Vernon Handley

George Vernon Handley, CBE ( born November 11, 1930 Enfield, London, † September 10, 2008 in Monmouth, Monmouthshire, Wales ) was an English conductor. As a student of Sir Adrian Boult he has rendered a great service particularly to the care of the British repertoire of classical music.

Biography

Handley was born to Welsh parents in a musically educated family. During his school days he attended the BBC Recording Studios, Maida Vale, watching there his later teacher Boult at work. After Handley's own admission, he learned the tools so dirigentischer technology. In the early 1950s both corresponded in writing and in 1958 finally met each other in person after Handley finished his military service and studies at Balliol College, Oxford, had been completed. He vividly remembers that first meeting: " In the course of our meeting, he drilled me in the worst two hours counterpoint and harmony that I had ever experienced. "

Following Boult he submitted the score of a symphony and asked Handley how he would solve a certain problematic place in it. "I was lucky. It was a page from Arnold Bax 's Third Symphony, a work that I knew inside and out. " Handley solved the problem to the satisfaction of the elderly conductor who then promised him his support. Bax 's Third Symphony as it was, which was a central work on the program of Handley's first public concert in London, with the orchestra of Merton College. Handley was a recognized expert in the field of music especially this late Romantic English, the complete symphonies and symphonic poems he recorded later for the Compact Disc.

1962 Handley was appointed chief conductor of the young Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra, which he led in the following twenty years. In favor of this task renounced Handley largely on an international career, which explains why he is only a small circle of connoisseurs is still known today in spite of his extensive discounted graphical interaction and admiration of his colleagues outside the UK. Besides Guildford Handley has also built up the orchestra of Tonbridge. In 1983 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He also headed the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra ( not to be confused with the Concertgebouw Orchestra ), the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast and is an honorary conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the oldest orchestras in Britain. In numerous concerts, radio broadcasts and CD recordings he conducted several times all the major London orchestras, as well as all regional orchestra of the BBC. Record companies with whom Vernon Handley's career was closely linked, are EMI, Chandos Records, Hyperion Records, and last Dutton. The resurgence of the specialty label Lyrita and the subsequent publication of classic recordings from the 1970s gave new attention Handley's work.

In the course of his extensive career five decades Handley led to countless works of British composers, including the symphonies of Robert Simpson and Granville Bantock, he also - usually in first admissions - grossed. His award-winning recordings include, among other things, complete cycles of the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Charles Villiers Stanford, as well as works by Edward Elgar, Arthur Bliss, Edgar Bainton, Alexander Mackenzie and York Bowen, whose instrumental concertos, especially in recent years has been subject Handley's attention.

In recognition of his services Handley was christened on 3 May 2007 the honorary prize of the Classical Brit Awards. Already in 2004, the British Queen Elizabeth II had appointed him " Commander of the British Empire" ( CBE).

In January 2007, Handley was appointed chief conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra.

On September 10, 2008, Dr. Vernon Handley died at his home in Monmouth. In his last years he had inter alia with severe diabetes and the consequences of a traffic accident in Munich in February 2002 ( in which the driver of his taxi died ) to fight.

Vernon Handley on Arnold Bax

In an extensive interview with Richard Adams for the Sir Arnold Bax Website at recording the complete symphonies Handley explains his special relationship with Arnold Bax and the fascination of the music of this late English romantic poet:

"I do not have a favorite composer. But it occurs to me that those things that works in Bax treat prepare me not only to recur with each new encounter, but might even increase. More than any other music, there are his works, with the time in which I have dealt with them, more and more seem to grow -. , And this aspect has always impressed me My confidence in the quality of his music is strong enough that I think I can say that his time will come - simply because Bax is as individual as original, his ability to capture moods in music and to project these moods outward so entirely different from the other composers.

My fear is always that one a mature work of Arnold Bax an orchestra presents and so benevolent, the musicians may be, they try to play as something other than what it is. Namely, as a mixture of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss - but this is ridiculous, because Bax captures moods and thoughts one to which these composers have never even come close in their works. No other composer transported such a mood, let's say, a kind of melancholy sensibility lightning thwarted by flash pagan reflexes. How does he do such a balancing act, I do not know exactly, but whenever I again am grappling with his music, I notice how she has grown in the meantime.

Bax is a giant when it comes to the musical form. But even so astute composer Robert Simpson had problems with it, to realize that. Of course Simpsons own works are not nearly as sophisticated in its chromaticism as those of Bax. I often wonder if it is because: Each composer speaks a particular accent, and this makes it impossible for him to accept the accent of another, when they hardly understand him. For example: It is a society with people from different areas, and someone who comes from Ayrshire says something to you. You can understand the content is just so. And then she talks to someone from Midlothian, and they think at first, he spoke Hungarian. It 's just a different accent - only dialect [sic ]! Therefore, even such sensitive artists like Bob Simpson, the structure in Bax music does not capture because they only listen to the accent is placed over it. That is what worries me. Even if a work of Bax is formally quite clearly contoured, such as The Garden of Found, truly a work of genius, then people do not recognize the structure. And, although it is a piece of truly rigorous classical structure - but no one sees it. "