Over a period of nearly 18 years the Dublin choir,
Our Lady’s Choral Society, enjoyed a close relationship
with Sir John Barbirolli, a relationship that took
them not only around Ireland and to Manchester and
London but to Perugia and Castel Gandolfo. It took
the choir to Berlin as well, but regrettably, at the
last minute, without Sir John. In his speeches and
writings he occasionally referred to them as the “Choir
of Our Lady of Dublin”, as though there had
been a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary in
Ireland’s capital. This is the story of that
collaboration.
Beginnings
It was in 1945 that the idea of bringing the best
singers from the various parish choirs in Dublin was
born. There were choral societies in Dublin, but none
with the imprimatur and ethos of the Catholic Church.
Duly, with the support of Dr. John Charles McQuaid,
the Archbishop of Dublin, the 360 singers of the Amalgamated
Catholic Choirs of the Diocese of Dublin made their
debut in December with two performances of Messiah
in the Capitol Theatre. The conductor was one of the
originators of the idea, Dr Vincent O’Brien,
the director of the Palestrina Choir in St Mary’s
Pro-Cathedral. He was nearing retirement and wished
to direct Handel’s masterpiece one more time.
By the following year, the last before his retirement,
the choir had been re-named Our Lady’s Choral
Society. The Director (administrator) of the choir
from the outset was the other originator, Father Andrew
Griffith, then a curate in the Cathedral.
Meanwhile Sir John was no stranger to Ireland. His
first solo recital as a cellist after the First World
War had been in the Theatre Royal in Dublin in1920.
After the Second World War he brought the Hallé
on tour in 1946 and 1949. The 1946 visit had included
concerts in Cork, Limerick and Dublin. One of the
two concerts in the Theatre Royal, Dublin included
E. J. Moeran’s Violin Concerto played by Laurance
Turner, the Hallé’s leader, with Moeran
in the audience, as he had been in Cork. The 1949
concert in Dublin immediately followed their Edinburgh
Festival appearances and was during the period when
Barbirolli had been forced to cancel, on doctor’s
orders, everything bar his Hallé engagements
for twelve months. This Irish trip had been allowed.
When, in 1951, Barbirolli was in hospital following
his return from Australia, he was in a ward with four
other people, one of whom was a Catholic priest. Naturally
the conversation turned to music and the priest told
Sir John about a choir in Dublin run by a friend of
his, Father Andrew Griffith. This in due course led
to an invitation from Griffith, through the Archbishop,
to conduct the choir in a performance of The Dream
of Gerontius the following year. This was to form
the centrepiece of the celebrations planned to mark
the Centenary of Cardinal Newman’s first visit
to Dublin, as a result of which the National University
of Ireland was in due course founded.
The choir meanwhile had continued to develop, adding,
among other works, the Choral Symphony of Beethoven,
Haydn’s Creation and the Verdi Requiem, to its
repertoire and including a number of appearances with
Jean Martinon among the conductors of the Radio Eireann
Symphony Orchestra with which it was now working.
Oliver O’Brien, son of Vincent, had taken over
the role of musical director and chorus master on
the death of his father in 1948. The previous year,
at a visit to the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen,
it had been described in an adjudication as “the
choir that loves to sing” by Sir Hugh Roberton
1. In 1950 a tour that included concerts in Rome and
Paris had been a considerable success. In the Teatro
Argentina in Rome, accompanied by the Augusteo Orchestra
(as the Santa Cecilia Orchestra was then known) they
had performed Messiah. This had been followed by the
Verdi Requiem in the Théatre des Champs Elysées
with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra under Martinon.
Therefore the possibility of performing The Dream
of Gerontius under Barbirolli with the Hallé
would be another major step on the choir’s musical
journey. It would also be the first time an Irish
choir had performed in Dublin with what was termed
“a foreign orchestra”.
The first Gerontius
In all nine months were devoted by the choir to preparing
for this event. Despite the death that day of Philip
Godlee, chairman of the Hallé and the man responsible
for bringing him to Manchester from New York in 1943,
Barbirolli arrived on September 28th, a month before
the concert, for two rehearsals. When he heard the
choir working with Oliver O’Brien he told them
he was impressed. To Griffith he said he had heard
better choirs, but he was looking forward to conducting
them in The Dream because of the way they interpreted
the music. At a press conference soon after his arrival
in Dublin towards the end of October for the actual
concert, he said that he had been agreeably surprised
and delighted with the singing of the choir, particularly
with its intelligence from a musical and dramatic
point of view.
In fact Sir John was treated like the major celebrity
he was, with many column inches devoted to his activities
by the morning, evening and Sunday papers while he
was in Dublin. His remarks about the choir were widely
reported. In the Irish Times, the daily diarist Quidnunc
caught the flavour of the Barbirolli humour during
rehearsal. Sir John remarked about the choir’s
singing of what he termed the ‘Devils chorus’.
“At first I wasn’t terribly satisfied
with their interpretation, so I stopped them and said
‘Look here, there you are, a crowd of full-bloodied
Irish revolutionaries, and you’re singing like
a bunch of Sunday-school teachers. Look at me –
I’m an Englishman – Now sing as if you’re
abusing me!’ After that they were fine”.
He also went on to say that with the great Irish artistic
tradition and with world figures like Stanford, Harty,
Moeran, McCormack and Burke-Sheridan, it was strange
there was not yet a national concert hall.
Two days before the concert he was honoured by the
National University with an honorary doctorate of
music. On this occasion his links to Ireland were
confirmed by the telling by John F. Larchet, Professor
of Music in University College, Dublin of the ‘Bob
O’Reilly’ 2 story from the First World
War.
The Newman Centenary concert took place on October
26th in the Theatre Royal, as had the Hallé
concerts in previous years. This was a large art deco
building opened in 1935, in Hawkins Street just south
of the River Liffey. With a seating capacity of 3000
plus, it was a regular location for major symphony
concerts. However while the acoustic was acceptable
for orchestral events, it cannot be said it was ideal
for choral concerts, because the choir had to be placed
well back behind the proscenium arch. Richard Lewis
sang the part of Gerontius, Marian Nowakowski the
Priest and the Angel of the Agony. Singing the Angel
for the very last time was Kathleen Ferrier.
The critic of the Irish Independent was full of praise
for the whole performance but noted particularly the
great improvement in choral technique. The Irish Times,
in the course of a critique on the Hallé Orchestra’s
two concerts over the weekend, commented upon the
contribution of the soloists most favourably, with
Nowakowski highly praised for the “wonderful
quality of his tone in ‘Go forth from this world’”.
Kathleen Ferrier had performed in both concerts, singing,
among other arias, Gluck’s ‘Che faro’
with “rare artistry” in the first. In
The Dream she was “right inside her part of
the Angel, and every tone and inflexion of her performance
was in exquisite taste”. As regards the choir,
the Irish Times confined itself to noting that Sir
John “obtained some lively effects from the
chorus, who were very good in the ‘demonic’
music”. Sir John was quoted in an interview
after the concert as saying he found the choir a highly
responsive instrument, marking it out as one of the
front rank in oratorio presentation. To the choir
he said, “I have conducted many choirs which
have sung magnificently, but there was something today
you have given me, something which I shall remember
to the end of my days”.
A tour to England
The success of the new collaboration was such that
a tour in England with the Hallé Orchestra
was publicly discussed. “Sir John Wants Choir
for London” said the Irish Press, adding that
Barbirolli would be writing to Cardinal Griffin in
Westminster to discuss the matter. There was talk
of concerts in Manchester to include both The Dream
and Messiah. Kenneth Crickmore, the manager of the
Hallé was brought into the debate. But, as
ever with such plans, the project foundered because
of lack of funds. Crickmore had gone so far as to
express his astonishment that the choir existed without
any subsidy. That the tour to Rome and Paris undertaken
by the choir in 1950 had been financed solely from
subscriptions made by the individual members, deepened
his respect for them.
Their next encounter took place within six months.
A tour of Ireland, again with the Hallé, was
announced for April 1953, to include Cork, Limerick,
Waterford and concluding in Dublin. The work to be
performed was Messiah. Apart from Waterford, where
the Cathedral was the appropriate venue, theatres
or cinemas were the settings. Herbert Bardgett, renowned
Chorus Master of the Huddersfield Choral Society and
the Hallé Choir, arrived to take three rehearsals
over the weekend preceding the tour which ran from
April 22nd to 25th. Barbirolli and the orchestra met
up with them in Cork, arriving by sea. On the 25th,
having criss-crossed the country, choir and orchestra
arrived in Dublin by train from Waterford at almost
mid day. They were on stage in the Theatre Royal by
2.30 p.m. ready for the final performance which began
at 3.
This time there was an Irish soloist, the soprano
Veronica Dunne, who had sung Eurydice to Kathleen
Ferrier’s Orpheus at her last appearances at
Covent Garden two months previously. Kathleen Joyce
was the contralto, William Herbert the tenor and the
bass once more Marian Nowakowski, famed for singing
“The strumpet shall sound” until he was
quietly told of his error.
The route that Barbirolli took through the various
editions of Messiah was described as “fresh
and scholarly” by the critic of the Irish Times,
who “regarded most of his alterations as steps
toward the ideal reading of the score”. The
critic of the Irish Press concurred, hoping that future
performances would be in line with Sir John’s.
Whether in the light of the quest for authenticity
these judgements would be made today, I rather doubt,
but I am sure those who heard the Barbirolli Messiah
would have favourable words with which to defend it.
Certainly today we most often hear ‘But who
may abide’ sung by the contralto soloist. Then
it had been the tradition to give it to the bass and
Sir John’s decision to restore it to the contralto
was felt to be particularly justified. Sir John was
taken to task by the Irish Times for setting too fast
a tempo for “Rejoice greatly” and making
exaggerated choral contrasts in ‘For unto us’.
Overall the choir was felt to have given a “splendid
performance”. The Irish Press thought the choir
had never been heard to greater effect, noting “a
clarity in choral texture that was amazing”.
Joseph O’Neill, the critic of the Irish Independent,
heard all four concerts of what he termed an “unique
tour”, noting the even increased precision and
understanding of Sir John’s interpretation in
the choral singing at the Dublin performance. He praised
what he termed “the restoration of tradition”
in Sir John’s reading. This followed a remark
that had been made to him by a Dublin musician that
Barbirolli had broken with tradition in his reading
of the score. The only part of the performance that
jarred “a little” was the tempo set for
the Hallelujah chorus. “A slightly slower tempo
would give it more majesty”. The sharing of
the final curtain by Sir John with Oliver O’Brien
was felt to be deserved.
Straight after the performance in Dublin, Sir John
and the orchestra left to return to England. They
travelled again by sea, the choir gathering on the
quayside to sing them farewell, including ‘Come
back to Erin’ and ‘Va Pensiero’
among others.
Overall, Sir John said he thought the performance
in Waterford had been the finest. He particularly
liked that they had performed Messiah in a cathedral.
Tenth anniversary
1955 was the choir’s tenth anniversary. The
year began in January with a gala concert in aid of
the victims of the floods that had devastated the
north of Dublin the previous month. Messiah was conducted
by Herman Lindars who, besides being one of Sir John’s
contemporaries at the Royal Academy of Music, was
also a very successful industrialist. The orchestra
was the Hallé.
The tenth anniversary concert in April was a performance
of the Verdi Requiem in the Theatre Royal, again conducted
by Lindars, this time with the Radio Eireann Symphony
Orchestra. Was Sir John asked to conduct these performances
but was not available? Either way one can detect his
influence, in the same manner that, in 1958, his associate
at the Hallé, George Weldon, was the conductor
for the choir’s December performance of Messiah.
An opportunity missed
September 1956 saw what one would suggest was a great
missed occasion in the context of our story, though
it undoubtedly still had considerable splendour. Barbirolli’s
influence in Berlin had resulted in an invitation
for the choir to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic
in the Berlin Festival of Music. Two performances
of The Dream of Gerontius were to be given in the
Hochschüle für Musik in Berlin. His inability
to fulfil this engagement remained one of Sir John’s
undying regrets. He had been to Dublin in July to
rehearse the choir. He had felt he should do something
to help improve the choir’s technique and a
summer school had been arranged. A current, long serving
member of the choir, then, as a boy, singing in the
Palestrina Choir, remembers being schooled in music
of the polyphonic period by Herbert Bardgett, ahead
of Barbirolli arriving to conduct master classes with
the choral society.
Sir John had also given a press conference to underline
the importance of the Berlin concerts and had written
an article that appeared in the Irish Independent,
noting that Elgar had first found fame with Gerontius
in Germany.
But it wasn’t to be. With Barbirolli in hospital
following an operation, at two weeks notice it fell
to Herbert Bardgett to step into the breach. The 200
members of the choir, known as ‘Der Liebefrauen
Chor von Irland’, travelled by liner from Cobh
to Bremerhaven and on by train to Bonn. This allowed
them to sing in Cologne Cathedral en route. The journey
was completed by air to Berlin. Two days of rehearsals
were scheduled. The soloists were now regulars, Constance
Shacklock, Ronald Dowd and Marian Nowakowski.
It would seem that the choir gave a performance as
though Barbirolli had been there. This is in no way
to belittle Bardgett’s achievement. The choir
knew him well by this time, as he had also conducted
Messiah with them on two occasions (and would do again)
and Elijah. But Barbirolli did seem to get something
special from them. In any event the Berlin Press was
ecstatic. Der Abend said “Large oratory choirs
as guests at the festival are a rarity. Here then
is one. From Dublin came Our Lady’s Choral Society.
Relatively young still, yet of tremendous qualities,
exemplary…….To remain true to the atmosphere
(of Elgar’s work) is no easy mission for the
choir. It demands inner readiness and power. And it
must be conceded that the choir possess them without
qualification”. The Kurier described the choir
as “an exquisitely picked ensemble, singing
clearly and precisely… comparable to Berlin’s
St. Hedwig Cathedral Choir”. High praise indeed.
The audience reaction was described as changing from
indifference to sympathetic appreciation, through
the conviction and sincerity of the singing. Fr. Griffith
said the choir “had brought The Dream of Gerontius
to Berlin, uncertain of its reception and we are now
overwhelmed by the reaction of the Berliners”.
Against doctor’s orders
In fact it was to be almost another year (and four
years since their last concert together) when Sir
John next stood before them in Dublin in June 1957.
He was appearing against doctor’s orders, having
fallen from the rostrum in Manchester two weeks previously.
But he did not wish to disappoint the choir he now
regarded as “part of the Hallé family”,
as he had been forced to do the previous year. Asked
whether he would have a special rostrum for the performance
he replied: “As long as I get something to lean
on, I’ll be alright”.
As it was the Elgar Centenary Year, The Dream of
Gerontius was the work, but the orchestra was the
Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra in their first performance
with him. The R.E.S.O. was now in its tenth year,
having been expanded from the Radio Eireann Orchestra
in 1947. Its ranks included a number of musicians
from the continent, particularly central Europe, who
had taken the opportunity to escape the aftermath
of the war and re-locate to Ireland. In an interview
Sir John said he was looking forward to renewing his
acquaintance with the orchestra’s leader, Renzo
Marchionni, whom he had known in Florence. The soloists
were the regular team of Constance Shacklock, Ronald
Dowd and Marian Nowakowski.
The Irish Times critic, Charles Acton, recently appointed,
thought the choir’s whole performance was better
than he had ever heard either in this work, or from
them. Similarly he felt the R. E. S.O. played as they
rarely had before: “It is a lift to our spirits
that they can play like this - when will it be their
habit?” In the Irish Independent Mary MacGoris
felt it had been a performance of deep intensity from
soloists, choir and orchestra, but had some remarks
to make about small points of diction. She also had
some harsh words for the theatre’s organ. Its
tone, she said, was a sad distraction. Robert Johnson
in the Irish Press thought the interpretation magnificent
and virtually flawless. For him Ronald Dowd’s
interpretation of the name part was possibly the finest
he had heard.
At the conclusion Sir John thanked the audience for
their receptive listening and said how moving it was
to give the centenary performance of the work of a
great man in Catholic Ireland, and thanked the choir
for giving him the opportunity to conduct it. In a
press conference the day before the performance he
had also said he was sorry not to be able to conduct
the Society in the Verdi Requiem in September, but
was looking forward to his next visit in December
to conduct Messiah.
Messiah with drama and passion
Then, as now, an important musical event in December
for many in Dublin each year was Our Lady’s
Choral Society’s Messiah. Sir John returned
for this, on December 18th conducting the Radio Eireann
Symphony Orchestra once more. The soloists were Lois
Marshall, Constance Shacklock, Richard Lewis and Marian
Nowakowski. Playing in the violins in the orchestra
on that occasion was the Hungarian Janos Fürst.
He remembered the performance vividly, to the extent
that when, in 1986, as Principal Conductor of the
Orchestra, he came to conduct Messiah himself with
the choir, he said he had modelled his interpretation
on Barbirolli’s because of its drama and passion.
Charles Acton thought the performance was a great
tribute to Barbirolli (and to Oliver O’Brien).
“Sir John can do just what he wants with the
choir. What an experience it would be to hear them
in a better building, not half-muffled by the proscenium”.
He thought Barbirolli’s control of the orchestra
equally complete. “Each time he seems to transform
them”. The Theatre Royal organ, however, he
thought should have been heard by Barbirolli from
the audience’s perspective. Its effects “ranged
from the unfortunate to the extraordinary”.
The writer in the Irish Press thought that the acoustic
problems presented by the vast stage of the Theatre
Royal worked against the performance and that Sir
John’s performing version would be better suited
to a smaller hall.
Manchester at last
The next year brought the fulfilment of a now long
held goal for the choir, an invitation from Sir John
to perform with the Hallé on its home turf.1958
marked the orchestra’s centenary and in his
introduction to the 1957/58 season’s programmes
Sir John expressed himself as being most gratified
that what he called “this great Catholic Irish
choir” could join the Hallé for The Dream
of Gerontius. He thought it “a gesture of friendship
and gratitude to invite them to share in our centenary
celebrations”. He had written to the choir saying
that, for the centenary season, he wished to surround
himself, not only with the greatest artists, but also
some dear friends. “I need not say with what
pleasure I would welcome you here”. Ten days
before the concert Barbirolli flew into Dublin to
rehearse the choir. On May 18th 1958 the choir travelled
over for what for some would be just a one-day, flying
visit, to perform with Norma Proctor, Richard Lewis
and Hervey Alan as soloists, in Manchester’s
Free Trade Hall.
The Irish Independent sent their critic, Mary MacGoris,
to hear the concert. She noted that “the clear
acoustics gave the full measure of the choir’s
quality and volumes of tone in a fashion that has
not been possible in Dublin”. She praised, as
she had not always done before, “the wonderfully
sure intonation”. The choir’s spontaneous
sincerity and deeply felt expressiveness impressed
her. Of Sir John she wrote that he “drew spectacular
playing from the orchestra” realising “all
the rich and varied colour of Elgar’s music”.
The Irish Times shared the services of the critic
of the Manchester Guardian, Colin Mason, who wrote
a separate piece for each paper. He expressed the
view that “the enjoyment of Gerontius is only
to be attained by a hard and unceasing fight to get
past Newman to Elgar. Here Sir John carried the day
by a fineness and sensitivity of response to the music
that kept us engrossed in every bar”. He thought
the performance exceptionally fine. He drew attention
in the Manchester paper to what he termed “the
lusty tone colour of the throats of the women’s
section of the choir, …which they could temper
when necessary to a lovely sweetness and expressiveness”.
In the Irish Times he called it “the vigorous
and attractive half tone”, reminding him of
the magnificent choirs of Bulgarian or Hungarian peasant
girls that had been in England recently. Overall the
incisiveness of the choir’s pronunciation he
found equally stimulating, “giving a keener
sense of the relationship of the music to the words”.
The performance was, he said, “an outstanding
success with the Manchester audience, in a work where
critical standards in Manchester are high”.
But perhaps the most cherished notice came from Michael
Kennedy in the Manchester edition of the Daily Telegraph.
“I have not heard a finer performance of this
work”, he wrote. Noting that this was the choir’s
first visit to England he continued: “They gave
us a virtuoso display of expressive singing. Their
diction was beyond praise and their attack, especially
from tenors and basses, something one had thought
only existed in Huddersfield on special occasions”.
At the end of the concert Sir John made a speech thanking
“his Irish friends “. It had given him
great pleasure to invite the choir to Manchester and
it had been a great experience for the people of Manchester
to hear what he termed this Roman Catholic work “sung
from the hearts and throats of ardent Catholics”.
The choir, once more with applause ringing in their
ears, returned by air and sea to Dublin for a week
off before re-commencing rehearsals for their next
adventure with Sir John, to Italy in September. 1958
would prove to be a high point in their relationship
with Barbirolli and a very busy one.
Italy and Pope Pius XII
The invitation had come for the choir to perform with
Sir John and the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino at the Sagra Umbra Festival in Perugia.
The works to be performed were once more The Dream
of Gerontius and Messiah, on consecutive evenings,
with two new soloists in the line-up, the contralto
Kerstin Meyer and the tenor David Galliver. Lois Marshall
and Marian Nowakowski completed the quartet for Messiah.
Sir John had given a broadcast performance of the
Elgar work from Rome the previous year with an Italian
chorus, but this was to be its first public performance
in Italy. Messiah was an outstanding success with
the Italian audience. The Hallelujah Chorus was heard
twice and there would have been a third, were it not
already well after midnight. Sir John and the choir
were cheered through the streets to their hotel. One
choir member recalled all this and added a personal
post script. She had come down to breakfast one morning
in the hotel in Perugia and been waiting to be served
when Sir John appeared and was served ahead of her.
Subsequently late for rehearsal, she was reprimanded
in front of the assembled gathering by Sir John. As
the Hallé knew 3, in these circumstances his
wrath was to be feared, but she was not to be cowed
and reminded him precisely of the reason why she was
late.
Glowing tributes were paid to the choir in the Italian
papers and it was announced they had been invited
to sing at La Scala, Milan in 1960. When they left
Perugia to travel to Rome, the town turned out for
“a tumultuous send-off” at the railway
station.
However the climax of the trip was yet to come. It
was an event those who were there never tired of telling
about, and that included Barbirolli. The British Ambassador
in Rome had arranged for the choir to be received
by the Pope in his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo,
and to sing for him. With David Galliver and Marian
Nowakowski and accompanied by Oliver O’Brien
on the piano Sir John conducted Part One of The Dream.
It was the last live music Pope Pius XII heard; he
died ten days later.
The Dream in a Cathedral
A month later Sir John was back in Ireland once more,
with the Hallé. They began on October 26th
in Wexford, where they appeared as part of the Wexford
Festival. The orchestra then joined the choir for
performances of The Dream of Gerontius in Dublin,
Mullingar and Limerick. The tour finished with an
orchestral concert to open the Cork Orchestral Society’s
season. The soloists for Gerontius were, as in Italy,
Kirsten Meyer, David Galliver and Marian Nowakowski.
The Dublin performance in the Theatre Royal on October
28th was given as a tribute to the late Pope. At the
end of Part One, at the request of Barbirolli, the
audience stood in silent prayer and no applause was
allowed. After the performance Sir John told the choir
that he was taking steps to have their performance
recorded. Sadly his recording company at that time,
Pye, were not persuaded and the preservation of the
partnership on disc never happened.
The Mullingar concert was of particular significance,
quite apart from being attended by the President of
Ireland and many dignitaries, as it took place in
Mullingar Cathedral. It would be the first time Barbirolli
had conducted the work in a Catholic cathedral. It
was also the first performance in a Catholic cathedral
since 1903, when Elgar conducted the first London
performance in the then newly built Westminster Cathedral.
One member of the Mullingar audience with connections
to the Cathedral recalled showing Sir John around
a couple of hours before the performance. Having spent
some time looking over the Cathedral and particularly
admiring the mosaics, they returned to the sanctuary
before the high altar. Barbirolli was asked what he
thought of the Cathedral as a setting for The Dream.
He said he thought it so inspiring that it must inspire
the choir to even better than usual efforts. “And
yourself, Sir John, I suppose this magnificent setting
will inspire you to give of your best”. Having
realised what he had just said, our guide looked for
the nearest pew to crawl under, as he received the
cold reply: “I always give of my best”,
with the gentle addition “but tonight I will
give my best - plus”. They all did and the next
night, in Limerick Cathedral, they gave it again.
Mahler and a Festival
At the beginning of January 1959 The Dublin International
Festival of Music and the Arts, under the Presidency
of Sir John Barbirolli, was announced for June of
that year. The Choir of the Sistine Chapel and the
Virtuosi di Roma would be what we would today call
the headline acts, but the highlight would be the
first performance in Ireland of Mahler’s Second
Symphony, ’The Resurrection’. This would
involve both the Hallé and the Radio Eireann
Symphony Orchestras and Our Lady’s Choral Society.
Concerts conducted by Barbirolli were to be given
by both orchestras, plus a ball in Skerries, in north
County Dublin, at which Sir John would conduct the
Hallé in Viennese waltzes.
The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin was the venue for the
orchestral concerts. The Hallé’s was
scheduled the day after its appearance at the ball,
perhaps to its detriment. Sir John was criticised
for not including a modern Irish work in either concert,
having offered John F. Larchet’s Carlow Tune
and Tinkers Wedding with the R.E.S.O. and Harty’s
With the Wild Geese with the Hallé. The critic
of the Evening Press thought the Harty unendurable,
“a dreary patchwork of bits and pieces”.
And that from a Dublin critic!
However the Mahler, staged in the Theatre Royal,
offered scale and spectacle. Mary MacGoris felt the
symphony to be “trite” and wrote that
Beethoven had made more cosmic statements with less
resources. Altogether she was much more impressed
by the performance than the music, an opinion which
seems very regressive today. RJ in the Irish Press
noted that Mahler was quite unknown apart from some
performances of the fourth and first symphonies. Sir
John’s “inspired conducting certainly
brought Mahler into his kingdom”. Charles Acton,
admitting to hearing the music for the first time,
thought it forbidding in prospect, but was totally
won over: “What a wonderful and soul-satisfying
event”. The choir’s small but powerful
contribution was duly noted. They had opened the concert
with Handel, Zadok the Priest, in a “fat, rich
performance” that was not helped by their placement,
back behind the theatre’s proscenium. Eugenia
Zareska and Victoria Elliott were the contralto and
soprano soloists.
Barbirolli declared the Festival to have been a big
success: “I hope this will be the harbinger
of many great festivals in this great and lovely city,
so that you can become as worthy of it as you are
architecturally and in the kindness and graciousness
of your natures”. He announced that he had accepted
the Presidency of the Festival for the next year.
The success of the Festival re-ignited the debate
regarding the resources needed to stage a festival
of this nature, in particular the lack of a proper
concert hall. This was a topic on which, as we know,
Sir John had very definite views, to which he would
return on a future visit.
Messiah once more
After the excitement of the Festival it was a quieter
few months for the choir. Compared with the previous
year in particular, when Sir John had taken them to
Manchester and to Italy, followed by the autumn tour
of Ireland it was positively sedate. But he was back
once more in December to conduct Messiah in the Theatre
Royal.
Charles Acton found it “hard to find words
with which to praise the choir. They had the precision
and the sensitivity of a far more intimate body, a
truly remarkable range of emotional mood, and gave
a performance up to the highest standard I have ever
heard. Their part in this Messiah was their and Sir
John Barbirolli’s glory”. He felt that
Barbirolli’s performing edition, he described
it as “a compromise between Handel on the one
hand and Prout et cetera, on the other”, worked
magnificently when the choir was as large as Our Lady’s
Choral Society and the auditorium as vast as the Theatre
Royal. However, he thought Sir John’s conducting
of every note sung by the soloists, including the
recitatives, looked singularly discourteous. Ena Mitchell,
Constance Shacklock and Owen Brannigan did not escape
criticism, but Alexander Young he thought was “outstandingly
good all the way through”.
The Royal Albert Hall
1960 saw no visit from Sir John but in 1961 they
were back together once again. Barbirolli took them
to London, to the Royal Albert Hall to perform The
Dream on Easter Sunday. He had been over to Dublin
to take the choir’s final rehearsals shortly
before they flew to London. In the days when Viscounts,
which could carry around 70 passengers, were the regular
means of short haul air transport, getting 250 people
from Dublin to London within as short a period of
time as possible became a precision operation and
necessitated four specially chartered flights. It
really was a flying visit because, straight after
the performance, the whole operation had to be repeated
in reverse, with the whole choir back in Dublin by
the small hours of Easter Monday, the last flight
arriving at 5 a.m. The choir, as ever, paid their
way; the cost to each member for the trip was £2.10s.
The concert was presented by Associated-Rediffusion
for whom Sir John was Musical Advisor. They held the
commercial television franchise for weekdays in the
London area. The Hallé with Sir John, meanwhile,
made their way down from Sheffield. Kerstin Meyer,
David Galliver and Marian Nowakowski were once more
the soloists.
An audience of 5,500 heard the performance, including
the writer of this article, only my second live hearing
of the work. Clifford Curzon, the pianist, was also
in the audience and said he had been overwhelmed by
the singing. The (London) Times critic noted that
The Dream of Gerontius, Sir John and Our Lady’s
Choral Society were no strangers to each other, having
come together on several notable occasions in different
places, but never before in London. “It was
a carefully moulded, deeply felt and richly expressive
performance”. “The choir”,
The Times’ critic said, “sang with an
admirable buoyancy and luminosity of tone (notably
the splendid sopranos) and even though their clear
articulation was sometimes achieved at the expense
of a true legato, there was never any danger whatsoever
of sogginess or muddiness from them. Their demon laughter
was realistically diabolical”. The Daily Telegraph
critic did not altogether agree. After noting that
“Sir John feels Elgar’s music very forcibly
and he obtained full tone and a singing line from
his players”, he went on to say “The choir,
Our Lady’s Choral Society from Dublin, appearing
for the first time in London, also responded with
singing of quality, especially in the Kyrie Eleison
and the closing passages of the work. Their tone was
not quite weighty enough, however, for the tremendous
outburst of ‘Praise to the Holiest’ nor
was their singing of the Demons sufficiently vehement”.
Barbirolli’s public words after the performance
were of praise for the choir. “They were superb
and I am glad London has heard them”. He had
said in the interval he felt they were uncomfortable
in the big Albert Hall and were more scattered than
they would have been in Dublin, as we can see from
the photograph that appeared in the Illustrated London
News. Later to Andrew Griffith he said he would like
to perform the Bach St. Matthew Passion with the choir
the following year.
More missed opportunities
In the Dublin International Festival in June of that
year Sir John and the choir both featured, but separately.
The choir opened the Festival with Berlioz’
Grande Messe des Morts with the Monte Carlo National
Opera Orchestra conducted by Louis Frémaux.
This performance was scheduled to take place in the
Theatre Royal, but was transferred at the last minute
out of doors, to Croke Park. Prince Rainier and Princess
Grace attended, with rugs to combat the cool evening
air. Later in the week in the Gaiety Theatre, Barbirolli
gave an orchestral concert with the Monte Carlo Orchestra,
with Szigeti and Evelyn Barbirolli as soloists.
Then followed frustrating years when projects involving
Barbirolli were announced, but never came about. One
can only surmise that his commitments elsewhere, particularly
in Houston, prevented his acceptance of invitations
to Dublin. In August 1963 a project was announced
in the press to take the choir to St. Patrick’s
Cathedral in New York, to sing Gerontius with Sir
John and the Monte Carlo Orchestra the following June.
Then in February 1964, it was announced that in the
autumn of that year Barbirolli would come to Dublin
to conduct the choir and the R.E S.O. in a concert
to celebrate the centenary of the Synge Street School.
Neither project materialised.
The Silver Jubilee
In 1966 the choir celebrated twenty one years, but
again without Barbirolli. As the main event Tibor
Paul conducted Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts,
this time indoors, in the Royal Dublin Society’s
Main Hall. However when the choir’s Silver Jubilee
season was announced in December 1969, the centrepiece
of the celebrations was to be two performances conducted
by Sir John, The Dream of Gerontius on May 13th 1970
and the Verdi Requiem on May 16th, both with what
was now the RTE Symphony Orchestra.
The venue for these concerts could no longer be the
Theatre Royal as that had closed in June 1962 and
the much criticised organ advertised for sale. The
theatre was demolished to make way for a “modernistic”
office building, which now houses the Republic’s
Department of Health. From then until 1973 the venue
for the choir’s annual Messiah performance was
the National Stadium on the South Circular Road. While
its principal use was for boxing, it had the undoubted
advantage of being able to hold an audience of 2500
people.
Barbirolli arrived on May 4th for an intensive period
of rehearsal. “This is like coming home to me”
he said on landing at Dublin Airport. “I was
very unhappy not to have been able to accept (the
choir’s) 21st birthday invitation, but I have
had these jubilee concerts guaranteed for the past
two years”. He began rehearsals almost immediately,
but unlike his previous visits, when he had stayed
at the Gresham Hotel in O’Connell Street, this
time he first spent a few days with his old friend,
Herman Lindars, in Avoca in County Wicklow.
The choir had not sung the Elgar work since the London
performance in 1961, and while it had sung the Verdi
under other conductors, it had not sung it for Sir
John. In all, they had eight rehearsals with him for
the two concerts. The choir had changed, maybe not
a great deal, but it had been nine years and there
were a number of new members who had not had the experience
of working with him before. So there was a degree
of nervousness among the 150 singers who awaited his
arrival.
.
The full flavour of his first rehearsal with them
was caught by Fanny Feehan, in a double page article
in Hibernia. It was re-told by Charles Reid in his
biography of Barbirolli, so I will not repeat it here.
One member of the choir recalls being reprimanded
by Sir John, as he entered the hall, for sitting with
his legs crossed in front of him. “You can’t
sing sitting like that”, not that they did much
sitting. The press reports were full of the rigour
and thoroughness of his rehearsals. But at the end
of the first rehearsal he said to Oliver O’Brien,
“Well Oliver, I’ve nothing to do except
conduct”.
At a dinner in the Gresham during this period one
choir member found himself sitting next to Sir John
and was told that they were the best ‘devils’.
Barbirolli told him: “When you sing ‘low
born clods of brute earth’, you must have in
your mind a picture of yellow and green things, absolute
filth, crawling out from under a rock”. Later
during the same dinner, he said, “You know,
I’m a Companion of Honour now. There’s
a manuscript of Messiah in Buckingham Palace. It means
I can go and look at it whenever I want”.
The orchestral rehearsals were not without incident.
Sir John’s practice of ‘borrowing’
the principal cello’s instrument to demonstrate
how he wanted a passage played caused outrage and
a walk-out was narrowly averted. The principal cellist
did not play for the concert.
On Sunday May 10th he attended the choir’s
Silver Jubilee Mass in the Pro-Cathedral, occupying
a special prie-dieu. The choir sang the Mozart Mass
in C. The day before, he and Evelyn, by special dispensation,
had been married by Father Griffith. It was a special
time with his “favourite chorus” which
he said was “world class”.
An occasion of a lifetime
Of the Gerontius performance on May 13th Mary MacGoris
wrote that what was generally notable was the variety
of tone and expression from the choir, with “a
splendour of sopranos that we have not experienced
for years”. For her, Barbirolli compellingly
realised both the drama and the mysticism of the work.
The odd acoustics of the Stadium did nothing to diminish
the impact of the performance. “One could not
fail to note the flowing phrasing, the colour and
the whole expressiveness of the interpretation”.
Of the soloists, this was the first time that Bernadette
Greevy sang The Angel with the choir, though she had
appeared regularly with them since 1961. Charles Acton
thought it the finest performance he had ever heard
from her. The magnificent, ringing tones of David
Ward singing ‘Proficiscere’ took him back
to Harold Williams in Worcester Cathedral with Elgar
conducting. Ronald Dowd’s Gerontius he thought
conveyed all the spirit of the occasion. “But
though everyone did so well, it was clear they did
so because they were inspired to it by Sir John Barbirolli’s
living the music itself”. Fanny Feehan wrote
in the Evening Press: “With Barbirolli in control,
three soloists who sang with unusual insight, and
a choir who sang with a feeling for every nuance,
‘The Dream of Gerontius’ took on some
of the aspects of an illuminated manuscript”.
She noted it was the close attention he gave to dynamics
that gave added meaning to the performance. She concluded,
“If this performance sounded so well in a boxing
stadium, what would it have been like in a real concert
hall? For Elgar, thanks to Barbirolli, it was a triumph”.
The line-up of soloists for the Saturday performance
of the Verdi Requiem should have added Elizabeth Vaughan
to Wednesday’s team. But on the Saturday morning
she was indisposed and was replaced by Janice Chapman.
Despite this the critics thought she blended into
the ensemble perfectly, even though the opportunity
to rehearse had been nil. It was another triumphant
evening, perhaps slightly in the shade of Wednesday’s
Gerontius, which for many had been one of those occasions
of a life time. Of the choir’s performance Charles
Acton wrote, “It was clear that Sir John had
again taught them to match their colour and quality
of tone to the meaning of the text”. However
he felt that, more than for Gerontius, the Verdi was
dependent on a balanced hearing, which was impossible
from where he, and ninety per cent of the audience,
was sitting. What these celebratory concerts did show
up was what he described as “our shameful lack
of a concert hall”.
Sir John addressed this at the choir’s party
after the second concert. He hoped that the arguments
about the site, about which he had heard, meant that
something might at last be done. We know it wasn’t;
the debate had been going on it seemed for ever, and
it would be another 12 years before a hall fit for
purpose was finally opened.
The rest of the story we know too well. He left Dublin
the day after and these were the last choral concerts
that he conducted. On Wednesday August 5th in the
Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, Archbishop McQuaid presided
over a special Requiem Mass for Sir John. The choir
sang excerpts from both The Dream and the Verdi.
As a footnote I should add that when I joined the
choir in 1980 there were still upwards of 30 members
who had been there at the beginning. Many more had
sung for Barbirolli in one or more of the concerts
described above. When we came to prepare The Dream
for its first performance in the new National Concert
Hall in 1982 there were still a few discernible Barbirolli
finger prints in the way a phrase was inflected. Today,
forty years on from that memorable pair of concerts,
there are still three members who sang with Sir John
and a number of former members who remember particular
occasions with him with great clarity and affection.
Notes
1 Sir Hugh Roberton
Sir Hugh Roberton was the founder of the Glasgow
Orpheus Choir. His tribute ran:
“This is a choir that loves to sing, that dances
as it sings, that smiles as it sings…with singing
at its purest and best”.
2 The Bob O’Reilly Story
As Private Barbirolli in the Suffolk Regiment in
1918, stationed on the Isle of Grain in Kent, he played
his cello in the Battalion’s ‘Voluntary
Orchestra’. The oboist was Irish, an ex-Regular
from the Indian Army who was “frequently drunk
and the most enchanting person you ever met”.
Unable to cope with Barbirolli’s name he christened
him Bob O’Reilly, “an Irishman like me”.
3 The wrath of Barbirolli
The Manchester Guardian reported in 1961 the case
of a member of the Hallé who had left his van
in a Huddersfield street while he attended a rehearsal
in Huddersfield Town Hall. In a letter to the magistrate’s
court, he said “I preferred to face the wrath
of the police, rather than the wrath of Sir John Barbirolli”.
Thanks and Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those who helped with stories
and memories. In particular I must thank Donal O’Colmain
whose compilation of the concerts of the first forty
years of Our Lady’s Choral Society provided
an admirable starting place. His archive of programmes,
cuttings and memorabilia was invaluable as was Marie
Lee’s collection. Father Paul Kenny, the Society’s
archivist, found original photographs for which I
am most grateful.
