A moment that we all knew would come has come, and is no less painful for that.  On Sunday evening I was chatting in the kitchen with my nephew who realised from my chirpy demeanour that I had not yet learnt the news – that Colin Davis (that’s Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE) had passed away that Sunday evening, 14th April, 2013.  I felt the huge sense of loss that comes with the passing of such a great man and the knowledge that I shall never again sing under his baton, or be reprimanded for the chewing of vowels, or laugh at his humour or enjoy the twinkling of his eyes or even have that vague sense that – across the generations – I am in the presence of a rather attractive man…

When my father died in 2006 the first job my mother gave me was to phone people – cousins, friends – to share the news.  Without exception people responded, spontaneously, with some expression of sadness and a story.  Over time I have come to understand that such stories are an important part of a process that we go through when we lose someone dear to us, a celebration of the person we have lost and of the relationship that we had with the person we have lost.  They are also part of a transition, a process… of all the words that carry connotations of consultant-speak and which, nonetheless reflect our experience.  With the death of someone dear to us comes a sense, at times overwhelming, of the loss we have suffered.  Over time, though, we come to accept our loss and to find that we have, still, a rich store of memories – of stories – to revisit, times that we celebrate again and again and again.  In this posting, I want to share some of my own rich store and to express my gratitude for many experiences of singing with Sir Colin Davis as well as my deep love and affection for the man himself.

As it happens, three generations of my family (given the almost 20-year age gap between my parents you could almost say four) experienced Sir Colin’s musicianship directly.  As a fiery young man – angry, even – Sir Colin conducted my parents in Reading.  My mother remembers his fiery temper and a tempestuous relationship with his first wife, April Cantelo.  When I first sang with Sir Colin, decades later, some of this temper remained (and it may have been the same gruffness that my nephew did not enjoy as a young composer with the National Youth Orchestra some twelve years ago).  In the early days of working with Sir Colin, he often invoked the presence – imminence, even – of death, inviting us to step into the shoes of someone who feared death as part of engaging with and performing Verdi’s Requiem or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.  In his 60s he would put himself forward as the man who was near to death, though I noticed that, as the years went on and his own death was drawing closer he did this less often.  Nonetheless, it didn’t surprise me to read, in a piece by Edward Seckerson, that he kept a human skeleton in the window of his home as a reminder of our mortality.

I could not speak of my own experience of Sir Colin without talking of my first performance with him of Berlioz’s Les Troyens in the early 1990s.  Sir Colin was, at this stage, established as a champion of Berlioz’s music.  I was a relative novice and so, too, were my fellow members of the London Symphony Chorus.  I made the commitment to sing all of this extraordinary piece of music which we performed in a series of concerts – two concerts worth of music over three days – part I, part II and then parts I and II back to back on an afternoon and evening.  Sir Colin steered us confidently through the experience with its diversity, rich drama and melodies, and its ability to surprise – I still remember hearing for the first time Hylas’s haunting song at the beginning of Act V, performed by the as yet little known Ian Bostridge.  I thought it unlikely that we would ever sing such an ambitious piece again and laid the experience down in my treasure store.  We went on to sing many pieces by Berlioz and, in time, to return to Les Troyens in 2000 which we recorded as part of the LSO Live series.  It was a fine performance and remains as part of Sir Colin’s rich musical legacy.

Later, I had an experience of Sir Colin’s conducting which I remember for all the wrong reasons, a performance of Verdi’s requiem towards the end of the 1997 London Proms season.  We were due to be conducted by Sir Georg Solti who famously hated to work with amateur choirs.  We were joined by a number of professional singers and Solti’s assistant (an exceedingly tall man – I was half way through our first rehearsal together before I realised that, no, he wasn’t standing on a box) repeatedly asked to hear “the professionals” and then “the amateurs”, something which was hardly likely to inspire.  In the midst of our rehearsals we heard of the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was our patron and asked for this concert to be dedicated to her which it was.  Five days later Sir Georg also died and it was Colin who stepped in to conduct.  No matter how much he urged us on to greater heights, he also showed great faith in us and we in him.  Suddenly the tables were turned as we gave him what we knew he would want in a concert which took place against a backdrop of deep shock and a nation in mourning.

In 2010 we were all shocked by the death of Sir Colin’s wife, who had been a regular member of his audience as well as his companion for almost fifty years.  We saw Sir Colin’s health deteriorate and were not surprised when he was unable to conduct our January performance of Mozart’s Requiem.  Somehow, it seems fitting that our partnership with him included – ended with – a performance at St. Paul’s Cathedral of Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts (one which prompted my English teacher to contact me via Facebook to say how much he was enjoying the recording).  If ever Sir Colin conducted with a sense of his own mortality and forthcoming death, this must have been one such time.

Over the years we saw Sir Colin soften and enjoyed his increasingly twinkling and avuncular presence.  His musicianship was never in doubt.  I celebrate this giant of a man.