Vernon Handley RIP

[vandermolen]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7608956.stm

Sad news.

[bhodges]

Oh that is too bad...

May have to hop on the recent Vaughan Williams bandwagon tonight and play one of Handley's recordings.

Thanks for posting.

--Bruce

[Mark]

Terribly sad.

I may not enjoy his Vaughan Williams symphony recordings as enthusiastically as, say, Andrew Achenbach, but I nonetheless acknowledge that Handley was indeed one of the greats among British conductors. And a great loss.

[drogulus]

    I was just now looking for his Conifer recordings, landed on his Wikipedia page which announced his death on September 10th, 2008. That was a shock. It's a tremendous loss.

      There's a wonderful article in the Telegraph. Here's the part about his relationship to Boult:
   
Eventually he wrote to Boult asking to be allowed to attend the older man's rehearsal for a concert of music by Holst at the Royal Festival Hall. Some days after the event, Boult invited Handley to his office in Welbeck Street. There, after a couple of hours of rigorous counterpoint and harmony, Boult opened a score of Bax's Third Symphony, which fortunately the young man had prepared, gave Handley a stick and asked: "How would you deal with that?"

Handley began to conduct. On the third beat Boult reached out and caught his wrist in an iron grip: "Would you do that again?" Handley did, and Boult took away the score and stick, turned to his secretary and said: "We'll help this one, Mrs Beckett."

It was on Boult's recommendation that Handley secured his first professional engagement, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 1961. Although he recalled being honoured with a standing ovation and glowing reviews it was, he later claimed, almost 14 years until he was invited back.

For many years Handley remained close to Boult, a magnificent Edwardian character whose dictum on the podium was "less is more". He recalled how "Boult's personality, through the eyes and by the intensity of movement of the stick, produced a tremendous passion and impact on the orchestra".

Handley also remembered the day that a rehearsal finished early, "so we went across to Paddington Recreation Ground where he consumed ice cream after ice cream after ice cream! He must have had four ices, I think, but during that time, during the ice creams, there would be a lot of wisdom."

Like Boult's, Handley's conducting action was minimal. He used an unusually long baton that he controlled with remarkable agility. "It's all in the stick, just watch" was one of his favourite phrases. Where he departed from Boult was in his championing of British composers. Boult, he recalled, "disapproved of Bax and Delius because they were promiscuous and roustabouts and so on". Handley stuck to his guns. His first London concert, with Morley College Symphony Orchestra, included Bax's Third Symphony and Delius's Dance Rhapsody No 1.

[MichaelRabin]

One of the saddest things is that the Queen never gave him a knighthood. A posthumous knighthood is in order.

[mahler10th]

 
This is indeed a tremendous loss.
Dr. Handley was one of the very few conductors who could take what might be regarded as provincial orchestras and make them sound as big and mighty as the VPO or similarly World renowned orchestras.  What he did for English music on the rostrum will be very hard to surpass.  Anyone unfamiliar with his brilliance should listen to him conducting Sir Arthur Bliss (cover below) with the Ulster Orchestra.
This loss is a very, very sore one for Classical Music enthusiasts in the UK, he WILL be sorely missed.

[vandermolen]

One of the saddest things is that the Queen never gave him a knighthood. A posthumous knighthood is in order.

Yes, I agree. Should have happened long ago in view of his services to British music. Am playing his recording of Rootham's moving Symphony at this moment, in memoriam. First came across him decades ago when I bought his Guildford Philharmonic recording of Bax's Fourth Symphony on LP. Like Mark I do not rate his Vaughan Williams symphony cycle as highly as some, but his recording of Bantock's Hebridean Symphony is in a class of its own and his Malcolm Arnold symphony cycle and Bax cycle + many other recordings (Patrick Hadley's "The Trees so High" for example) were great achievements which will keep his memory alive long into the future

[vandermolen]

Thanks drogulus. The Telegraph obituary is excellent.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I got quite a start when I read the title of this thread. Sad, very sad.

We have so much to thank Vernon Handley for. British music lost one of its greatest advocates.

He will not be forgotten.

[SonicMan46]

Yes, a sad event - own Handley in the RVW & Bax Symphony sets - and likely more that I'd need to check on - just today, an Amazon package arrived w/ Handley doing a number of the Bax Tone Poems - 

[vandermolen]

Yes, a sad event - own Handley in the RVW & Bax Symphony sets - and likely more that I'd need to check on - just today, an Amazon package arrived w/ Handley doing a number of the Bax Tone Poems - 

Volume 2 must be one of his last great recordings:

[not edward]

A sad loss indeed.

His championing of the modern British symphonic repertoire was exemplary, as were his performances of it.

[Dundonnell]

How very, very sad

I can only echo what others have said and acknowledge the fine obituary in the Daily Telegraph referenced above.

Handley's contribution to British music was immense and he championed the cause of so many British composers so successfully both in the concert hall and-immortally-on record and disc.

I would just like to highlight his recordings of the symphonies of his friend Robert Simpson(on Hyperion). It must have taken enormous commercial courage for the late Ted Parry and Hyperion to embark on the Simpson cycle but Vernon Handley's work in conducting ten of the eleven symphonies with such insight, such enthusiasm and such passion is a towering achievement.

Having heard Handley in some of Rubbra's music I would have loved to have seen Handley being given the opportunity to conduct a complete Rubbra cycle but it is more appropriate to focus on what he did achieve in his lifetime. For that all lovers of British music in particular will for ever be in his debt!

[Lethevich]

The lack of a knighthood was particularly stupid on the part of the establishment. At the time when his Bax cycle cemented his reputation, it should've been plainly obvious that he did not have many years left in him. But then, the queen is apparently pretty ignorant when it comes to classical music - horses are more her thing

He was the one conductor with whom everything he recorded in his last years was of interest to me and executed brilliantly. His steaming through the Bax catalogue producing reference level recordings of many obscure works was particularly demonstrative of his value. My favourite recordings have to be the obvious choices of the RVW cycle, in which he finds a remarkable clarity and consistency, and his Bax cycle, which enabled me to hear the music as I had not done before thanks to his excellent handling of the long line, unwillingness to wallow in the rhapsodic sound, and excellent engineering from Chandos. It was as if the orchestra and label both stepped up their efforts yet further out of respect to him.

[Sean]

Is there anybody now left? All the great conductors are gone.

I had some fine Handley Bax on CD including an amazing Spring Fire, but the disc that will stay with me forever was a Delius LP- Brigg fair, In a summer garden, Eventyr and A Song of summer (I think gaining a rosette in the Penguin). If you don't know these readings, it'd take me the next twenty minutes trying to convey how idiomatic, beautiful and refined in the best English sense these they are, really first rate artistic insight; Brigg fair is an intense experience, especially the opening, and perhaps the most extraordinary moment is the preparation and entry of the flute solo section in In a summer garden- just transcendental.

[Dundonnell]

Apparently, although he accepted a CBE in 2004 he had earlier turned down an OBE so who knows if he had in fact been offered a knighthood at some point?

But yes-the point is well made!

Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Pritchard, Sir Reginald Goodall, Sir Charles Groves, Sir Alexander Gibson-all knighted and now sadly deceased.

And among the living-Sir Edward Downes, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Richard Armstrong, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Simon Rattle. Handley would have been an illustrious addition

[M forever]

Elder is a Sir, too? It seems to be really easy to get one of those titles.

BTW, what is the Guildford Philharmonic? And why is it that Handlet apparently never held any chief conductor positions, at least not loonger than a few years?

I listened to his Sinfonia Antarctica yesterday - maybe even while he was passing away, eerie! - and it made a very good impression on me, but I can't put it into context since I know only very little RVW and so I can't "judge" his performance. But it made sense to me.

[Dundonnell]

Elder is a Sir, too? It seems to be really easy to get one of those titles.

BTW, what is the Guildford Philharmonic? And why is it that Handlet apparently never held any chief conductor positions, at least not loonger than a few years?

I listened to his Sinfonia Antarctica yesterday - maybe even while he was passing away, eerie! - and it made a very good impression on me, but I can't put it into context since I know only very little RVW and so I can't "judge" his performance. But it made sense to me.

http://www.guildford.gov.uk/GuildfordWeb/Leisure/Philharmonic/AboutGPO.htm

(Not that it tells you that much, I am afraid!)

Regarding knighthoods for conductors-well, obviously, despite a well-orchestrated(sorry!) campaign by his many admirers to promote the idea of a knighthood for Handley it never happened. Nor has Richard Hickox yet been knighted, although i am pretty sure one will come his way in the future.

Regarding Handley and a permanent position with a major orchestra I suppose there was a perception that he was too much of a British music specialist and had less to offer in core repertoire. British orchestral management seem to prefer conductors from abroad anyway these days! In his latter years Handley did not enjoy good health and frequently was compelled to cancel engagements.

[sound67]

A sad day indeed. I don't know yet which of his recordings of English music I'm going to play tonight in his memory - there are so many. 

The Telegraph has provided the best obituary yet:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2778592/Vernon-Handley.html

He basically sacrificed his careeer by concentrating on 20th century tonal British music, which was particularly unpopular with the all-powerful BBC establishment under William Glock.

Thomas

[sound67]

There's an even more personal obit by Lewis Foreman on The Independent website now:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/vernon-handley-conductor-and-champion-of-british-music-whose-extensive-discography-includes-100-premieres-925543.html

He once remarked to me, "Being a British music specialist has harmed my career without any doubt and my image as the British music man has got out of proportion. I only do this music, and a lot of it, because I believe that a native conductor ought to. There are British composers who are close to my heart, but the first reason is much more important. I am a conductor, not just a 'British music conductor'".

Thomas