After Sir Adrian Boult was abruptly booted out of the BBC Symphony Orchestra upon reaching the 'official' retiring age (something which infuriated Lord Reith who wrote several letters of protest) he, as most of you will know, went off to Decca for a while and other labels (I like the Beethoven symphonies he did with Vanguard and he was kind enough to autograph mine
He also made a (to me) fabulous recording of the complete organ concerti of Handel played by E.Power Biggs in a church in England (where Handel had played) so remote there was no electricity and a generator van had to be brought in with cables stretching about a mile.
Eventually Decca and others lost interest and for quite some time he did no recordings at all. In his own words: 'It's quite simple....they had all decided I was dead.'
His 'renaissance' came as many of you will also know in the form of philanthropist music lover Richard Itter who founded Lyrita Records and asked Sir Adrian to record Elgar Symphonies 1 and 2. These were highly successful and achieved high sales figures after universally excellent reviews (quality pressings for their time as well as I recall).
These sales figures did not go unnoticed at EMI who immediately approached him and asked him to sign an 'exclusive contract'. They were extremely anxious to exclude Mr Itter (who had resources but not endless resources on the scale of EMI). In their first approach they made it absolutely clear that the 'exclusive contract' meant what it said and they even referred to the contract that had previously existed from the 1930's onwards with Boult and the BBC Symphony for what was then called HMV.
Boult flatly refused and once told me that he had said at a meeting: 'For goodness sake, you have treated me for more than 10 years as if I was dead. Is it because you have suddenly discovered I am alive, through the generosity of someone else, that you wish to make it exclusive?'
After several months of 'negotiation' (with Sir Adrian refusing to budge) EMI gave in and his 'exclusive' contract included a clause allowing him to record ANYTHING that Richard Itter wanted him to record. And so it remained to the end of his career.
Sir John (later Lord) Reith founded the BBC Symphony in 1930 and appointed a young Mr Boult as the first principal conductor. When Reith died in June 1971 the BBC immediately came on to Boult to ask him to conduct a memorial concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
He had to decline. I have no idea whether he told the BBC why he had to decline but I can tell you why he turned it down.
As most people will know, Sir Adrian was a sort of English 'icon' (and this grew in his later years). Long before that, amateur orchestral and choral societies all over England approached him to be their (unpaid) President to which he always agreed. His secretary estimated that he was probably 'President' of several hundred musical societies
One of them, in Buckinghamshire, had been pressing him to conduct a performance of Handel's Messiah for many years. For many years he had been forced to turn them down because of other engagements but had finally accepted this one (at half fee, by the way) and it clashed with the Reith memorial concert.
'I can't let them down' he said. 'I've let them down so often by saying no that I cannot do it again. They've been asking me for 20 years' And so, on the day of Reith's memorial concert he was conducting an amateur orchestra/chorus somewhere in Buckinghamshire and my memory is that Barbirolli took his place.
Interestingly, in these days of 'megastars', at no time did his conducting fee (even in the 60's onwards) exceed £250 per concert although he was on a modest royalty share for EMI (flat fee for Lyrita). Of course, at that time in England it was still a considerable amount of money per concert but to put the matter into some sort of perspective when the USSR Symphony Orchestra came to England in 1963 the fee for the orchestra was £4000 and the fee for the conductor (Evgeny Svetlanov) was EXACTLY the same.
The two things he wanted to do (but didn't live to do) was to re-record Schumann's symphonies and to do all seven Sibelius symphonies. (He held the view, for what it's worth, that Schumann's songs were better balanced between vocalist and piano than those of Schubert).
When aged and frail, it must be said that EMI did have the decency to install a stereo system in his room at the nursing home. The last music he heard (on this earth) was his own recording of Vaughan Williams Symphony No 1.
Somewhere in that wonderful slow movement (On the Beach at Night Alone) he fell asleep and never awoke from it. None of us (unfortunately) can choose the manner of our passing but that's as good as any I can think of.
Kind regards, Alan M. Watkins
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