Sir Charles Groves

[edjones]

Two things stand out in Groves time at the RLPO. Firstly the band was the first contract orchestra to have a guaranteed 5 day week which was naturally a huge benfit to the players.
The second being the seminars for young conductors which started with a conductors competion with the prizewinner returning for a concert next seaon.
The winner turned out to be so awful on their return that it was decided instead to have a seminar with 6 conductors working with the band for a week and giving 2 concerts at the end. The seminar I played for included Andrew Davis and John Eliot-Gardiner, both obviously benfitted from the experience!
Groves could be ruthless if he found a player underperforming. Two principal players found themselves replaced at very short notice.
I once had a bad experience during a Mahler Symphony when I started to feel rather queasy, eventually walkng off during the performance. When I made an abject apology afterwards Charlie was not at all critical.
"You did right, being sick on stage would have been worse" Other conductors may not have been so forgiving.

[Pianophile]

Wonderful to read these reminiscences and anecdotes. Groves always appeared such a benevolent figure on the podium. I have fond memories of him conducting the Halle whilst attending my first concerts as a child at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester

[Roslynmuse]

I recall waiting to get in at the 150th anniversary concert of the RLPO at the Phil. Because of the security arrangements there was a slight delay in getting in. Behind me I heard a very gentle 'excuse me'. Looking back it was Sir Charles.

How many if todays 'Maestro's' would be so polite and considerate?

Was that the same concert that Simon Rattle played percussion in Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole? And Groves conducted the Triumphal March from Caractacus? I remember hearing it on R3 if so.

[GrahamMca]

Groves was also wonderful with amateurs (sorry if anyone has said this earlier). I worked on a Missa Solemnis with assorted Lincolnshire choirs in the Cathedral in the '70s. Imagine what a challenge that must have been for him and some of the horrors those high notes must have inflicted on him. But he was cheerful and loveable and we all felt, with the CBSO, that we produced a great performance!

[Chris Newman]

Welcome, edjones.

Here is a download of Sir Charles conducting Messaien's Turangalila. Click on the link at the bottom of the page.

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/tapes.php

It was, I believe, Charlie's third go at the symphony. He played it very fast with the RLPO, which I heard on the radio. I went to his second and and third performances with the BBCSO. The second was at the Royal Festival Hall and this recording was at a Prom a few months later. Each time he relaxed more and got better with the romantic side of the work.

It is available here thanks to Clive Heath, one of our members, who restores tapes and old recordings. This is his website:

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/index.php

Best wishes,
Chris.

[Barbirollians]

I was a violinist for 2 years with the RLPO from 1968-70 and played many concerts with Charlie as he was called. The performance of Turangalila was memorable as we had string sectional rehearsals which was a rarity, and the piece was really awkwardly difficult. The composer attended the final rehearsals and kept calling out "More Blue" "More Yellow" We thought he was a bit crazy, but it was explained that he saw colour in response to sound, and was trying to realise his intentions. Charlie coped well "Trombones Piano"" he would say in a guess for more blue.
One feature about Groves was that he always knew the score and did not waste time learning it during rehearsals which musicians always loathe. His discipline was however poor, and the band would get sloppy, talking during rehearsals and not playing attention, then afer a while Charlie would have a fit like an angry headmaster and tear a strip of us all.
He was a very good accompanist and a memorabl;e concert was the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Rostropovitch at the time of the Prague Spring. He was booed on entry, but gave a staggering performance to an ovation at the end.
Charlie could be a bore to string players as he did not really have a feeling for string sound like Paul Kletski for instance. The worst thing you could do was make a wrong entry or stand out in the section. Some conductors made you sit on the end of your seat and play for your life. Charlie did not.
He was a nice man who wanted to be liked.

How interesting . There was a BBC legends Proms peformance of the RLPO/Groves accompanying du pre in the Dvorak Concerto in 1965 . Very good it was too - some of the wind playing is perhaps not top notch but he does not indulge du Pre but supports her superbly.

[BBMmk2]

I was fortunate to be conducted by 'Charlie', way back in 1975. This was when he conducted the massed brass bands at the very first bras band summer school held at lancasrer University. Other luminaires were there like Harry Mortimer and Elgar Howarth.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

the massed brass bands at the very first bras bandsummer school held at lancasrer University.

Playing The Flight of the Bumble B-cup?

[amateur51]

Playing The Flight of the Bumble B-cup?

bravo ferney

[secondfiddle]

I obviously never had the chance to see Sir Charles Groves live in concert on this side of the pond, but I do have a brief memory of a 1980's radio broadcast of the Los Angeles Philharmonic where Sir Charles was the guest conductor. At the end of the concert, the brass struck up a spontaneous fanfare for him.

From recently reading John Drummond's Tainted By Experience, Drummond told the story of the 1989 Last Night, which Sir John Pritchard conducted, but where as a back-up plan, because Pritchard was in poor shape, Drummond had asked Sir Charles to be on call in case Pritchard couldn't pull off The Last Night. Drummond noted that he was particularly grateful that Sir Charles had agreed to this, as Groves was miffed at not getting a concert in the 1987 Proms (an omission that was corrected in 1988 with Delius' A Mass of Life). Sir Charles also went to the trouble of studying the scores in the Last Night program that he didn't know before. In the end, Pritchard managed to pull off his Last Night appearance. Drummond noted at the end of this story, after Pritchard had given the speech:

It is good to see so many warm memories of Charles Groves. Bluestateprommer’s quotation from Sir John Drummond’s book reminded me that I have a tape of the Prom conducted by Vernon Handley and given in memory of Sir Charles who was to have conducted. Before the Sea Symphony Drummond gave a very fine 4 minute tribute to Groves in which he listed Groves’s many musical connections and attributes and he told then the story of him standing by at the Last Night of the Proms when Sir John Pritchard was so very ill. It is worth adding that, as Drummond told the Prom memorial, Groves refused to take a fee – he was just doing a turn for a colleague.
Groves was such a versatile conductor with a particular fondness for British music and I have many dozens of recordings of his broadcasts. I also cherish a recording of another much missed conductor, Sir Edward Downes, conducting Elgar Symphony No 2 at the 1992 Lichfield Festival, a performance that he introduced and dedicated with a few well-chosen words to Groves’s memory.

Listening to tonight’s Prom performance of Belshazzar’s Feast also reminds me that I sang in a Prom performance of that work under Charles Groves (1969 – and by chance under Pritchard in the following year’s Prom season). He was a very clear conductor to sing under so that one had complete confidence in his direction.

And now in the words of this evening’s gushing and gabbling presenter who closed the broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall with these words: ‘I must love you and leave you’. I’ve never heard anything quite like that before!! Where do they get them from?

[BBMmk2]

bravo ferney

thank you guys But seriously, this experience was quiote top drawer for me. We played Holst's 'Moorside Suite'.

[Hornspieler]

It is good to see so many warm memories of Charles Groves. Bluestateprommer’s quotation from Sir John Drummond’s book reminded me that I have a tape of the Prom conducted by Vernon Handley and given in memory of Sir Charles who was to have conducted. Before the Sea Symphony Drummond gave a very fine 4 minute tribute to Groves in which he listed Groves’s many musical connections and attributes and he told then the story of him standing by at the Last Night of the Proms when Sir John Pritchard was so very ill. It is worth adding that, as Drummond told the Prom memorial, Groves refused to take a fee – he was just doing a turn for a colleague.
Groves was such a versatile conductor with a particular fondness for British music and I have many dozens of recordings of his broadcasts. I also cherish a recording of another much missed conductor, Sir Edward Downes, conducting Elgar Symphony No 2 at the 1992 Lichfield Festival, a performance that he introduced and dedicated with a few well-chosen words to Groves’s memory.

Of all his achievements, the outstanding one for me had nothing to do with his conducting.

It was the fact that he devoted hours standing in Bournemouth Square alongside orchestra members; selling raffle tickets for the "Save the Orchestra" fund, when the Philistine Bournemouth Borough Council announced that the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra (founded by Sir Dan Godfrey to bring classical music to the South coast) was to be disbanded.

He gave talks, he rallied support from many quarters, including The Arts Council of Great Britain and the result was that "The Western Orchestral Society" was formed to manage the newly named Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Charles could have taken himself off to conduct elsewhere, but he stuck with his players and one only has to look at the achievements, both locally and internationally, of the orchestra since then to know that Bournemouth, the West of England and beyond the seas, owe Sir Charles Groves a great debt of gratitude.

[PJPJ]

Playing The Flight of the Bumble B-cup?

... part of an uplifting programme......

[Barbirollians]

More thread resuscitation . Just started on the big Groves British Music box bought too long ago. We had an embarrassment of riches of British conductors in those days otherwise there would surely have been Elgar and VW Symphonies from Groves ?

[kernelbogey]

The late member Hornspieler's #72 is worth reading.

(I had an exchange with Hornspieler upthread about Sir Charles conducting the first orchestral concert that I had attended.)