Obituary: Sir Edward Downes - a conductor of quiet distinction
“So I saw lots of matches from half-time onwards. But I only ever saw one Villa player sent off, and that was a gentleman called Pongo Waring.”
In 1945, still a horn player, he took part in one of the landmark events in 20th century British music – the premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
He joined the Royal Opera House staff in 1952, when his first job was prompting the soprano Maria Callas. He made his conducting debut there the following year and went on to conduct in every season for more than 50 years, giving 950 performances of 49 different operas.
He was renowned as a conductor of Verdi, and an authority on Russian music, particularly Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
In the 1970s he became music director of the Australian Opera, conducting the first performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1973, and he enjoyed a 40-year association with the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic, as chief guest conductor, principal conductor and conductor emeritus.
Sir Edward always suffered from poor eyesight, and by the time I interviewed him in 1998 was unable to learn new scores because of the difficulty of reading them.
He said: “ I have to do everything from memory. Fortunately I have a very large symphonic repertoire and a very large operatic repertoire. I cut people dead, though not with intent, in the street. They have to come and accost me.”
Nevertheless, he was able to continue working, making appearances with the CBSO at Symphony Hall in 2004 and for the last time in two concerts in May 2006, with a programme including Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.
