<<  -- 7 --  Bill Newman    AFTER ANTAL DORÁTI

'We arrived at the first rehearsal -- I to listen. There was a sort of listless mood with the players. The weather was rather grey and foggy. So, Toni watched them, and looking at them said: "Gentlemen, may I remind you what a tremendous privilege it is that you can earn your money making music, instead of working in a Post Office stamping letters!" They immediately sat there in different positions. Suddenly, each appeared alert. He had this talent for saying the right thing for the occasion.'

He could be exactly the opposite. 'Not in my time. There could be some relapses, but only with Hungarian orchestras. With his own countrymen, he sometimes lost his temper. At the start of recording the Haydn Symphonies. But never, later.'

I told Ilse about one occasion with the London Symphony Orchestra when Dorati literally exploded, and walked out of the session. This was at the recording of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, where he made some ruthless comments about the slapdash attitude of players finding it very difficult to play this music for the first time. They were then an ensemble of young players. Afterwards, Hugh Maguire, the leader, came into the control room requesting Doráti to be more tolerant, as they respected his discipline and were trying their best. And he grunted: 'All right, I go back!' Five minutes later the recording was resumed.

Musical Partnerships

What were your first recordings together? 'The Haydn Concerti. We played the D major quite often. But we also performed Chopin and Schumann. I also had twenty Mozart Concerti in my repertory. He was always my favourite composer, and I concentrated on his music for a long time. I was brought up on Mozart at the Salzburg Mozarteum. On Toni's eightieth birthday at the Royal Festival Hall, London, we performed Beethoven's Concerto No 2 in B flat, to be followed by the Symphony No 9.'

'I performed Toni's Concerto over twenty times, which is something of a record, and at a Henry Wood Prom in the early 1980s we performed the Bartók No 3. Then there was the Strauss Burleske.'

A lovely piece! 'I think so, too. But do you know what a London critic wrote? "Miss von Alpenheim wasted her talents on a very weak Strauss piece." I performed it also on an RPO tour of Germany, and enjoyed it tremendously.' Tchaikovsky No 1? 'Only when I was very young. But I decided it was not really my piece. I am not one of those tigers of the piano, and prefer the music of the Classical Tradition. It is closer to my heart.'

There were occasions, though, when he was away doing opera and orchestral concerts, where you had to carry on your own career. Recitals, perhaps concerts with other conductors? 'You know, I had to make a decision. As we had both met rather late in our lives, I wished to make a compromise. I wanted to be a lot of time with him. We did a lot of concerts together. When he was performing in London, I arranged my recordings of Haydn Sonatas there, a project which took over two years. I did the same in America when he was there, I kept myself busy in this part of the world. But it worked out very well.'

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