mackerras left the stage after the first applause, leaving the horn player to take a solo bow, and there was some concern at the interval about whether he would be able to carry on. But of course he did and cheerfully conducted music, probably new to most of us, Strauss’s Suite of incidental music to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Below are a number of links to written sources which I’ve used, and some enjoyable musical links which have probably caused me to take far longer than I anticipated to write this. If I haven’t done Mackerras justice, I hope that these will.
List of Mackerras’s performances at the Edinburgh International Festival
Tam Pollard’s personal reminiscences from his Where Runnicles? Blog
A useful site to links to recordings and video clips, with more links being added to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Mackerras’s death
A list of opera performances conducted by Mackerras in Scotland
Radio recording of 1994 Cosi Fan Tutte
1962 Shostakovich 9th Symphony review of the recording from 1962 Festival including short audio clip
Janacek Glagolitic Mass with Czech Philharmonic
Finally Mackerras never conducted G and S in Edinburgh, but here he is conducting the overture to HMS Pinafore at the 2005 Proms
