Sir Mark Elder, honoured

Sir Mark Elder backstage at the Royal Opera House (Photo: Mark Thompson)

‘It gives me the most enormous pleasure to have been able to nominate Mark for this award, not least because he and I go back a very long way. We were both choristers together at Canterbury. And subsequently our paths almost crossed at Cambridge, Mark arrived as a young repetiteur here at the Opera House just after I left, and we’ve kept a beady eye on each other ever since. Some years ago we went to a reunion at Canterbury, and listening to choral evensong it struck me that it must be hard to spend five years singing psalms, canticles and anthems and not come out with a great love of the English language, and the way language interconnects with music. Since then Mark and I have in our different ways, professionally, lived in the space where music and words meet.

‘When we were at Cambridge together I remember that there were only two respectable opera composers: Mozart and Wagner. Verdi was mentioned. Puccini basically belonged on the top shelf at WH Smith! I think it is not least among Mark’s achievements that he has turned himself subsequently into a world-class conductor of Verdi, and among other things a great champion of the dramatic qualities of bel canto. As we’re in these hallowed walls, I think it also appropriate to mention two former pillars of the Royal Opera House, who I know had a formative influence on Mark. One is Sir Edward Downes, the great Verdian conductor under whose tutelage Mark gave many of his first opera performances with Australian Opera, and the other is the irrepressible, indefatigable Italian coach Ubaldo Gardini.

‘Last year I happened to catch a programme on BBC when Mark was talking about the 150th anniversary of Hallé Orchestra. Not least among these plans were Mark’s various initiatives to give children and young people a more direct experience of orchestral music. He is very committed to working with young musicians, and particularly for instance with the National Youth Orchestra, I remember his excitement on the occasion when at the proms they did the last act of Valkyrie, and Mark pointed out that these kids had never heard a note of this music before we started ten days ago – and of course they gave a stunning performance. ‘All I am trying to say is that in Mark we have a truly rounded musician – almost in that hackneyed phrase a ‘musician’s musician’ – and therefore there’s nobody more worthy of receiving this award from his colleagues in the profession than Mark.’

Roderick Swanston, ISM President 2008-09, was delighted to present the award to Sir Mark who then spoke about the importance of the ISM and why musicians need to stand together.

A united voice

‘This very distinguished Society has stood for years as a voice and a forum for all types of musicians and what you do is of inestimable value. This is a very unexpected occasion and it allows me to state the importance of what you all do, and of striving together.

‘Combining creators, re-creators and teachers is the only way a united voice can be found in our profession. Whatever we all believe in, we surely are all teachers in some way or other. If our debt to our past can be expressed in any other way it surely must be to prepare for the future. Our responsibility to bring live music – and I stress live – is so important to the lives of other people.

‘These last years for me, centred as I am in Manchester, have been the most fulfilling of my life – and I say that after the very arduous but rewarding years at English National Opera. I always wanted to have my own symphony orchestra. I always wanted to lead a musical ensemble in a community, and that is something that is much easier to do outside London. That’s not to say that the London orchestras don’t have their loyal supporters, but in Manchester you can strive to make an orchestra part of a community, which my great predecessor Sir John Barbirolli did so movingly and so memorably after the Second World War. The tradition that he started there was connected to what Hallé himself had done 100 years earlier.

Standing together

‘Our debt to the next generation is supremely important in these coming years. Before the credit squeeze jumped on us, we were all nervous and apprehensive that the wonderful ‘Olympic dream’ would drain the resources that might otherwise have gone to the arts. Now that the credit squeeze has joined that pressure, it is all the more important to stand together and be prepared to speak out. Not as ‘whinging luvvies’ (as the scribbling profession would have us be called), but as people who stand up for something that they passionately believe in.

‘Thank you all very much for your belief in me and what I do. I will end with a memory that I have of how important it is realise how far into the different corners of the world music can go.

‘One November night in the pouring rain in New York, I eventually managed to get a taxi. I threw myself into it – the traffic was crawling down the Avenue – and I found myself in the company of an enormous Afro-American taxi driver. He was listening on the radio to the BBC Philharmonic playing Korngold’s Sinfonietta. I said to him, ‘do you like this classical stuff? Do you listen to this often?’

‘‘‘Man,” he said, “it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. If I listened to my music, with all the crap driving I have to witness, I’d go out of my mind and there’d be more road rage than ever.”’

‘Isn’t that great? Music can reach into people’s lives in ways that we can’t imagine. All of us here believe in music. We believe in the power that music can give people to change lives, to change our hearts, and we must go on saying that and not be ashamed of it.

‘Who says the English are cold? Who says that they don’t understand musical things? Who says this is the “Land without Music”? They used to in the 19th century, but they sure can’t now.’