Self-taught great
Michael Vestey
Julian Bream was rightly described by Humphrey Burton on Radio Three last week as one of our greatest living musicians and a clear successor to Segovia. The classical guitarist and lutanist is 70 in July, and to celebrate his birthday and achievements, Radio Three made him the subject of Artist in Focus on Morning Performance throughout the week. It was about time. I suppose, as Bream has been playing professionally for more than 55 years.
Bream talked about his upbringing in south London, the composers he's either commissioned or worked with and the music he's played and transcribed for guitar. His father encouraged him to play the guitar because it was fun but until he was 11 it was mainly jazz. Then, his father brought home a classical guitar record, saying that if he was going to play this instrument it had to be this type of music. He was dubious about his son taking it up as a career; to placate him Bream learned the cello so that he could always play in an orchestra if necessary, 'He was very worried I wouldn't be able to make a living. I might have a career but not a living.' he told Burton.
Although he had a few guitar lessons from an amateur he is really self-taught, which is even more remarkable. When Segovia, who revived guitar music, gave a concert in London after the war, Bream took along a pair of binoculars so that he could study how the great Spanish virtuoso's fingers worked, and he learned a great deal from this. He must have been something of a child prodigy because he made his professional debut at Cheltenham at the age of 13 and his first London appearance at Wigmore Hall when he was 17. As he was making his name as a soloist in the 1950s he began to commission works from the leading composers of the day, among them William Walton, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. Burton wondered if that meant he'd not been satisfied with the existing repertoire for the guitar and Bream agreed. But in those days I was quite a patriot. I wanted to create a British school of musical composition for the guitar.'
He didn't always succeed with composers. 'I tried to get a piece out of Stravinsky but that was a tough nut to crack, I tell you. But I failed. He wrote back to me, a very nice letter, saying he doesn't compose commissioned written music anymore so that was the end of that.' Burton played Bream's BBC recordings over the years since 1957, which he hadn't heard until Radio Three sent them to him last year to select for these programmes. As they're not commercial recordings there are no royalties from them.
Among them were Fernando Sot's Variations on a theme from Mozart's The Magic Flute, opus 9; Mauro Giuliani's Variazione Concertanti (with John Williams); Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland; Haydn's Adagio, arranged from String Quartets; Luigi Boccherini's Guitar Quintet in E minor; Walton's Anon in Love, sung by Peter Pears and the Concerto Elegiaco by the Cuban composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer who is now in his sixties, About the latter Burton asked him what the elegy was of and Bream replied, q think he thinks I'm rather a sad chap! I'm rather good at sad music, perhaps that's why it is.'
John Williams, another great guitarist, of course, is a friend of his though their styles are different. Of Guiliani's Variazioni Concertanti performed with Williams in 1975, Bream said. 'Some people don't think we're good at all. They say that our styles are too diverse and that our ensemble isn't as perfect as it might be. On the other hand, I think that makes our duo a rather interesting one because we are two soloists who come together to make music for pleasure,' Of the Boccherini Guitar Quintet, one of my own favourites, he said the Italian-born composer and cellist had lived in Spain and his music reflected some of the 18th-century cruelties of that country, though this particular piece seems to me to have some of the exuberance of Italy.
As it happens I know Bream; he lives in a neighbouring village in Wiltshire. Some of his recordings were made in the 18thcentury Wardour Castle neo-classical Catholic chapel nearby. He told me recently that it has the most perfect acoustics; that is when low-flying aircraft didn't interrupt him. I'm trying to lure him to Umbria in September so that he can play in one of the most exquisite small 18th-century theatres in Italy, the Teatro Cesare Caporali which survives on a small budget. Although he's semi-retired I hope he comes. It will be an experience to remember in a mediaeval hilltop town where people love music of all kinds.
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