Richard Temple Savage in Royal Opera House - 1951

from A voice from the Pit: Reminiscences of an Orchestral Musician, page 136:

1951, Festival of Britain Years, saw the first performance of Vaughan Williams' "Pilgrim's Progress". It was conducted by Leonard Hancock, one of the music staff, a fair, good-looking young man, so quiet and relaxed that Beecham asked in a loud aside after meeting him for the first time: "Does he breathe?" Vaughan Williams had announced rudely and publicly that he did not want "any of the Opera House hacks" to conduct his work but it didn't really matter who conducted it; as Kleiber said when I asked him his opinion of it: "Nothing much you can do with it, is there?" It just went on and on in …   more >>
cite as

Richard Temple Savage, A voice from the Pit: Reminiscences of an Orchestral Musician (Newton Abbot, 1988), p. 136. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1432842964850 accessed: 29 March, 2024

location of experience: Royal Opera House

Listeners

Richard Temple Savage
clarinettist music librarian, writer, music librarian, Clarinetist, Writer
1909-

Listening to

hide composers
'The Pilgrim's Progress'
written by Ralph Vaughan Williams
performed by Covent Garden Opera Company, Leonard Hancock

Experience Information

Date/Time 1951
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, indoors, in public

Originally submitted by iepearson on Thu, 28 May 2015 20:56:04 +0100
Approved on Sun, 20 Dec 2015 16:08:14 +0000