Sir Charles Mackerras

A memoir by Glen Quick

Charles Mackerras was probably the greatest Australian conductor who ever lived. Born in the USA in November 1925, he died in England in July 2010. His father was Alan Mackerras, an electrical engineer, at that time studying and working with the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York. Alan Mackerras later became Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at Sydney University.

Charles Mackerras trained at Sydney Conservatorium in oboe, piano and composition and became principal oboe with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1944. As so many young Australians did at the time, in 1947 he left for London where he joined the Sadler's Wells orchestra as second oboe on tour. During that tour he met his future wife, Judy Wilkins, who was playing first clarinet in the orchestra. The tour lasted for twelve weeks and during that time, he was studying the score of Dvorak’s sixth symphony in a restaurant when a fellow diner said “why don’t you study the music of my country in Czechoslovakia”. He applied for, and got, a scholarship which took him to Prague.

Just before he left, he and Judy married and while Judy undertook postgraduate studies on the clarinet, Charles studied conducting with Vaclav Talich. Talich didn’t really have time to teach in a conventional manner, so instead he told him to come to all his rehearsals, which he did. Then the communists came to power and Talich was thrown out of all his positions. He lived out the rest of his life in his country house just outside Prague. Mackerras had a year-long scholarship and no job back in England so he found where Talich lived and went to his house and found that Talich was rather lonely. What followed was a unique opportunity for Mackerras to study not only the classical repertoire, but also the Czech repertoire and the Czech language. Returning to England, he brought back the scores of Janacek with which he felt a particular affinity.

What followed was a 60 plus year career as a conductor where he directed masterly performances of not only Czech music but also Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Wagner. He excelled in conducting Gilbert & Sullivan and his first major success was to arrange the music of Sullivan into the ballet Pineapple Poll for the choreographer Jon Cranko and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Conducting this ballet opened many doors for him when he was just starting out. He was a pioneer in the period performance of Mozart and Handel before it became fashionable and at his death was rated as the finest Mozart conductor alive. His recorded legacy extends to some 400 recordings. The critics could rarely fault his performances. He is said to have conducted more operas than any other person.

During the first Adelaide “Ring Cycle”, I was talking to two of the principal singers and Sir Charles Mackerras’ name came up. They referred to him as “Chuck-em-up Charlie”.

“Why”, I said, “do you call him that”?

They explained that they had been singing in a performance of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and during rehearsals, Sir Charles had said to the singers that if any of them needed cues in the immensely complex final Act, they should ask for them. So just to try him out, they started asking for the most obscure cues and found that while the tumultuous last Act was in progress, Sir Charles would lift his head from the score momentarily and throw the requested cue at each of the singers at exactly the right point. They were amazed at the sheer competence and professionalism of the man who they rated among the best opera conductors that they had ever sung under.

During the next four months [November through to the end of February], I will be presenting most of the Czech operas recorded by the late Sir Charles Mackerras in our regular Wednesday night programs. Other Mackerras recordings will come up in my normal programs.

Glen Quick
September 2010

 

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