Sir Alexander Gibson

[pastoralguy]

When this CD first appeared at budget/mid price, I needed a Sibelius#3 in my collection, and this was the only one I could afford. I was almost put off by memories of RL's "damning by faint praise" (he is generally reliable in all matters Sibelian) but took the plunge anyway. Never regretted it - and you remind me that it has been far too long since I last played it ...

At the risk of sounding like a well balanced Scotsman, ( a chip on both shoulders! ), I have found that London critics can be quite sniffy about arts organisations from the 'provinces'. I have heard the (R)SNO being damned with faint praise in journalistic organs.

[Barbirollians]

The only one of the Gibson cycle I was less convinced by was the Seventh but otherwise a splendid set .

[Barbirollians]

I've just bought the Eloquence reissue of 'Witches' Brew', and fabulous it sounds too. Amazingly vivid and hard to believe it's almost 60 years old. The original LP contents are supplemented with the Gounod Funeral March of a Marionette and the Faust Ballet Music - a most classy performance of the latter. Incidentally, the Faust ballet could well be by Delibes rather than Gounod (it has an undefinable 'something' in common with the music Delibes wrote for La Source) and I hadn't noticed till this evening that Sullivan pinched bits of the final Bacchanale for the Ruth/Frederic duet in Act 1 of Pirates, and the Yum-Yum/Nanki-Poo duet in Act 1 of Mikado. (He also naughtily stole part of the Agnus Dei of Gounod's St Cecilia Mass for the Act 1 Finale of Pirates - the 'I'm telling a terrible story' bit.)

It is a scintillating record - fun to hear the now rather frowned upon Rimsky completion of a Night on Bald Mountain in such a thrilling performance .

[Barbirollians]

I'm really glad you like them. Did you get the Rosenkavalier as well (I think it's in the same set?)
I wish I'd heard more of Sir Alex in the opera house, so these extracts are particularly welcome.

I do recommend forumites dig out copies of these opera sets second hand . The ballo in maschera highlights are splendid especially Charles Craig as Gustavus.

[Nick]

Fascinating thread!

I am a new member of this site. Indeed I only just discovered it. As a longtime fan of Sir Alexander Gibson, a musician who surely has to be a member of that group we term "great" conductors, I am delighted to come across it.

Stanley Stewart's post #19 brings back a host of memories and it is clear we were both at one if not more of the performances. I, too, was at that Walkure Act 1 concert with the SNO in Aberdeen , I saw Vishnevskaya as Lady M in Edinburgh (odd that she took the high D in the sleepwalking scene down an octave), Meistersinger at Glasgow's Theatre Royal when Linda Esther Grey stepped in at the last minute because Elizabeth Harwood could not continue after Act 1, Janet Baker's gorgeous Dido in The Trojans and her superb Dorabella, and Helga Dernesch at her peak before the voice gave out. After a year off she turned to the opera stage - but not to Scottish Opera - as a mezzo. I did see her as a wonderful Herodias in Munich in the late 1980s. Such a pity that Dame Janet had to withdraw prior to rehearsals for Scottish Opera's Alceste at the Edinburgh Fesitval in 1974 but Julia Varady was an excellent replacement.

It is an even greater pity that full-length professional recordings do not exist of all the operas listed by smarty in post #46. I attended all except the Rigoletto. I remember being surprised at how good Klara Barlow was in the first performances of Tristan in Glasgow. Many around me were complaining that they could not see Dernesch who was taking over the tour from Edinburgh onwards, but Barlow was excellent and clearly knew the role extremely well. Gibson marshalled his forces superbly.

I still enjoy listening to the CFP Silver Double Series CDs with the 4 excerpts discs made in 1974 and 1975. Rosenkavlier shows what a fine Strauss conductor Gibson had become. Ballo is not quite in the same class. This is sad because Charles Craig should have been involved in far more commercial recordings, but here was suffering from a frog in the throat he could not quite rid himself of. Even though his voice is only 95% of what we had often heard, it was just not quite what he himself would have wanted. I don't much care for some of the singing on the Don Giovanni disc, but Gibson with the perfect Widow in Catherine Wilson, an ideal cast and excellent playing from the Scottish Philharmonia is absolutely in his element in the last to be recorded, The Merry Widow.

That he was ousted from Scottish Opera a few years into the start of its long series of major financial and other crises is a frightful condemnation of its Board of Directors of the day. The Company's years of troubles coupled with his habit of smoking a good 50 or so cigarettes a day must surely have accounted for his early death aged only 68. Like Sir AG and Stanley Stewart, I am an Aquarian!!

[Leinster Lass]

21 years since his death he would have been 90 this year .

Not a conductor well known to me since I began to collect his marvellous Chandos Sibelius recordings - which are wonderfully idiomatic and immensely enjoyable .

Any memories of him in concert or other favourite recordings ?

1967, Salzburg: Tchaikowsky 4th plus (I think) Janet Baker singing Brahms, and Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (?)
Early 1980s, Croydon: Sibelius 5th, plus Paul Tortelier playing the Dvorak concerto. I think this may have been the final concert in a national tour.
Both with the SNO (not yet Royal).

(Written before spotting Nick's post, which I found very interesting).

[Nick]

I often think the scale of Gibson's achievements was far greater than he is now given credit for. The youngest ever Musical Director at Sadlers Wells in 1957, the music world was virtually at his feet. Conrad Wilson in his interesting but all too short biography "Alex" points out that many of his friends expected him to stay in London and use it as a base for a career there, on the continent and in the USA.

North of the border the Scottish National Orchestra (as it then was named) had been plodding for several years under two European stalwarts and very limited repertoire, Karl Rankl and Hans Swarowsky. It was, though, an ensemble on full 52-week contracts, several years before any US orchestra was able to offer its musicians such contracts. When a small majority of the SNO Board decided to offer Gibson the MD position in preference to yet another continental conductor, he completely changed that orchestra. Over a period of years he increased the number of players to over 90, started up the Music Nova and Glasgow Proms series, and financially for the orchestra best of all, he persuaded many doubters to get Scottish Opera off the ground. That first week of 2 operas in 1962, a year later than hoped, gave the SNO almost 4 weeks of work and helped justly those full year contracts.

Around 1967 he took the SNO on its first European tour with Janet Baker and Jacqueline du Pre as soloists. Dame Janet was especially fond of 'Alex' whom she regarded as one of the finest accompanists for a singer. Their first concerts on that tour were in the Musikverein. Without Alex, it is extremely doubtful that she would ever have considered singing Dorabella on stage. The fact that her appearances in The Trojans, Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne were not performed with any other company (barring a last minute one-off replacement at Covent Garden in its French Troyens when she sang in English) is a mark of her admiration for him.

Soon he started recordings, a venture he considered vital for the SNO, and his reputation overseas grew. As Scottish Opera grew very quickly and many years before it formed its own orchestra, Alex was instrumental in the founding of the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra to play for some of the operas.

Yet, had he not committed himself to so much time each year to SO and the SNO over a quarter of a decade, it is tempting to believe he would have had a much more extensive international career and resultant reputation. Conrad Wilson paints a picture of a man who, while absolutely certain of what he wanted to achieve musically, was essentially quite shy. Perhaps that was why he preferred to have his roots very firmly in Glasgow with his wife and four children. But we will never know!

[gurnemanz]

Nice to see this thread return. Thanks, Nick, for those interesting posts. I notice that at the time I contributed a memory of LPs of Mozart Violin Concertos with NPO and Henryk Szeryng. They were a favourite recording, not heard for years, so I should seek it out. Spotify maybe.
I noticed a dearth of Gibson in my collection. I have just played the Planets with SNO on Chandos with great pleasure. I probably don't give this work an outing often enough, maybe thinking it is a bit of hackneyed thing to choose, but in fact I do not know this work at all as well as I think I do.

PS Nick's reference to Hans Swarowsky rang vague bells and I checked old programmes to discover that we heard him in November 1972. It must have been one of the first concerts I attended with my now wife who I had just met in Leipzig. We heard him as a guest conductor at the Gewandhaus in Mendelssohn 2nd Piano Concerto and Mahler 6th. One thing leads to another: The pianist in the Concerto was Günter Philipp, whose name meant nothing to me. I checked Wiki to find the story of a fascinating many-sided artist and scholar, sidelined by the Communist regime in East Germany. Born in 1927 and still with us, aged 93.

[Roslynmuse]

I am a new member of this site. Indeed I only just discovered it. As a longtime fan of Sir Alexander Gibson, a musician who surely has to be a member of that group we term "great" conductors, I am delighted to come across it.

I still enjoy listening to the CFP Silver Double Series CDs with the 4 excerpts discs made in 1974 and 1975. Rosenkavlier shows what a fine Strauss conductor Gibson had become. Ballo is not quite in the same class. This is sad because Charles Craig should have been involved in far more commercial recordings, but here was suffering from a frog in the throat he could not quite rid himself of. Even though his voice is only 95% of what we had often heard, it was just not quite what he himself would have wanted. I don't much care for some of the singing on the Don Giovanni disc, but Gibson with the perfect Widow in Catherine Wilson, an ideal cast and excellent playing from the Scottish Philharmonia is absolutely in his element in the last to be recorded, The Merry Widow.

It's so nice to see a reference here to Catherine Wilson. I knew her (and her husband, Leonard Hancock - another important figure in the foundation of Scottish Opera, and conductor of the premiere of RVW's Pilgrim's Progress) when I was a student and I learned much from playing for her singing lessons and opera production rehearsals. She was the most elegant and poised of people, and I often thought that the roles she coached (and performed) - The Merry Widow, Governess in Turn of the Screw, etc - reflected her perfectly. We lost touch until just a few years before she died but sadly were not able to meet up again. She can be seen in the film Quartet.

Back on topic, I never heard Gibson conduct live, but was listening to his Sibelius recordings over the summer - wonderful - and see that I mentioned upthread the reissue of his splendid disc 'Witches' Brew' (plus music by Gounod) a few years ago. That LP of Music of the Four Countries on EMI (Harty, German, Smyth and MacCunn) is another excellent memory of teenage listening.

[Nick]

How splendid that Roslynmuse mentioned Leonard Hancock. He truly played a vital role in the development of Scottish Opera. I had the pleasure of meeting him along with his wife Catherine Wilson on several occasions, including once at their lovely flat in Glasgow Street. This was then a row of dark unappealing tenements behind Great Western Road but the Hancocks had decorated their apartment in a very elegant manner. Leonard loved to cook I believe and the dinner we enjoyed was wonderful, as much for the wines which Leonard had found somewhere in the depths of Scotland as the meal and the conversation. I cannot now recall precisely who was there but the conductor Roderick Brydon was definitely one.

Leonard occasionally took over productions from Gibson. One was Iain Hamilton's Catiline Conspiracy which had been premiered I think at the MacRobert Centre in Stirling. By the time it reached Sunderland, very few tickets had been sold. I heard that Leonard cheekily reminded the Company Manager of the old theatrical adage that if there were more on stage and in the orchestra than in the audience, it was perfectly acceptable to cancel the performance! It still went ahead.

If ever there was a conductor who was overlooked when it came to the top positions with orchestras in Scotland, surely it was Brydon. He worked on a large number of productions with Scottish Opera over a couple of decades or so, had a titled position with the SNO (as it then was named) and was the founding Music Director for eight years of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (what a stunning ensemble that quickly became). When Gibson decided to step down from Scottish Opera, I thought Brydon would have made a vastly better Music Director than the American John Mauceri. Compared to Brydon, Mauceri was a lightweight. For his recordings of Candide and Street Scene, the Scottish Opera productions received only a handful of performances, so he had clearly mounted these merely as a vehicle to save money for Decca and provide a pre-rehearsed orchestra, since virtually all the principals from the stage performances were replaced by 'big names'. Nowhere on the CDs does it mention these were actually Scottish Opera productions. I think Gibson must have been livid at seeing this.

[Nick]

Just read a fascinating new book that gives new insights into Sir Alexander Gibson. "Scottish Opera's Golden Years: The Glitter and why it Faded" is written by a man who worked with the company for most of those years. Its publication was to mark the company's 60th anniversary on June 5. He became close to Sir Alex when spending many evenings over many months months cataloguing his reel-to-reel tapes in his study at home in the evenings and then enjoying a whisky or two with the conductor. It was the start of a long and obviously close friendship that continued until their final dinner with Lady Gibson just months prior to his early death.

The author points out that Sir Alex was actually approached about possible interest in the Music Directorship of the Toronto Symphony after the death of Karel Ancerl around 1973. After considering whether to conduct a couple of concerts to test the chemistry, he decided not to have his name put forward. He was then somewhat shocked when Andrew Davis was appointed. Davis at that time was Associate MD of the BBC Scottish - a post Gibson had given up 20 years earlier. Had he decided to express interest in Toronto and got the position, it is fascinating to consider what might then have happened with his MD position at the SNO. For those interested in both the SNO and SO, his reaction to what followed the Golden Years is both fascinating and sad. In appointing successive non-administrators to run the Opera, the Board succeeded in undermining Gibson's position to the point where, eventually as reported by the critic Conrad Wilson in The Scotsman, it appointed his own successor before he had actually submitted any resignation! The author calls this the Board's most disgraceful act, probably the more so given that his replacement, John Mauceri, waa then a conductor of much lesser stature.

I got the book from amazon and I believe there is a Kindle edition as well. On a very sad note, readers may know that Lady Gibson, a woman of great beauty and a joy to be with, passed away in late January after years battling Alzheimers.

[Barbirollians]

The CFP Silver double of Sibelius has arrived and a terrific Sibelius 1 to start with - his RL in Gramophone thought this undercharacterised beats me.

[smittims]

I often disagree with record critics. We could have quite a rich thread on this subject!

[HighlandDougie]

I'm back working in Hong Kong for a week and have just discovered a new - to me - CD shop (Classical and Jazz). In among some other treasures, I found a 2023 reissue of the Gibson/LSO Sibelius 5th/Karelia Suite, bulked out with the Lohengrin Act III Prelude, Grieg's 2nd Norwegian Dance and the the 1812. I've never heard this 5th but I think that Smittims may have commented favourably upthread on it.

[Dave2002]

Are Gibson's Sibelius recordings currently available on CD? Not sure if they were all released, and even if they were, maybe I need to look in charity shops to find them. I have 3 and 7 on LP. The favourable comment on Symphony 1 is tempting me to look around.