Hard as it may seem after the many decades during which he bestrode the music world, September 10, 2013 marks exactly five years since conductor Vernon Handley died. His final band, the English Symphony Orchestra, have published a tribute page on their website, including an effecting little character sketch by ESO leader Michael Bochman:
"Everyone called him Tod. And the respect and affection for him was total. His beat was everything according to him. He was incredibly clear with the baton and everyone knew exactly what to do when and when something went wrong he always blamed himself. Whether this was really the case or a ruse one never quite knew! He always got the best out of everyone and scarcely ever criticised. He enabled. This meant that every musician was both playing for him/herself and Tod and everyone at the same time. He once said that if you stand in front of an orchestra with your palms up you enable and with palms down you impose. It was one of a myriad of small human points that made him what he was. He made everyone realise their best self. There was an atmosphere of friendliness and amusement in all rehearsals but the music making was completely in earnest. His understanding of English music was the best of his generation, I believe. His enthusiasm for it was probably what stopped him from achieving the dizzy heights of stardom. I think this annoyed him. Personally I preferred him as he was."
Unusually, even among British conductors, Handley specialized in British music on record to the exclusion of almost all else. Although there are works by Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Lalo, Grieg and others in his discography, these are mere pin pricks in the vast blanket of his many records, CDs and in his final years, downloads. Even the collaborations with violinist Tasmin Little, that brought concertos by Brahms, Sibelius and Bruch are nothing in terms of volume to the hours of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Bantock, Bax, Arnold, Stanford and the like. It didn't reflect his wide-ranging repertoire in the concert hall, but it has accounted for the way, already, that he is fondly remembered.
His Vaughan Williams symphony cycle stands as perhaps his most appreciated body of recorded work. But the single disc that brought the most attention is most likely the Elgar Violin Concerto with the young and prodigiously talented Nigel Kennedy (pre-Aston Villa football kit, in the days when "Nige" was still performing in a suit).
His last year, meanwhile, brought a typical mix of rare English repertoire, especially a lavishly produced Chandos set of Bantock's Omar Khayyam with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
Handley's musical pedigree, as a protégé of Sir Adrian Boult (it remains a mystery much remarked upon in British music circles, incidentally, why Handley was never knighted), also helped to shape the young pupil's musical preferences--including introducing him to the music of his beloved Bax.
Early stints with the Guildford and Tonbridge Philharmonics were followed by associate conductor posts with the London Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony and principal conductorships with the Ulster Orchestra (later Conductor Laureate), the Malmo Symphony, the West Australian Symphony and, shortly before he died, the ESO.
After Handley's death, the English music baton seemed to naturally pass to Richard Hickox, whose own shockingly premature death, however, followed soon after. Yet the influence of Handley on Hickox and on those who continue his work now--Martyn Brabbins and Sir Andrew Davis among them--is palpable.
I only ever interviewed Handley once, on the subject of his mentor Boult. Towards the end of what turned into a wide-ranging conversation, I urged him to write an autobiography. Ever modest, he replied benignly, "There's never the time. And anyway, I don't think anyone would really be that interested."
