CAMWe had a show called Too Marvellous for Words. One review said: “It’s not”
For David Pickard (Corpus 1979), director of the BBC Proms, Cambridge was about discovering new music, converting people to opera… and performing terrible shows in Edinburgh.
Peter Grimes
Benjamin Britten
I had caught the opera bug at age 16 – I loved music and theatre, and now I found them perfectly fused in opera. When I got to Cambridge, I didn’t sense much excitement for it among my friends so I set about trying to convert people. Still now, I meet contemporaries who say: “Oh David, you introduced me to opera!” For me, the masters are Britten and Monteverdi – they show such an understanding of how music and drama work together.
Anthems from King’s
This wonderful collection by composers like Stanford, Wood and Parry was the music of my life as a choral scholar – just gorgeous pieces. At Corpus, we sang two services on a Sunday and midweek evensong. We may not have been the best singers compared to King’s, but we loved singing. And you did get a better room in those days if you were a choral scholar – close to the chapel, so you could slope in sheepishly after the choir stalls were full if you’d overslept.
King Arthur
Henry Purcell
I was introduced to Purcell’s viol fantasias on my first day at Cambridge – I had never heard these extraordinary, magical pieces by one of Britain’s greatest composers. A fellow student, played it to a few of us in his room in the early hours after a lot of wine. By the end of the night, we were firm friends and I had been introduced to music that would later allow me to run the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Symphony No 2
Rachmaninoff
One of my frustrations in my first two years, despite how much I loved studying music, was rarely getting past Mozart and Haydn to the late 19th century onwards. It was a time when the early music movement was taking off, and people could be rather pious about Bach and Handel and how baroque music should be played. I longed for something more emotional and so, after hours of dry academic work, I would escape to this Russian romantic – a great release.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book
Some of these songs were among those Michael Law carefully transcribed for jazz arrangements to accompany a show we took to the Edinburgh Fringe in the early 80s. The music was fantastic, but the script was terrible. The cast was strangely distinguished – actor Simon Russell Beale (Caius 1979) played Churchill, baritone Simon Keenlyside (St John’s 1980) played Hitler and I played Neville Chamberlain… so you can see where it might have been going. We were supposed to run for three weeks – we did 10 days. The show was called Too Marvellous for Words and one review simply said: “It’s not.”
David Pickard is stepping down as director of the BBC Proms.
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