RIP John Shirley-Quirk

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  • Pabmusic
    Full Member
    • May 2011
    • 5537

    #31
    Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
    Not a bad epitaph Pabs
    The things we leave behind (mainly, but not only, memories) constitute our 'immortality'.

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    • amateur51

      #32
      Originally posted by Pabmusic View Post
      The things we leave behind (mainly, but not only, memories) constitute our 'immortality'.
      And the row of spring onions (weeds most likely!) that will be nourished eventually by our own personal stardust, of course

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      • Pabmusic
        Full Member
        • May 2011
        • 5537

        #33
        Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
        And the row of spring onions (weeds most likely!) that will be nourished eventually by our own personal stardust, of course
        Have you read "We know you're busy working but we thought you woulsd't mind if we just dropped in for a minute" (or similar) by Edmund Crispin? You'll get the analogy if you read it (in the collection Fen Country).

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        • amateur51

          #34
          Originally posted by Pabmusic View Post
          Have you read "We know you're busy working but we thought you woulsd't mind if we just dropped in for a minute" (or similar) by Edmund Crispin? You'll get the analogy if you read it (in the collection Fen Country).
          Lovely recommendation Pabs - I'm just off to a well-known bookselling website

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          • Pabmusic
            Full Member
            • May 2011
            • 5537

            #35
            Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
            Lovely recommendation Pabs - I'm just off to a well-known bookselling website
            I hope you read it. It's one of the finest short crime stories, comparable to Stanley Ellin's "The Specialty of the House". (There's another, if you don't know it. Don't eat at Sbirro's.

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            • Petrushka
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 12255

              #36
              Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
              I think I saw him in Schoenberg's "Survivor from Warsaw" with Simon Rattle and CBSO too
              That may have been Benjamin Luxon (or it was when I heard the CBSO and Rattle in Birmingham, March 2 1995).

              JS-Q did the Schoenberg before Tennstedt's LPO Mahler 5 on Dec 13 1988 and what a pity that this never made it on to the CD or DVD of that concert.
              "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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              • Dave2002
                Full Member
                • Dec 2010
                • 18021

                #37
                Originally posted by french frank View Post
                Nostalgia: I've just got this LP on ebay - I got rid of mine with my old turntable. But now I have another turntable Suspect I paid rather less than £6 when I bought it brand new (slightly manky sleeve but, mine probably had too. ...):

                I had/have that one, and also the RVW Songs of Travel. I think I heard him in concert at least once - probably in Dream of Gerontius, and maybe on other occasions in other Elgar choral works.

                I believe also that the Songs of Travel was available on CD - but not for long, as my local library had it and I thought of "liberating" it. Sadly I didn't, and it's no longer in the library catalogue. The Saga LPs are hard to track down in CD versions.

                This link might be of interest, however - http://themusicparlour.blogspot.co.u...s-vaughan.html

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                • LeMartinPecheur
                  Full Member
                  • Apr 2007
                  • 4717

                  #38
                  I too treasure his Saga LP of RVW Songs of Travel, and was delighted to catch him as Don Alfonso in a Glyndebourne Touring Opera Cosi in Oxford, 1987.
                  I keep hitting the Escape key, but I'm still here!

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                  • french frank
                    Administrator/Moderator
                    • Feb 2007
                    • 30302

                    #39
                    Rather touching. My ebay LP arrived this morning and it had a large sheet of braille tucked inside; and what I thought was a torn sleeve was actually a white braille label. Still, the LP doesn't seem to have suffered. Glorious to hear that voice again.
                    It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

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                    • mercia
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 8920

                      #40
                      nice tribute on that Sunday morning programme. Cynara and the Five Mystical Songs.

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                      • bluestateprommer
                        Full Member
                        • Nov 2010
                        • 3009

                        #41
                        The NYT has a somewhat belated, but very nice, obit for JS-Q:



                        The Guardian's tribute mentioned his degree in chemistry, but it wasn't until I read the NYT article that I realized how far he had proceeded in that career line until making the switch to music.

                        (Guardian tribute, for the record: http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...-shirley-quirk)

                        I unfortunately never saw JS-Q live, but have heard him many times on record and liked what I heard. His recordings of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and RVW's A Sea Symphony particularly stand out. He also served Michael Tippett well on The Vision of St. Augustine and The Ice Break, in addition to the various recordings of Britten opera. The closest I would have gotten, in the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sense, is hearing his son Benjamin Shirley-Quirk with the Oberlin College Choir once in Cleveland, as the chorus in a Cleveland Orchestra performance of JSB's Cantata No. 56, " Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen", with Thomas Quasthoff as the baritone soloist, and FWM on the podium:

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