LESLEY GUY

Interview with Lesley Guy, about her time in the New Philharmonia Chorus 1968-1972

Lesley is my mother. I am curious to find out about her evident passion for singing & music.

Lesley Guy, aged 27 in the 1970s. She is wearing heavy black glasses, a ginger bakerboy hat & a very short dress underneath a very short ginger & cream coat. An Irish lady made her the outfit. The lady in front of her in the photograph was an architect.

Every January there was a concert in Madrid. This photograph is from a calendar dated 1970.

Herr Pitz, German chorus master.

How old were you, what year when you joined the The New Philharmonia Chorus? 1968. Aged 27.

How long were you in the choir for? 4 years

What were your motivations at the time for joining the choir? It had been a dream of mine for many years to get into a first class European choir. This one was considered the best in England and had a very high reputation abroad, not only in Europe but also in America. One member of the choir went to America and just on the strength of having been in this choir with Herr Pitz (a reputable German chorus master who flew to London every week for our rehearsals, director of Bayreuth festival) she was allowed to join a world famous professional opera house chorus.

I’d tried to get in twice and they were very fussy. At the first audition I was very nervous and I sang a piece by Purcell. It was in the Ghandi Hall which seemed huge with an elderly pianist at one end and me at the other. The pianist was a very fine professional accompanist in fact. I didn’t succeed in getting in.

The second audition, one year later, was in a smaller rehearsal room. You could hear noises from other rehearsal rooms down the corridor of bassoons, violins and all sorts. I’d chosen a better piece and that time I was accepted straight in. That was a year later, so remember to never give up! Within a year of that I had another audition with Herr Pitz to be accepted into the semi-chorus. That time he didn’t bother to let me sing the exercises. I had chosen another piece by Purcell, 'Sweeter than Roses' which is very taxing both musically and technically.

He put me straight into the semi-chorus which is a small hand-picked group of the best voices in the chorus. That really felt like a feather in my cap!

What are your earliest memories of wanting to sing or singing? Always sang a lot. I was very carsick as a child. At weekends people used to go for rides in their car. To take my mind off my sickness the family all sang rounds, 'London’s Burning' etc to stop me from feeling ill. My Dad had a beautiful Irish tenor singing voice, as also did my Grandma and Mum sang well. I learned piano, developing my interest in music. I continued a bit with that after leaving school but I really wanted to sing in a good choir and became more interested in Oratorio.

I met your father a few years after joining the choir. I didn’t meet him in the Philharmonia, but at Chiswick Music Centre where I had studied singing in previous years. I was also in a small motet group called The Chandos Singers which was to put on a performance of Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell (again). The conductor, PhiIip Irwin needed more tenors so borrowed them from the Chiswick Music Centre where your father was studying singing at the time. Your father actually was given a solo part in the concert and later joined the Chandos himself. After that I suggested he join the Philharmonia, which he did. He had previously sung in the Birmingham City Choir, another very excellent choir.

Within a year we became engaged and then married.

How important were radios or record players to you? A lot of our performances were on the radio or Television. So we’d rush back home or to our hotel rooms, if we were abroad, to listen to them after the concerts. Unfortunately I missed actually performing in one of the hardest pieces to learn because I contracted 'flu on the night. The choir had spent months learning to sing in Czech Janaceck's 'Glagolithic Mass'. I was very disappointed to have to sit at home, listening to the performance from the Festival Hall on the radio. People listened to the radio more in those days. I learned the music in the choir, not so much from previous knowledge. I have a record of our choir singing.

How important were choir masters to your artistic development? Well Herr Wilhelm Pitz was the best and he used to make us sing one row at a time as Sopranos if he suspected someone was singing off key. ‘If you cannot sing, sing not’ he’d say. He’d walk up and down the rows of ladies to hear which of us was flat. It was scary and if you knew that it was you, you simply wouldn’t sing. He was a very fine, strict trainer, the very best; since then I’ve not been taught by anyone like that, since getting married and moving to rural Tewkesbury.

How many times a week did you have to practice? Well it depended on how near to a concert we were. Usually it would be twice a week. Concert schedules could be hefty. Then near a concert there would be a quite a few more rehearsals to attend. There would be a considerable amount of studying music at home. Everyone would need a piano at home.

Is the narrative, the story of a song, the words themselves important to you & how far? At the time it wasn’t except when we did Brahms' 'German Requiem, the Verdi Requiem and Haydn's 'Creation' sung in German; also Bach's 'St Matthew Passion'. I now realise much was straight out of the Bible. Nowadays, as a born again Christian I find it wonderful but even then I found the words very inspiring, especially The Messiah, Handel although the Philharmonia never performed this as it is written for a much smaller choir, but over the years I have sung it many times with other choirs – the Chandos and local choirs. As a soloist, singing locally in later years, the words of art songs (as opposed to oratorio or opera) were very important. Songs by Schubert, Schumann or Wolfe told often very sad or romantic stories. I particularly love English folk songs arranged by Benjamin Britten.

Apart from your husband were there any other lasting friendships or creative relationships came out of that time? Yes, Janet was a very good friend at that time with a wonderful soprano voice, also in the semi-chorus. She involved me in her local choir with solos, duets etc

Any unusual memories? I went to Barcelona one time and my room-mate and I stayed in a horrible hotel with cockroaches & beetles. Well we overslept the morning after the concert and the coach arrived at 6.15am to take us to the airport. The whole coach was waiting and we boarded the coach, half dressed, no make-up, thoroughly embarrassed and very dishevelled having packed our luggage in two minutes' flat!

Another time we went to Madrid and I had a Cuban (married) friend who was living in Madrid. He insisted that I and another of my friends meet up with him and his friends. Well we were in a hurry to get back to a concert in the Teatre Real after meeting them but these Cubans were ‘manana manana’. They took us to a beauty spot in Segovia and arranged to meet us back there later that afternoon to take us back to the opera house in Madrid. We were waiting there at this aqueduct for them for over an hour and a quarter. We had only 45 minutes when at last they arrived to get to the stage at the Teatre Real, Madrid. We did get there in a real panic and the men drove like dervishes!

Also one time we were singing in Bath, at a place called the Forum. We were excited, anticipating that it would be a place of beautiful architecture. It turned out to be a corny cinema with very few changing rooms. The facilities were totally inadequate to house a full choir and a large orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra. It was very amusing. The acoustics of the old cinema however left much to be desired.

At the Edinburgh Festival, my first season with the choir, the organisers forgot to include me in the seating arrangements and there was no seat allotted to me on the tiers at the back of the orchestra in the Usher Hall. I had to sit in the aisle, so I stuck out like a sore thumb! On the journey there we slept in sleepers on the train. There were parties in the sleeper units and it was great fun.

Did you achieve your dream? Yes and more.

Any regrets? There was one strange performance of Holst's Planets where the American conductor, Lorin Maazel wanted to create an eerie sound. We had to walk off stage and sing as we walked to the back of the stage, up some stairs, to where it was dark and peculiar. I was ashamed because it was difficult in the dark and I didn’t do it well.

The good thing about a choir is… it can be professional. You are treated as such. Not as a bunch of amateurs. I was very proud to sing with this famous choir. The massed sound of singing is amazing.

The most important thing for me about that time was… when singing in that choir all over Europe it was as if all the rest of my life was just existing out there. What mattered was that I was living, this was me, true, deep me, now, just singing. Something deep inside of me could come out. It is similar now when I sing at church in worship in a different way. Every bit of you is involved, the way you stand and the way you breathe.