Richard Boothby talks of his career as a viol player and about Fretwork

On July 28th 2014 I met with Welsh-born viol player Richard Boothby in Devon, UK. Following studies in Salzburg with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Richard Boothby founded the Purcell Quartet in 1984. He was a founding member of Fretwork in 1985. Since then, his career has been bound up with these two groups, with whom he has recorded and toured, performing the broadest range of repertoire for viols, from early to contemporary music. Performing solo recitals, he recorded the three Bach sonatas for viola da gamba with Shalev Ad-El for the Chandos label, enthusiastically received. Boothby has given many recitals of suites of Antoine Forquerey and is professor of viol at the Royal College of Music, London.

PH: Professor Boothby, what were your early musical experiences?

Richard Boothby: I suppose they were listening to records with my parents. I remember they had a recording of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s 4th Symphony. My brother had recordings of “A Hard Day’s Night” and of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album and I became familiar with those. I started learning the ‘cello when I was at school in South Wales. In those days, the 1960s, there was free instrumental tuition for all school children. When I went to secondary school at age 11 we could choose between violin, clarinet and ‘cello. In my mind, I had confused the ‘cello with the oboe and was then too proud to say I was not expecting anything like that instrument when given a ‘cello! But I liked the ‘cello very much and carried on with it.

PH: When did you start playing the viol?

RB: When I was at Manchester University studying Music, a university course (Musicology) rather than a conservatoire course, I was given the chance to play the viol. We did a lot of playing there, all the same.

PH: Where did you go from there?

RB: I went to London and studied with Charles Medlam for a few years. He had strong connections with Salzburg and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. I applied to the Mozarteum and received a scholarship to go and study for a year with Harnoncourt in Salzburg. That was 1980-1981.

PH: And following your studies…

RB: I returned to the UK and started a career. Actually, it is very difficult to just start out just like that on an instrument as esoteric as the gamba. For many years I worked in the Early Music Shop in London. For a time I worked with harpsichord builder and restorer Mark Ransom. Learning about harpsichords and their tuning was useful as I was playing a lot of music with harpsichord. As performing demanded more of my time I worked less at these jobs, finally devoting my time solely to performing. I was doing a lot of solo recitals but my career really took off when I founded Fretwork and the Purcell Quartet. They both became successful groups.

PH: Do both groups still exist?

RB: The Purcell Quartet stopped a few years ago, but Fretwork is very much in existence.

PH: Where does Fretwork perform?

RB: Anywhere and everywhere. We have played all over the world.

PH: Does Fretwork join other ensembles?

RB: We have sometimes joined with vocal groups such as Stile Antico, Red Byrd and I Fagiolini and sometimes we have a solo singer, but mostly it is just the four of us – Asako Morikawa, Reiko Ichise, Richard Tunnicliffe and myself.

PH: In addition to the early music repertoire for viols, Fretwork seems to be interested in modern music.

RB: Yes. We started with just one contemporary piece…then a few more and, eventually, contemporary music became a bigger and bigger part of what we do. Nowadays it is unusual for us to do a program without some contemporary music in it. In fact, we sometimes do a whole concert of contemporary music. For example, we will be performing in the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, a festival focusing only on music of living composers.

PH: Has there been a changeover of players in Fretwork over the years?

RB: Yes. I am the only “surviving” founder member of the group.

PH: Do you research viol music?

RB: In the early days of Fretwork, with parts not so available, we had to copy out a lot of music we wanted to play from collective editions. But things have changed enourmously in 30 years. We do some research, but a lot of previously unknown music is now available to players. If we come across music in editions we do not like I will produce my own edition.

PH: Do you publish your editions or are they just for your own use?

RB: We started producing computer set parts and a former member of Fretwork Bill Hunt has carried on with Fretwork Editions, producing scholarly- and practical editions of a lot of viol consort music – Lawes, Jenkins, Dowland etc., a huge variety of works.

PH: Do you find there are enough audiences in the UK interested in hearing all the viol music that has been unearthed as well as modern viol works?

RB: Yes. There is a good audience for the music we play. Different programs and different soloists attract people to come and hear us.

PH: Would you like to mention your teaching.

RB: Yes. I teach at the Royal College of Music, at Dartington Hall and every year I teach at the Marnaves Summer Baroque Course in France. The latter, run by Lucy Robinson and Andrew Wilson-Dickson, is a course focusing on solo- and consort viol playing.

PH: Is the UK producing a new generation of viol players?

RB: Yes. There are a great many very good players coming up. It is very encouraging. Jonathan Manson, a wonderful ‘cellist and viol player teaching at the Royal Academy of Music, is doing a very good job at encouraging his ‘cello pupils to take up the viol while they are at the Academy. Because of that, several good viol players have come from the Academy. What is surprising is that not more viol consorts have emerged in the UK. Even in Europe, where there are many, many viol players, there are very few viol consorts. It is a shame. There is a lot of room for more consorts.

PH: Do you compose?

RB: No, I don’t.

PH: When it is not music, what interests you?

RB: I am fairly interested in politics. I like food and cooking. My wife is Italian and I spend quite a lot of time in Italy, which is always very nice.

English baritone Stephen Varcoe talks about his career and more

On August 4th 2010 I had the pleasure of talking to singer Stephen Varcoe over a glass of wine in the White Hart Bar at Dartington Hall, Devon, UK. Dr. Stephen Varcoe is one of Britain’s most distinguished baritones, known for his performances and recordings of Baroque music, a large repertoire of solo song and for his appearances in early to modern operas. His book “Sing English Song” is designed to give amateur singers, voice students and professional singers insight into Britain’s rich vocal heritage.

PH: Stephen, what were your earliest musical experiences?

Stephen Varcoe: I was born in Cornwall. I think my earliest memories of hearing much music are from age three. My mother, a former music teacher, played the piano a lot and my father played the violin. Their friends would come to our house to play music with them...triosonatas,etc. My parents also had a house madrigal group. I began piano lessons at age six. I can not remember a time when I could not read music. At the age of eight I went to the Canterbury Cathedral choir school, where I remained till age 13. I left my piano studies; singing had become my way of life and my voice could do what I wanted it to. I then moved to the King’s School in Canterbury, where I carried on singing.

PH: Where did you continue your studies?

SV: I was accepted to King’s College Cambridge to study Mathematics and Law. I sang in the King’s College choir, which met six days a week. I changed from Law studies to Land Economy. However, singing had become central to my life and, during my first year at Cambridge, I was encouraged by older musicians to take on singing as a profession. My singing teachers at Cambridge were John Carol Case and Wilfred Brown, both keen exponents of British music; it is from then that English music has remained a great love of mine, as is the English language…and languages, in general.

Having graduated from Cambridge, I spent one year of post-graduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where I was able to create my own course program. Well, I did not come away with a diploma but there I studied Lieder, French song, Baroque music and, of course, singing. My voice teacher there was Arthur Reckless; he was so loved by all that the door of his room was constantly opening and closing, with people constantly dropping in to say hello and have “a word” with him.

PH: What about performances?

SV: At that time, four friends and I started an a cappella group called “The Scholars”. We had all been members of the King’s College Choir. I sang with them for 18 months, performing more than 100 concerts; we sang madrigals and early Tudor music and we also commissioned works from composers such as the Australian composer Malcolm Williamson. I had also begun singing with small groups in London. There was a lot of work with BBC radio and in live concerts, too. Choral conductor John Alldis, who specialized in new music, was looking for singers who were excellent sight-readers to perform modern music under his baton and I joined him. We toured Australia and New Zealand performing these works.

PH: And your solo singing career?

SV: Having started doing solo work, I took part in the Gulbenkian Competition of 1977 and won it. The prize enabled me to leave other jobs I was doing and concentrate on building up my solo career. Other important stages were singing in the Schuetz Choir under Roger Norrington (known for his exploration of historical performance practice) and in the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner (famous for his interpretation of Baroque music performed with period instruments). From singing as a member of these choirs, I became a soloist with them. Another conductor important to my career was Richard Hickox. We were friends from Cambridge. I did many concerts with him, including performances at the BBC Proms, where I soloed.

I also found myself doing a lot of work in Germany with WDR, the Cologne radio station.

PH: Would you like to talk about your involvement in Early Music?

SV: Yes. The two conductors who were the major influences on me in this genre were Roger Norrington and John Eliot Gardiner. We performed concerts together, traveled through Europe, appeared at festivals and recorded. Early music constituted much of my work in Germany with WDR and with German ensembles as well as with Sigiswald Kuijken. I have done much work with the American conductor, keyboard player and musicologist Joshua Rifkin: we performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with two singers on each part in the BBC Proms and the B minor Mass with one singer to a part! The latter meant each singer was a member of the chorus as well as a soloist! And I have sung in Baroque opera, Peri’s “Euridice”, Monteverdi’s “Orfeo”, etc.

PH: You have made well over 100 recordings.

SV: Yes. I have recorded extensively with Gardiner, Sigiswald Kuijken, Gustav Leonhardt, Pinnock and Hickox – including music of Bach, Purcell and Handel but not just Baroque music. As digital recording came into its own, record companies were make a great number of recordings.

I have a great love of the songs of British composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956). When I was in my early 30’s I decided I would like to record his songs and wrote to a number of recording companies, receiving refusals from them all. Then, one day, a letter came from his widow Joy Finzi, in which she wrote that the Finzi Trust was interested to record his songs and would I like to sing them? It was an extraordinary opportunity for me. I recorded them with Hyperion and this led on to more recordings with the same company – recordings of English songs, French songs and Lieder.

PH: Would you like to talk about your work in teaching?

SV: Yes. What I love to do is coaching singers, with the emphasis on interpretation rather than voice production. I do that one day a week at the Royal College of Music (London), also teaching at Clare College, Cambridge. I also hold master classes in several locations – at universities, in schools and at Dartington Hall (Devon). I encourage the students to find the right “sound” for the song at hand, to communicate with their hearts and in the spirit of the language of the song.

My wife and I also host song days and song weekends in our barn at Ansells Farm. Some have a theme. These attract a variety of keen singers – students, amateurs and teachers.

PH: Let’s go back to the subject of interpretation.

SV: I recently completed a PhD in communication in song at the University of York, this subject being central to my teaching and the focus of my own singing. The research is about historical performance and goes right back to Aristotle, the psychology of reception on the part of the audience and the use of imagination on the part of the singer. It meant reading dozens of books by singing teachers, composers, actors, directors, philosophers, psychologists, etc. The bibliography runs to about 280 books and papers; it was a process whereby one book led onto many more, actually, a never-ending search process. My writing deals with the singer’s precise feeling for a song, who the singer is in the song, who the singer is addressing and whether the audience is “present” or not. It has to do with the theory of acting, with theatrical concepts, who the actor is and to what extent the singer inhabits that role. Of course, the singer’s own personality and imagination are involved. A lot of singers are happy to settle for a general emotion; I, however, am convinced that the singer needs to be more specific in order to convince his/her audience.

PH: What role does your audience play?

SV: A very active role. Firstly, the people present at the concert are there out of choice. They are attentive and supportive, they are important to the “partnership”. I would rather sing to a small attentive group than to a larger less involved audience.

PH: What is on your performing program at the moment?

SV: I am playing the Ferryman in Benjamin Britten’s “Curlew River”. The performance will be in Suffolk, where it was premiered in 1964.

I will be performing in “Celebrating Grainger 2011”, a three-day event from February 17th to 20th 2011 at the Kings Place Concert Halls, London that will mark the 50th anniversary of Australian composer Percy Grainger’s death.

PH: Stephen, when not busy with music, what other interests do you have?

SV: I love gardening. One favorite annual outing for me is to the Great Dorset Steam Fair to see to see the huge collection of working steam traction engines; historic machinery and industrial archeology interest me. I also enjoy making things. I recently made some big oak doors for our house.

PH: Stephen, many thanks for your time and for this interesting discussion.