Sir Charles Mackerras - an appreciation

SCO Violinist Rosenna East pays tribute to Sir Charles.

From the front of the second violins in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra,we always had a straight line of sight to Sir Charles Mackerras waiting in the wings, minutes before a concert. Poised expectantly at the edge of our seats on stage, draped in long black evening dresses and surrounded by the auspicious red and gold of the Usher Hall, my desk partner and I cherished especially that private view of our maestro.

Receiving the nod from stage management that it was time to make his entrance, he was transformed. The brightness of his white tie and dress shirt were eclipsed by the beaming grin that would light up his no longer elderly face, as with a sharp backwards thrust of his shoulders he would shake off his 84 years.

Pulled up like a cadet suddenly called to military attention, he would shoot out of the wings to the bright lights of the platform, heading for the podium like a boy to the sweetshop. His electric entrance, accompanied by rapturous applause before even a note had been played, never failed to inspire our orchestra to play at its best.

It is with terrible sadness we contemplate the news of his death. We mourn the loss of the grandfather of our musical family. Our beloved Sir Charles wore his own heart on his sleeve when it came to the SCO.

In his official role as Conductor Laureate, he was a tireless champion of the orchestra. In private, he never failed to appear for rehearsals wearing his own clan tartan – either in waistcoat or trousers. Proud of his Scottish heritage, he was no less proud of his Scottish orchestra.

And we were proud of our work with him – work marked by his distinct and notable musical integrity.

Performing or recording with Sir Charles, we only ever worked from his own personal orchestra parts. Nobody else’s would do – no hire parts or modern editions. Sir Charles had collected his precious Breitkopf parts of the Beethoven and Mozart symphonies on trips to the former communist bloc. Paid his fees from the Berlin Staatsoper in East German marks, unusable in western Europe, he came up with the idea of spending the money on building his own library of orchestra repertoire. Any musician who worked with him will know how delicate those parts were. He would apologise for the lamentably poor quality of the East German paper, but we knew he was delighted to tell the story of their origins.

Revision after revision had been made to these treasured parts by Sir Charles. Corrections to historical misprints, as well as interpretative markings, were the result, first, of careful personal scholarship in the libraries and archives of the world, further honed by years of experience of what worked best in the concert hall. But his wealth of scholarly knowledge never closed down debate, as it might with some. He was always open to a new suggestion – from leader Chris George, with a new bowing that might just work better. Or from David Watkin, principal cello,whose style of playing broken chords for cello continuo parts Sir Charles first adopted in our recording of Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito, and used from then onwards with such delight.

That continual striving for the highest stands of music-making gave Sir Charles a justifiable pride and pleasure in his work. The same enthusiasm and delight which he brought with him to the stage was palpable in the recording studio. In the “box” with the sound engineers and record producers, his principal players gathered around him to hear the recent takes, my memory is of him being meticulous with detail but, more often than not, delighted by what he heard.

After our recordings of the Beethoven symphonies live from the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006, he was enormously proud to tell us that no “patching” session would be needed – a recording session in which we would have expected to iron out the blemishes and mishaps of a live performance.

Not a note of those live recordings would he alter. That those discs more than hold their own with the very best digitally edited versions is proof that he was justified in his pride and delight.

Only two weeks ago the SCO board heard with what relish Sir Charles was preparing to return to the score of Mozart’s Idomeneo for the EIF this year. Despite deep sadness that we will not now have the chance to do so with him, his undimmed passion, for his work and for the music, will remain an inspiration to all who knew him.

© First published in The Herald on 17 July, 2010