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Richard Lewis - Lyric Tenor

Our Richard Lewis album is now available  at iTunes

Richard Lewis was, quite simply, one of the finest lyric tenors Great Britain has ever produced.
His wanderings, at the behest of music, took him all over the world and like Nanki-Poo in the
Mikado, a role he played often, Lewis was infinitely versatile.

Richard Lewis was born in Manchester on 10 May 1914. His parents, however, were Welsh, and
it was only his father’s quest for work during the depression that took him out of his natural
element. Being a Welsh family there was music in the home and in the Methodist Chapel. It soon
became clear that the boy had a natural gift for music and an exceptional voice. He began to enter
local competitions winning cups and medals and established himself as a boy soprano of outstanding
quality. He was widely regarded as the North’s answer to Ernest Lough, whose 1927
recording of Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer had firmly established itself among the best sellers
of all time. Alas, there are no recordings of Richard Lewis’s unbroken voice to test the comparison.
An invitation to record for the BBC was thwarted by an untimely cold and came to nothing.
Then his voice broke and was lost for ever. And even if an early disc had survived, the chances
are that few of its admirers would connect it with Richard Lewis, for in those days he was known
by the name on his birth certificate: Thomas Thomas.

Richard Lewis’s journey into professional music making was by no means plain sailing. He left
school at 15 and it was to be nearly ten years before he could embark on any systematic training.
In the meantime he studied music intensely under the guidance of T. W. Evans and he found
work in a cotton fabric factory. He started as a office boy but later put his artistic skill to good
use as a designer. Indeed, there were times when he seriously thought of art and design as a career.
In his spare moments it was always to painting that he turned for recreation.
Of course it was music that won and when at last the chance came to further his studies it
was to the Royal Manchester College of Music that he was sent. His singing teacher was the
bass-baritone Norman Allin, then at the height of his very considerable powers. It was Allin who
eventually advised a change of name. No one, he declared, would take Thomas Thomas seriously.
It sounded too much like a comic Welsh stereotype. So one Thomas made way for his mother’s
maiden name, while the other was dropped in tribute to his favorite tenor Richard Tauber. Thus
Richard Lewis was born.

Lewis’ s studies had to be broken off. War had been declared, and although his natural instincts
were for pacifism it was obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler an exception had to be made.
Lewis volunteered for service and was drafted in the Royal Corps of Signals as the Army had decided
that musicians stood a better chance than most of mastering the intricate rhythms of the
Morse Code.

In fact Lewis’s army career proved to be less of an interruption that it might have been. Once it
was discovered he had a voice opportunities were made for him to sing, especially when the Allies
began to liberate Europe. Smart in his army uniform, he began to fulfill engagements in Belgium,
Norway and Denmark, and thus, at the Army’s expense, continued to learn his trade. It
was through one of these engagements that Benjamin Britten first heard of Richard Lewis and
determined that, when the time came, he would make good use of Lewis’s services.

On being demobbed Richard Lewis resumed his studies, this time at the Royal Academy of Music
in London. But he was by now a seasoned singer. He was, after all, in his early thirties. He was
beginning to be in demand and, up to a point, could name his price. It says much for his determination
to consolidate his musical knowledge that he was able to combine duties as a student
with opportunities as a young professional.

What really put Lewis on the map and swung him into full time professionalism was a performance
in Brighton of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings. This occurred early in 1947.
Britten was so delighted that he engaged Lewis to sing the part of the Male Chorus in the revised
version of the Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne. He thus joined the English Opera Group and in
November found himself singing Peter Grimes at Covent Garden. By the end of the year he was
famous.

Richard Lewis proved to be an outstanding interpreter of Britten’s music, but his relations with
the composer were not always comfortable. Britten was torn between his desire to exploit a superb
voice and his fear that it might overshadow that of his friend Peter Pears. In fact the two
voices were so different that competition scarcely came into the equation. However Britten was
uneasy and showed his ambivalence by rehearsing Lewis only with the greatest reluctance. “I’ve
still not had any rehearsals with Ben” complained the bewildered singer as he prepared The
Rape of Lucretia. “I don’t understand- can’t he find the time?” But with or without the composer’s
advice, Richard Lewis became closely associated with Britten’s music.

The career that followed Richard Lewis’s Benjamin Britten year, if we may think of 1947 in
those terms, was remarkable for its breadth and diversity. Here was a singer who could move
effortlessly from the lightest of music to the most serious, from intimate recital to operatic stage, from great classics to untested music of his contemporaries. He would shine in Mozart and Monteverdi and then go on to create leading roles inWalton’s Troilus and Cressida and Tippet’s Midsummer Marriage and King Priam. He could bring tears to the eyes as Elgar’s Gerontius as easily as he could rivet your attention as Aaron in the first British performances of Schoenberg’s operatic masterpiece. Whether he was called upon to be Pinkerton or Tom Rakewell, he was utterly convincing.

It is not generally known that Richard Lewis had originally been selected to join Kathleen Ferrier
in Bruno Walter’s famous 1952 recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. This was an
opportunity Lewis had to pass up because of other commitments.

Glyndebourne audiences in the 1950s and 60s had particular reason to be grateful to Richard
Lewis. In Mozart Lewis was to be heard as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, as Don Ferrando in
Cosi fan tutte and perhaps most remarkable of all as Idomeneo, King of Crete. It was this last
role that he made especially his own.

Here we are celebrating the career of no ordinary tenor. Apart from the sheer gutsiness and uninhibited
virility of his singing, what shines through again and again in his performances, is the
intelligence and integrity behind them. Small wonder that British composers turned to him
to launch their latest works. Two operatic firsts are especially famous. On 3rd December 1954
he created the part of Troilus in Sir William Walton’s only full length opera. Then scarcely two
months later Lewis went on to create the part of Mark in Tippet’s Midsummer Marriage. What
that says for his powers of concentration and assimilation need hardly be stressed. He was, in
fact, a remarkably quick learner and was blessed with a photographic memory. Tales of his
learning feats abound as in his first encounter with Sir Malcolm Sargent, for whom he was to
work happily for over twenty years. Sargent needed a last minute replacement tenor for a performance
of Beethoven's Missa Solemenis. Lewis agreed to help out, but did not mention that he
had never sung the part. He simply knew he would be able to learn it on the train journey from
London to Liverpool.

So much for Richard Lewis’s career in Great Britain, but it should never be forgotten that he
was equally in demand abroad and especially popular in America. Indeed, so often was he required
to sing in both North and South America that from 1966 to 1972 he found it more convenient
to live in Bermuda, half way, so to speak, between the two Americas. This coincided
with the early days of his second marriage. The first had been to pianist Mary Lingard with
whom he remained friends. His second wife, the soprano Elizabeth Muir, had worked with him at
Glyndebourne and their wedding in the summer of 1963 had been especially memorable for its
music thanks to their Glyndebourne friends. Richard went on to sing Fidelio that same evening,
leaving Elizabeth to wonder if the audience had noticed that the chorus of prisoners seemed
rather more cheerful than usual!

Back in England Lewis’s career continued to prosper although it is strange that none of the London
colleges thought fit to offer him a teaching appointment. As an intensely thoughtful musician,
he would have had so much of value to pass on to young students. For one reason or another
a magnificent opportunity was lost. His recordings , on the other hand, remain as a permanent
inspiration.

Richard Lewis gave his last Gerontius in 1983. The following year he suffered a stroke and his
career, to all intents and purposes, came to an end. He lived on, cared for by Elizabeth, until the
winter of 1990.

Which of Richard Lewis’s recordings should we choose as his testament? Luigi Nono perhaps
whose Sul Ponte del  Hiroshima he sang at the 1963 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts? He sang
it brilliantly, but hated the experience. Maybe the aria Onaway awake beloved from Coleridge-
Taylor’s Haiwatha trilogy which caused Isabel Baillie to ring up in the greatest excitement to
congratulate him on “the most beautiful singing ever.” Or perhaps his Stockholm broadcast of
Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, which he made in November 1958; or the cycle Essence of our Happinesses
by Elizabeth Luytens which he premiered in September 1970? Any of them would do, for
Richard Lewis gave a total commitment to whatever music he was called upon to serve. But I
prefer to recall Richard in a complete rarity, Berthold Goldschmidt’s Mediterranean Songs
which he broadcast the first performance in Britain from the BBC’s Maida Vale studios in 1959.
Michael Hurd © 1995.

Since Michael Hurd wrote this note for us back in 1995 ( this release has had a long gestation)
we have added a recording of a recitative, aria and arietta from Handel’s last oratorio Jephtha.
Richard Lewis was always in demand as an oratorio singer. Such engagements might have been
seen as mere bread and butter to many singers, but here Lewis put just as much thought and effort
into the music as he did in the opera house or in a recital. The short, only 18 bars long,
larghetto For ever blessed is an exquisite example of Richard Lewis’s art.

Elizabeth Muir - Lewis, Richard Lewis’ widow, has recently provided some illuminating commentary on her late husband’s relationship with Benjamin Britten and in particular preparations for his performance of  The Rape of Lucretia. Britten had heard about Richard from an agent who had worked with him during the war and called him to an audition at the Wigmore Hall together with Sir David Webster and Rudi Bing. But when it came to rehearsing the Rape, Britten never worked with Lewis because as Eric Crozier subsequently told him, “Ben knows your top notes are better than Peter’s; he won’t listen Richard”. © 2010 Michael Hodges

Chopin Bicentenary

For the Chopin bicentenary we feature the Piano Sonata No2 often performed by Sergei Rachmaninoff who took liberties with the score that would receive disapproval from today's critics, Elgar's orchestral version of the Funeral March from the Sonata and the E minor Piano Concerto in two versions, one orchestrated by Balakirev and played by Friederick Gulda the other, a cut version, performed by Polish pianist Arthur Rubenstein in 1937.

Out of the Depths - A Prayer for Haiti

We have published Yorkshire composer Nick Morgan's setting of the 1st verse of Psalm 130 ('De Profundis'). Its perfomred by Nick and his seven year old daughter Susie. We are donating the proceeds to Worldvision an organisation that has been in Haiti since 1978 and had a staff of 800 already on the ground and is committed to helping Haiti in the long term. 


It is available as an audio track download  price GBP0.50  and as an MP4 video price GBP1.95.

January is Bach Month at Beulah Extra

This month we feature mainly, but not wholly, organ music by J S Bach at Beulah Extra.

One gem that you can now download is Bach's Cantata No 54 sung by the late Helen Watts.

Helen Watts also features  in  another recently issued Beulah Extra download - the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate by Handel.

Russian music at Beulah Extra

In November we will feature music by nineteenth century Russian composers performed by twentieth century artists. If you can't wait until November just click on the heading of this post.

Freatured compsers are :
Balakirev
Dargomischky
Glinka
Liadov
Mussorgsky
Rimsky-Korsakov
Tchaikovsky

Featured artists are
Sir Thomas Beecham
Sir Adrian Boult
Peter Dawson
Ignaz Friedman
Sir Herbert Hamilton Harty
Enrique Jorda
Helen Lawrence

Van Beinum's Mahler - Coming Soon

First, apologies to those of you who had expected our Van Beinum conducts Mahler disc last month. We were not satisfied with any of the existing translations of the German texts so we commissioned Nick Morgan to write texts that communicate the meaning of the original into 21st century English. Hopefully this has been achieved and we shall be sending artwork to our printer by October 9th. This means the discs will hit the record stores by the end of October with another van Beinum disc, The Art of Eduard van Beinum, close on its heels.

Malcolm Walker writes in his excellent notes for Van Beinum conducts Mahler:

It is half a century since the untimely death of the distinguished Dutch conductor Eduard van Beinum at the early age of 58. In the ensuing decade after World War II he quickly became recognized as one of the most significant of the emerging new group of international conductors. Not only was he Principal Conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, but following an unexpected and sudden début in 1945 for an indisposed Albert Coates, van Beinum became a most welcome and respected visitor to the British capital where he conducted the London Philharmonic regularly, even becoming their chief conductor for two seasons in 1949, before ill health forced his earlier resignation. In 1956 he was musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a single season. His health, never particularly robust, must have contributed to his early death.

Van Beinum's repertoire basically covered the mainstream of Viennese composers but omitted serialism. As a result of the political situation in Holland under the Nazi occupation his range was at that time restricted. It was not until 1945 that he took up Mahler, a composer of whom he later became an admired interpreter, whereas his Bruckner had been long admired. In the area of the 20th-century music he conducted much Bartók, Debussy, Kodály, Ravel and Stravinsky as well as a most positive commitment to contemporary Dutch composers. His performances were never flamboyant, thereby unjustly giving the impression of understatement but he conveyed firm discipline at all times, allied to a lucid clarity of texture and shape, sustained tension and awareness of the music's pulse. Ultimately he was seen as a players' conductor who treated his musicians as equals.