The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

The death at the age of 80 of the conductor Sir Andrew Davis has robbed British music of one of its most ardent champions. Since the announcement of his death this weekend, numerous headlines have linked him with his many appearances at the helm of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, occasions which were enlivened by his lightly-worn bonhomie and mischievous wit. The Last Night, with its succession of patriotic favourites, was something that came naturally to Davis, as did an easy rapport with both his fellow musicians and the audience – something that can’t be said so emphatically about some other conductors who have graced the event. Yet there was very much more to him than Last Nights alone.

Born on 2 February 1944 in Ashridge, Hertfordshire, Davis had piano lessons from the age of five, studied Classics at school (an abiding interest), and found work as a teenager playing the organ at the Palace Theatre, Watford. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, and then as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, during the David Willcocks years. It’s easy to imagine that the young Davis might have gone on to work in the church music sphere, but the opportunity to study with Franco Ferrara at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome set him firmly on the path of orchestral conducting. After a spell as keyboard player with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, he made his professional conducting debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, where from 1970 he was associate conductor.

Davis’s career took off in the 1970s: from 1974–7 he was principal guest conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and then music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1975–88), where his easy, collegial manner and sharp ears made him popular with orchestra and audience. He retained strong links with the Toronto band throughout his life, but in 1988 he took over the reins of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from Sir John Pritchard. His self-deprecating wit and complete lack of ego, combined with a wide knowledge of the repertoire and ability to tackle complex modern scores immediately, disarmed the sceptics. From 1989 he was also music director at the Glyndebourne Festival, working closely with the London Philharmonic Orchestra which formed Glyndebourne’s pit band.

I first witnessed Davis at close hand in vocal and orchestral rehearsals for Glyndebourne’s production of Janáček’s Jenůfa – the second of the three Janáček productions by Nikolaus Lehnhoff which were a highlight of the Davis years. It was clear from the outset that this was a conductor free of any airs and graces, who simply revelled in music-making and was able to convey both his enthusiasm and his passion to his colleagues while bringing out the best in them. Rehearsals were good-humoured but always focused, and these qualities were evident in the performances themselves, which exuded above all a deep love of the music.

In Janáček, Davis was one of the few conductors who came close to Mackerras’s level of punchiness, but he also had an unerring feel for musical lyricism which was evident in his close affinity for British music. The pastoral vein in Elgar and Vaughan Williams, with its rich hints of folk mysticism, was second nature to him. His Enigma Variations and Dream of Gerontius were rightly praised, and when Richard Hickox died before completing his cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies on Chandos, Davis was an ideal choice for the remaining works. Yet he was also supreme in less familiar fare: Elgar rarities, a series of Holst’s orchestral music, as well as works by Bax, Bliss, Bowen, Delius and Goossens.

Davis’s tastes were by no means limited to British music: he made a fine series of Berlioz recordings for Chandos, as well as orchestral works by Charles Ives whose maverick qualities suited him well. More unexpectedly, Davis had an abiding passion for the music of Alban Berg: Graham Vick’s production of Lulu was another hit from the Glyndebourne years, and it was a work Davis returned to when, on retiring from his BBC and Glyndebourne posts in 2000, he became music director at Chicago’s Lyric Opera (Wagner’s Ring and Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage were other highlights there). More recently, a recording of Berg’s Violin Concerto with James Ehnes bore further witness to this enthusiasm, coupled with Davis’s own orchestration of the composer’s Piano Sonata, and to his qualities (highly valued among soloists) as an accompanist. From 2012 he was chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (another group with which he formed a particularly close bond, and which features on many of his Chandos recordings), while remaining resident in Chicago.

No summary of Davis’s career would be complete without mentioning his championing of living composers. These were part of the lifeblood of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and works by composers as different as Anthony Payne, Nicholas Sackman, Hugh Wood and David Sawer all featured in concerts and on disc. The recording of Payne’s elaboration of the sketches for Elgar’s uncompleted Third Symphony remains the NMC label’s top seller, and it made a huge impression on its initial release. New commissions have, of course, always been a feature of the BBC Proms seasons, including the Last Night. And it was at the 1995 Last Night that Davis conducted one of the most notorious of all those premieres, Harrison Birtwistle’s Panic, with soloists John Harle and Paul Clarvis (a recording was issued on Decca/Argo shortly afterwards).

It is another Birtwistle recording, however, The Mask of Orpheus, recorded live at London’s Southbank Centre, that remains among Andrew Davis’s most important recordings: a significant document of a landmark of 20th-century opera, recorded by the BBC and issued on NMC. In our present troubled times, it’s touching to note that one of Davis’s final recordings – shortly to be issued on Chandos, the label which has preserved so much of his art – is the oratorio A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett, another of the many British composers continually championed by this most generous-spirited of all conductors.

Andrew Davis married the American soprano Gianna Rolandi in 1989: she was singing Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos under his baton at the New York Met (a reminder of his talents as a Strauss conductor). Rolandi predeceased him in June 2021; they are survived by a son, the composer Edward Frazier Davis.

Some essential recordings:
Elgar-Payne - Symphony no.3 (BBCSO) NMCD053
Birtwistle - The Mask of Orpheus (BBCSO) NMCD050
Elgar - Enigma Variations, Serenade for Strings (Philharmonia) SIGCD168
Elgar - The Dream of Gerontius, Sea Pictures (BBCSO) CHSA51402
Ives - Orchestral Works Vol.2 (Melbourne SO) CHSA5163
Vaughan Williams - Job, Symphony no.9 (Bergen PO) CHSA5180
Berg - Violin Concerto, etc. (Ehnes, BBCSO) CHSA5270
Stravinsky - Violin Concerto, Apollon musagète  (Ehnes, BBC Philharmonic) CHSA5340
Tippett - A Child of Our Time (BBCSO) CHSA5341