Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake talking to Sean Rafferty
BBC Radio 3 In Tune, 15 December 2009
This interview can be heard through the Radio 3 website until Tuesday 22 October.
SR: Half a century not out, the stars turning out to celebrate the birthday of the man they love to have at the piano…
…Now are you sitting comfortably? Shhhhh, it’s curtain up…
Ives — Memories: Performer: Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano). Wigmore Hall Live Click CD cover for details
SR: Memories. A little song by Charles Ives sung sublimely by Gerald Finley, in magnificent voice the other day with the London Symphony Orchestra when he sung his first Iago in Verdi’s Otello the LSO with Colin Davis. Julius Drake at the piano, and he’s here after 6 o’clock celebrating something of a milestone with some wonderful music of course.
[... after 6 o’clock]
SR: Mark Padmore, Gerald Finley, Ian Bostridge, Joyce DiDonato, Alice Coote among others are having a party. Fireworks please.
Stravinsky — Fireworks: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa (conductor). RCA VD 60541, tr 15
SR: We have fireworks for Julius Drake next week when he’ll be joined by among others the great American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, here with Reynaldo Hahn on the Venetian lagoon, a perfect place for sweet nothings in the moonlight.
Reynaldo Hahn — Sopra l’acque indormenzada: Joyce DiDonato (soprano), Julius Drake (piano). Wigmore Hall Live. Click CD cover for details
SR: A little intimacy in a Venetian lagoon, with the gondolier apparently not looking. Sopra l’acque indormenzada by Reynaldo Hahn sung by Joyce DiDonato with Julius Drake at the piano. Well Joyce is flying in to sing with Julius at Wigmore Hall next week, erm, just one of the great voices joining him to mark his 50th birthday and to raise money for young musicians. He’s playing, of course, but it’s not all singers, Nicholas Daniel, BBC Young Musician at the age of 18, one of the greatest oboe players is there too, theirs is a very long partnership from the days of a little duo that they had called Menagerie, and they’re both in to play especially for us In Tune, beginning with Schumann.
Schumann arr. Howard Ferguson — Canon for pedal piano: Performer: Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Julius Drake (piano). BBC Studio Recording
SR: Thank you very much indeed Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake playing specially for us, and that’s one of the canons for pedal piano by Schumann arranged for them by Howard Ferguson. Well Schumann’s always been a passion of Julius’s, and he’s allowed to indulge any passion he wishes at the moment [JD: laughs] coz it’s all a little prelude to your birthday celebrations and you’ve got the stage at Wigmore Hall groaning with talent [JD: yeah] if they all fall off [JD: laughs] there’ll be no concerts in the next year!
JD: Oh Sean! No I’m a very lucky man, I’ve got a concert which I’ve been able to put together at the invitation of the Wigmore Hall, with the excellent excuse that it’s my birthday, and I’m thrilled and touched and honoured that so many of my closest musical friends are joining me.
SR: Wonderful. Well we’ll be talking to Nick shortly as well, coz you two go back a long way. Singers though are the main passion aren’t they? Working with the voice
JD: Nobody’s more of a passion for me than Nick! [laughter]
SR: A very old relationship and you’re still speaking
JD: Actually it’s interesting because when I was at Music College I didn’t play with singers at all, I played with instrumentalists. In fact it was at Music College that I developed a passion for chamber music having only played when I was at school, at a music school, I played solo, the solo repertoire. At Music College I started playing with wonderful people like Nick and thought “This is the life for me, chamber music is for me”. Then in my early 20s when I was going around doing concerts with Nicholas a lot, I particularly wanted to get to know this wonderful song repertoire, I sort of fell in love with it, and Nick and I put together a programme called The Menagerie, and the premise of that was that Nick and I plus a guest singer would present a programme around the theme of animals, admittedly a very loose theme, but it was a great chance for me to start to work with singers and meet singers.
SR: So which came first, the passion for chamber music or the love of the poetry which you have to really immerse yourself in as well don’t you? The words
JD: Yes well it really was… looking back… I mean, I’ve always been passionate about the piano and I’ve played since I was seven, and as I say I went to a music school and was able to practise a lot and work hard on the solo repertoire, and then went to the Royal College of Music, and literally I think on my first day or my second day, started playing chamber music, and then it was a… yes exactly that, once I left college what I loved about song and why I fell in love with it was this extra element of the words, and the languages, and it added something or gave me something else which I became terribly interested in and have remained so.
SR: do you remember a sort of Damascene moment where you played with a voice that you particularly find absolutely enthralling. A real high
JD: No, no because I’m not, I’m not a, it’s not that I’m nuts about voices actually, I’m nuts about chamber music and I think of playing with singers as chamber music in exactly the same as when I’m playing with Nick or indeed playing a piano quintet which I occasionally do. Erm I don’t think of it as any different, it’s the chamber… the fact that you are working with a musician you can relate to, communicate with, admire, and make music with, literally, and whether that’s a wonderful singer or a wonderful oboeist, it’s the musician that I respond to, and that element of making music together which I love.
SR: there must be some that you wouldn’t work with again! Are there?
JD: Mmmmm one or two, but very few… considering how many… very few. No. [SR: laughs]
SR: Schumann we heard you to begin with. Schumann is one composer that you absolutely adore. Is that because [JD: Mmm] not just because of his conflicting personalities, but does he do something special in the piano part even of his songs [JD: Oh yeah] and his chamber music?
JD: Schumann for me is up there with the Gods, yes absolutely, up there with Schubert and a few others, I’ve always felt a tremendous connection with his music, as of course millions of other people do as well, and I adore playing it, whether it’s songs or chamber music.
SR: Well, it’s very good to have you with us, err it’s going to be a blockbuster of a birthday concert, lots of marvellous voices assembling for you, but Mr Nicholas Daniel waiting with his oboe, we’re going to meet him in a moment. You’re going to do the andante from the oboe sonata by Howells, not often done or certainly I think it only had its premiere in the 1980s amazingly.
JD: Yep, absolutely yes, and we were very closely involved with that and made one of the first recordings of it. It was buried after Leon Goossens said he didn’t think it was playable, it was written for Leon Goossens, and Howells was shy about it and he put it in a cupboard and it was only rediscovered in the early 80s which was when we recorded it, but it’s a piece that’s been very close to Nick and I’s heart ever since.
SR: Thank you. Well we’ll hear the andante from it now, playing especially for us in the studio Julius Drake with Nicholas Daniel on the oboe, music by Herbert Howells.
Howells — Oboe Sonata (andante): Performer: Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Julius Drake (piano). BBC Studio Recording
SR: The andante from the oboe sonata by Herbert Howells played especially for us in the studio by Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake. All a little preface to Julius’s… well… significant birthday [laughter in the background] coming up next Tuesday the 22nd when there’ll be a host of singers and the odd instrumentalist on the stage at Wigmore hall, and I think Nick Daniel definitely you qualify at every single level [ND: laughs] you remind me of a Kavanagh poem I think where he says something like, talking about Christmas music making, “he can make it talk, the melodeon” you can make an oboe talk
ND: I hope so. I mean Julius has been an important part of my whole musical life ever since we first played together, 30 years ago [laughs] and… yeah!
JD: We were 5 and 6 at the time [laughter]
ND: Yes. But it’s interesting hearing you talk before because it occurred to be if you think about what the life of a collaborative pianist is, in fact it’s about being something of a chameleon actually, because you’ve constantly got to create a new duo every time you go on stage with a different artist, and of course you have your regulars, you have you Bostridge’s and the people [JD: the Daniel’s] and the people you work regularly with, but then you know there’s always somebody new who you want to work with and I think part of the trick is seems to be to me that he seems to make a different sound with each person he plays with, so he enters into the spirit of it [SR: hmm] in a very complete way. It must be a funny job in a way from that point of view.
JD: I don’t think about it like that, I think of it much more that you’ve got this great bond, which is the music, you know you’re meeting with somebody, working with them and you both love the music and you want to try and do as much as you can to… to live up to it
SR: Of course you chose well with young Mr Daniel, he was already BBC Young Musician of the Year presumably when you started at the tender age of 18 [laughter] you stole him, you…
JD: Well no! It was, it was a wonderful… as I said at the beginning we also formed The Menagerie, but it was great that Nick was already known because of The Young Musician of the Year, and so the music club doors, if you like, where opened. It got us a great start
ND: In fact the first piece we played together was the Schumann Romances and I remember, I remember the feeling of going to Julius’s parents’ house in Hampstead and just playing this music, and just feeling this extraordinary bond immediately, and then we spent hours working on it, I’d never worked in so much detail with anybody, it was a wonderful experience, and that’s one of the things that stands out about what Julius wants and what I want, we’re never prepared to say well that’s good enough [JD: yeah] you know, we compromise by the end result. In our minds, the conscious sort of chatter that goes on is always critical, but then again you’ve got to let it go, so we both have that in common.
JD: every concert you’re having another go aren’t you
SR: Well you are. It’s a moment in time and that’s it [ND: Yes] the moment arrives and you must give of whatever has come [JD: The best you can] from that moment. Well no wonder you and Mr Daniel have lasted so long with that marvellous singing quality to the oboe and especially your playing of it, it’s a very difficult instrument isn’t it? It’s hard to squeeze the sweetness out of it
ND: We don’t think about things like that
JD: not like the piano. The piano’s a doddle, you know.[laughter]
SR: Well you’re going to play something… Of course this great birthday concert, there are loads and loads of great singers and um of course. Gosh, Gerry Finley’s there and Joyce DiDonato I think is what Nick is going to be now he’ll have to put on some long hair and get an American accent [JD: That’s right, that’s right] because you’re going to transcribe one of her songs for oboe [JD: One of the things I...] she’s singing one of these in the concert isn’t she hopefully
JD: Yes she is hopefully. And one of the things I wanted was to show a bit of some of the range of song repertoire which I love. We have got Schubert and Schumann and Wolf and that whole German repertoire wonderfully represented but there’s also French song, and there’s also Spanish song, which Joyce is very sweetly going to sing, and this is one of them, it’s by Obradors
SR: Obradors. Which one are we having? [JD: Del cabello mas sutil] Del cabello mas sutil – Of the Softest Hair, OK. The song is Del cabello mas sutil, Of the Softest Hair, which you have in your braid I would make a chain so I could bring you to my side, so that I may kiss you each time you take a drink. I think a jug is needed as well, in this case though it’s just the genius of Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake
Obradors — Del cabello mas sutil: Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Julius Drake (piano). BBC Studio Recording
SR: Wonderful music by Obradors played by Nicholas Daniel with Julius Drake. And Joyce DiDonato will be singing that wonderful line that Nick managed to bring to it, in Julius’s gala charity concert, his 50th birthday next Tuesday the 22nd of December at Wigmore Hall in London, in aid of the Jean Meikle charitable Trust which among other things funds the song duo prize at the Wigmore Hall Kohn Foundation International Song Competition, so that’s next Tuesday with everybody, Sophie Daneman, Alice Coote, Joyce DiDonato, Derek Lee Ragin, Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore, Gerry Finley, Christopher Maltman, Nick Daniel of course and Richard Watkins on horn, so it’s going to be quite an occasion. [Click below for details]
