Adrian Partington was appointed to the position of Director of Music at Gloucester Cathedral in 2007 and took up his post in January 2008. The following interview took place in the study in Miller's Green, in the shadow of Gloucester Cathedral, where many of his distinguished predecessors have sat.
PH - Adrian, can you tell me a little about your early musical development and musical education?
AP - Well, my musical education began, I suppose, when I was about three, as my father was a professional pianist and my mother was a professional violinist, and they used to do violin sonatas and chamber music in the evenings, when I was small. Those are my earliest memories. There were no televisions around – I grew up with the sounds of violin and piano music, and those sounds have stayed with me for my entire life. Then I was sent away to be a boarding chorister at Worcester Cathedral, so the next great influence on my life was the wonderful Anglican tradition as taught to me by one of the great church musicians of the last century, and indeed of this century, Christopher Robinson. I would say that they are the two great influences on my life.
PH - So after Worcester Cathedral as a Chorister, where did you go from there?
AP - After Worcester, I went to be Organ Scholar, also for Christopher Robinson as a matter of fact, at St George's Chapel Windsor, and I loved all the ceremony and garter days. The Worcester Lay Clerks when I was a boy, I remember thinking at the time, were rather ordinary. When I went to Windsor the Lay Clerks were absolutely fantastic. Many names who have gone on to be hugely successful – like Paul Hillier, who runs the Hilliard Ensemble, and various other people like that. So the men there were marvelous. Immediately after Windsor, I went to King's College, Cambridge, and little need be said about that as the choir there is always absolutely first rate.
PH - And after Cambridge?
AP: After Cambridge, I went back to Worcester - my life has been cyclical, as you can see. I had a very happy few years as Assistant Organist at Worcester Cathedral. Then I went, very briefly, to a teaching job at an independent girls school for two years, which I really loved, and learned a lot about dealing with females in the music profession, as I had spent my entire life dealing with males! And then after that, I went self-employed, as I got a job at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, running the newly established youth choir and being Associate Chorus Master, and playing the organ and piano in the orchestra. Those years were Rattle years, when Rattle was absolutely at his prime in Birmingham, so they were marvelous. Shortly after getting the Birmingham jobs, I got a lectureship at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and became Chorus Master of the BBC Welsh Chorus, which is now called the BBC National Chorus of Wales. So, we decided to live in Ross-on-Wye, because that was halfway between Birmingham and Cardiff, I spent a life on the M5 and the M4. Thrilling years, they were.
PH - And that was the beginning of your involvement with the BBC?
AP - Yes. I've been employed by the BBC now for, let's see, 14 years, and I've had all sorts of interesting things to do for them, including recording the soundtrack of one series of Doctor Who. They once sent me to Texas, to train a choir for them – the Houston Symphony Chorus. And I've done all sorts of things like conducting at the Last Night of the Proms, the televised link to London from Swansea. So, it's been terribly exciting, and its a link that I am continuing for the benefit of Gloucester Cathedral.
PH - What influenced your decision to come back into Cathedral music after so long away from it?
AP - Well, my background is in Cathedral music, and you can't easily forget the experiences of a lifetime. And, we had lived near Gloucester for a long time, so I was quite quickly made aware that the Cathedral post was going to become vacant last year, when Andrew Nethsingha decided to leave, and Gloucester, of all the English Cathedrals, has always had a place in my affections. Of course, I remember it from Three Choirs Festivals when I was a boy, and when I was Assistant at Worcester, and so the point of things were that the building has always thrilled me, and still does, the choir I heard at John Sanders' memorial service was fantastic – far better than I imagined it could be, much better, if I may say so, than the Worcester Choir when I was Assistant Organist there. And I suppose the negative way of looking at it is that I was simply worn out: I spent so many hours on the road. I did last year, you see, 35000 miles. A lot of work for Raymond Gubbay, you know the promoter. I thought nothing of driving to Glasgow to conduct a Messiah, that sort of thing. So, inspiration from the building and the choir, a desire to recapture the music of my youth, so to speak, and general weariness of being self-employed. Those were the principal issues.
PH – And how are you finding the move to Gloucester – settling in and the first two or three months?
AP – I've found it incredibly exciting. Obviously, it's been really really hard work – I don't start work later than 6.30 in the morning even on a Sunday. It's the incidental things that are so time-consuming. People wanting things, people in the diocese, RSCM, all those other things, composers sending me music that they wish me to perform – all that stuff. Dealing with the chorister parents, dealing with small admin matters: those are the things that take the time. But I so far have found them interesting, and I want to do them. I've thoroughly enjoyed the choir. It's been great getting back to working with boys again, as I've been dealing with professional women mostly, and of course big amateur choral societies as well, but boys have a way, which I had forgotten, of committing themselves to the music in a way that even mature and experienced women don't. They have a sort of unconscious grasp of what is required, particularly in performance. Several times this term, I have gone into evensong thinking 'My God, what on earth is going to happen here?', as I haven't been able to spend enough time on this, and yet they've absolutely sung it brilliantly. Though I'm not going to take it for granted. So, it's been a voyage of rediscovery really, and I've found it thrilling.
I've just worked out that we've done, between my arrival just after Christmas and Easter, 250 separate pieces of music. It just occurs to me, I've done children's choirs and youth choirs over the years, and we'd be lucky to do 10 pieces of music in a term. And for these lads to have performed 250 pieces of music, it's an enormous number. It's quite remarkable really. And of course, I was a chorister myself, so I sort of went through it, but coming back to it is such an exciting thing, seeing a different way of making music. And of course the choir men here are very good, and I've really enjoyed working with them. They are so helpful and so musical, and so running the Cathedral choir has been fantastically exciting, but extremely hard work, because of the incidental administration that I mentioned earlier.
PH – What about the Three Choirs and your aspirations for your tenure as Artistic Director of the Gloucester Festival?
AP – Well, the first thing to say is that that's possibly the hardest thing I've got to do because last year's Gloucester festival, by any standards, by all the standards of the previous 250 years was one of the very best. And my predecessor managed to pinch quite a lot of the large-scale pieces that I would have chosen to do in my first festival. So, the challenge to me is to make sure that the programme for 2010 is as exciting as that of last year, and also to continue to raise standards – think of ways for the chorus to me made better (they were excellent, I'm not criticising them, but they can always be made better), perhaps rethink the rehearsal arrangements, perhaps rethink the way pieces are divided between the choruses. All sorts of little things like that. So really the challenge is to find a programme that is as exciting as last year's, and to build on the improvement in standards which again is totally evident to me. I mean, when I was last at the core of the enterprise was 1990, 17 years ago, so something really has happened, and the whole thing was so much better than I remember it being. I just hope to build on what has already been achieved.
PH – What do you think you have had the most pleasure out of across your musical career?
AP – If I give you an honest answer to this, it's going to seem like I'm in the wrong place. Or you may think I'm being sentimental, but the thing that has given me the greatest pleasure is playing chamber music, and the one thing that I regret since coming to Gloucester is that I haven't got the time to play the piano. I've jolly well got to get down to it though, as I've got some concerts coming up! I have a duo with a violinist – a lady called Margaret Faultless, who I was at university with. She's the leader of the OAE (Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment) and for the last four or five years, we've gone around this country, and Germany, doing period instrument performances of the great violin and piano pieces. Our researches have so far taken us as far towards the present day as Elgar. And there is of course a thrill about making music in a glorious building like Gloucester Cathedral, and I remember Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College Cambridge, and all the conducting I have done – the pieces that have completely bowled me over when I've been directing them are The Dream of Gerontius, A Child of Our Time, Belshazzar's Feast. But when you're conducting you're making other people do their best, and the thing about chamber music is there is an intimacy, and an intensity as a performer that's not quite the same thing as when you are in charge of a lot of other people doing things. So, I'd probably say that the greatest satisfaction and musical joy I've had is playing violin and piano music .... which is probably not what you wanted to hear, but it is the truth!
PH – You talked earlier about Christopher Robinson as an influence on your career. Are their any other interesting people or events that have influenced you in your musical life?
AP – I suppose, though I sound like a football manager saying this, but I'm always influenced by the people that are around me, whether they are famous musicians or just the humblest chorister. You learn from everybody. The greatest influences on me were Christopher Robinson in the early part of my career, Simon Rattle who I've already mentioned – an astonishing man. His musicianship is far beyond anything that I've encountered elsewhere. Other great influences, I have to say are Richard Hickox, as I was his chorus master in Cardiff for 8 years, and I learned a terrific amount from him; not so much musical things, but how to run rehearsals, how to organise things, how to work at high speed, how not to forget things in performance, how to prepare scores, because he is such a practical musician. And the current musical director of BBC Wales I've learned an enormous amount from – he's a Swiss chap called Thierry Fischer. So, I suppose working with the BBC has meant that I've had the opportunity to work with some fantastic musicians. I mean, the list is endless: I've chorus mastered for Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, John Eliot Gardner, Mark Elder, most of the great conductors of the last 40 years I've had the privilege to work for and work alongside. All these chaps have left their mark on me, and what I hope I'm doing in coming to Gloucester is in a small way acting as a sort of conduit for the experiences I have gleaned in nearly 20 years of being a freelance musician, and bringing that style of musicianship into the Cathedral world; and I'm sure that having been out of it for such a long time has given me a different perspective on music. And it's also given me a joy in even simple things: we're doing Byrd Short Service in evensong tonight, and I was thinking about it in the Boys practice this morning. It's an astonishingly crafted and beautiful piece of music, and a lot of the chaps who have never left Cathedral music probably think 'Oh, Byrd Short, dull little piece', but it's not. It's wonderful. So, outside influence, that's what I'm hoping will be a feature of my service here.
PH – All of those orchestral influences have presumably had an effect on the development of your conducting style.
AP – Yes, I suppose so. I haven't looked at myself recently, but I have had lots of lessons, conducting lessons, and I find that what works for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra works for a kiddies choir too. I mean, everybody's after, or should be after, clarity first, and expression second. And I haven't been aware that people can't follow me since I've been here, so I suppose I'm doing something right.
Somebody I should have mentioned earlier, but didn't is Sakari Oramo. He was marvelously helpful as a conductor. You see, everybody who is making music is after the same thing really, and is doing it in the same way. It sounds a pretentious thing to say but it's true. And other conductors I've taken scores to – Mark Wigglesworth, not a household name, but terrifically helpful. I took some choral music to him (he's an orchestral conductor) and he has such a different view of things. I remember spending a couple of hours with him on the opening chorus of the Verdi Requiem, and he just made me think about the music in such a different way. So I hope that all the orchestral conducting I have done has a positive influence on the choral stuff I'm now doing.
PH – The one thing we haven't touched on, going back to your personal life, is your family. Tell me about them?
AP – They should have come first, of course. I met Clare, my wife, when I went to be Organ Scholar at St George's, Windsor, so we've actually been together for .... 32 years. And for 26 of those, we've been married. We have 5 wonderful children: Tom, the eldest is 25, and he's just got a new job as a supervising social worker in Tewkesbury, and then there's Benedict who is doing his GCSEs at Newent; Miriam is 12, and is also a Newent – we're hoping she'll join the youth choir in the Autumn, when she's a little bit older. Then there's Jacob, who is a Cathedral Chorister, and thoroughly enjoying it - actually Tom was a chorister at Worcester for a time as well – and I'm so proud that one of my boys can sing in this wonderful choir here. And then there's little Joey who is 5 and has lots to offer as well.
PH – Adrian, thank-you for your time.
AP – A pleasure.
