Introduction and Allegro and the double bass

It all began, somewhat improbably, in a secondhand bookshop in Nottingham – one of those old buildings on the Derby Road, crammed full of musty volumes, maps and engravings, and shelf upon shelf of unreadable histories of nations, court cases and families long since dead and buried. I had a free afternoon after a rehearsal and was nosing around piles of Edwardian sheet music on the floor, when my eye was drawn to a copy of Leaves from the Journals of Sir George Smart. Smart was an organist, a conductor of sorts, and a leading light in London’s Philharmonic Society who was responsible for commissioning the Symphony No. 9 from Beethoven and directing its first, somewhat chaotic, British performance. The story goes that the recitative in the final movement was written for the great double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti, who lived and worked in London for the best part of half a century and whose life I was researching. I looked him up in the index and there, to my astonishment, was a note mentioning a duet by Rossini written for Dragonetti to play with Sir David Salomons, a wealthy banker and amateur cellist. A totally unknown work for my instrument by a great composer? This was bait indeed, and set me on a trail that was to lead to libraries in other parts of the country where I knew Dragonetti had played.

My career as a young freelance bass player had been taking its course, and I was lucky enough to get involved with chamber orchestras, the Nash Ensemble, various touring ballet companies and some lecture recital work demonstrating the instrument to school children in Hertfordshire. It was on one of the school days, going back to London by train, that someone who happened to be travelling in the same carriage enquired whether I ever gave lecture recitals for adults? Why not, I thought? So I was booked. I prefer to forget the occasion itself as I had ambitiously programmed two block-busting concertos that I had studied at the Royal College of Music, and a new solo work by the late John Hall who accompanied me for the concertos. My fingers were raw and my arms ached at the end of the evening; I still had much to learn. But with the aid of a good sense of humour I had managed to get away with it, albeit as an inexperienced recitalist with precious little suitable repertoire. This was soon to change, however, and over the years I must have given more than a thousand lecture recitals in places as far flung as the Sydney Opera House and Kathmandu!

Eventually the manuscript of the elusive Rossini Duetto turned up at an auction and was bought by a wealthy Swiss collector. I was disappointed not to have put in a bid myself, but I was able to get permission to edit it for performance. It simply had to be heard in London as it had been un-played since its composition in 1824. So I booked the Purcell Room, had a poster designed and in 1969 gave the first public recital by an English bass player in a London concert hall within living memory. Christopher van Kampen and I played the Duetto, and Elisabeth Lutyens wrote me a piece for the occasion – “It will only be six minutes,” she said, “as nobody will want to listen to a double bass for longer than that.” The remainder of the programme comprised unknown repertoire that I had unearthed from various places. The concert sold out and was kindly reviewed in the national press. ‘Mr Slatford’, wrote one critic, ‘gave an entertaining evening on his large and formidable instrument.’

Unable to interest any publisher in my newly-discovered mini-masterpiece, or any other of the interesting pieces I had found, I resolved to print it myself. There were few self-publishers in those days and the ‘engraving’ was done on a musical typewriter, then a relatively new contraption. Yorke Edition, my small, specialist imprint, had unexpectedly taken off, and within weeks I had requests for music from Brussels, Berlin and Tokyo.

Recalling the maxim ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, the following year I successfully auditioned for the Park Lane Group with my accompanist Clifford Lee. We were offered half a programme in their important Young Artists series. But what on earth would we play? Our second Purcell Room appearance was hardly an occasion to be dragging out hackneyed concertos with orchestral reductions and in any case one of the objects of the exercise was to play new music.

As chance would have it, at around that time I happened to be playing in a concert at St John’s, Smith Square, and on the programme, which I believe was being broadcast, was Lennox Berkeley’s Serenade Op. 12. It was a work I had always enjoyed and it was fairly standard string orchestra repertoire in those days. There was initially no proper platform at St. John’s and so the audience sat practically on top of the performers. On this occasion they were so close that I had to ask for a little more room in order to play. At the end of the piece the orchestra acknowledged the applause and the gentleman who I had all but decapitated with my over-enthusiastic playing, stood up and took his bow as the composer. I had been playing almost in Lennox Berkeley’s lap! The opportunity to meet him was too good to miss, and I hurried to introduce myself before the audience disappeared. Mr Berkeley said that he had been fascinated by my playing, and so I asked him about a possible commission, mentioning that Elisabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Maconchy had written for me, and that the Gulbenkian Foundation had offered to fund three commissions. ‘If all else fails,’ I wrote to him, on 6 February 1971, ‘then I shall finance it myself: could you let me know the sort of figure you require?’

A meeting was arranged and I went to play for my newly-found composer with my accompanist Clifford Lee at the Berkeleys’ lovely period house near Regent’s Canal. We got on well and chatted over a cup of tea in the elegant drawing room. The piece was written quite quickly during August and September, and we returned to play it to him. Although he had not written for solo double bass before, the piece needed no alteration, as Lennox had taken great pains to write something that would be useful not only for Clifford and me, but also for other young players looking for interesting repertoire that was both easily accessible and not too technically demanding.

The Arts Council of Great Britain helped with the commission in the days when a simple letter to John Cruft, its then music director, brought a swift and positive reply, followed by a cheque as soon as a work had been completed. We gave Introduction and Allegro its première at the Purcell Room, London, in a 1971 Park Lane Group Young Artists Award concert, becoming the first bass and piano duo ever to play in the long-running and prestigious series.

I wrote to Lennox again in April the following year with a letter from a ‘satisfied customer in Italy’ who had enjoyed the piece. I also mentioned to him that I had played it twenty times already and hoped to put it in a Wigmore Hall programme, to which Lennox replied, ‘I feel very much honoured that my piece should be in your programme; I have rather an affection for it and feel I’m not likely to have many opportunities of hearing it.’

Introduction and Allegro became the twenty-first publication in my Yorke Edition catalogue in 1972, and was reprinted with corrections in 1984. It was first broadcast from the Aldeburgh Festival in 1976 where I presented a programme that included bass quartets that went under the title of ‘Double Bass Fourum’. It has since been set on examination and competition syllabuses the world over and though I have long since retired from playing, I still feel a sense of pride in having secured such a useful piece for the repertoire from such an experienced and respected composer.