Conductor is back in time for festival

WHEN conductor Richard Hickox stands on the stage at Wycombe Swan at the Wooburn Festival there could very well be a lump in his throat.

Although Wycombe Swan might not have the stature of the Royal Albert Hall, the prestige of the Royal Opera House, the glamour of conducting in Los Angeles, Sydney or Rome - all stages where he feels at home - the festival is high in the emotional stakes for him.

Richard set up the Wooburn Festival when he was just 19- years-old.

He says: "It is very nice to feel my roots are still here. I feel very attached to it and it is quite moving."

At the concert, Richard is conducting the City of London Sinfonia and the Wooburn Singers who are performing The Nelson Mass by Haydn and Zadok the Priest by Handel. These pieces have an added emotional twist for Richard as they were the first works he conducted for the Wooburn festival back in 1967.

And it is going to be quite a family affair as his mother Jean is singing with the Wooburn Singers and his wife, Pamela Helen Stephen, a distinguished mezzo-soprano is performing too.

It is also the first time in nearly ten years that Richard has been able to get back home to conduct at the festival. Being a conductor with an international reputation he often finds that he is thousands of miles away conducting when the festival takes place.

"It has not been possible for me to conduct the Wooburn Singers for a very long time, the last time was in 1988 in a memorial concert to my father."

It was, in fact, his father, the vicar or Wooburn, who first spotted that young Richard had a flair for music.

"At the time my father was the vicar of Stokenchurch and, when I was around three years old, I used to go to church on a Saturday with him to get the church ready for Sunday. One day he plonked me on the organ stall and he noticed that I was actually playing chords and not just putting my elbow on the key board."

His mother, who was a well-known music teacher, taught Richard how to play the piano. The lessons lasted until he was 18 when he won an organ scholarship to Cambridge.

"It is not meant to work if your parents teach you how to play but it was fine."

The idea of setting up the Wooburn Festival came to Richard when he became the organist of Wooburn Parish Church.

"The organist who had been with my father retired and I set about re-forming the church choir and dedicated my life to that for a few years. We started to do concerts. And then I set up the Wooburn Festival. I invited an International singer John Shirley-Quirk, who lived in Flackwell Heath, to become the president."

In 1967, just before Richard went off to Cambridge, he formed the Wooburn Singers.

"I was devoted to getting the festival going and we started to perform Britten's opera Noye's Fludde and the Fairie Queen by Purcell. We did very interesting things and it was enormous fun. There were three of us who ran it and we did everything even down to putting up the posters."

Running a small village festival stood him in good stead for an international conducting career.

"It taught me a huge amount about the business and I often say to people if they are going to play in an orchestra they should have a month in the office before they play and they will have a lot more understanding about the whole business.

"It was great fun and an adventure, I am just so happy that 30 years later it is still going.

"I am delighted that it has become an institution and gone on and the Wooburn Singers have performed internationally now."

When Richard left Cambridge he founded the City of London Sinfonia with fellow graduate Richard Atley. It was, he says, a means of getting his foot on the conducting ladder.

"It is extremely difficult to start as a professional conductor. There is no set route. So on a wing and prayer and an overdraft I decided to form an orchestra. It is still going strong."

He regularly conducts the City of London Sinfonia at the Barbican Centre, the BBC Proms and the major UK festivals and foreign tours.

"The orchestra is now conducted by many people, it is self perpetuating. It is like your child growing up, the child lives at home and then you have to let him grow up.

"I am so grateful everyday of my life to know that the thing I enjoy doing most and which most people would regard as a hobby, I am employed by many of the world's greatest musical institution to do what I love most. I am extremely fortunate and I just love what I do. I really adore conducting and adore music and to be given so many wonderful opportunities."

For him the thrill of conducting is in creating the sounds.

"It is being in the middle of a sound that you are creating, you are interpreting which is a very creative thing to do. It is partly the job of a psychologist as well because you are persuading orchestras like the London Sinfonia Orchestra, who may have had played the piece five time in the last year, to convince them that the way I am doing it is the way to go now. That is a fascinating process.

"Opera combines the theatre which I love and singers which perhaps I love the most."

Although he has conducted in some of the finest concert halls all over the world he says the Proms is the most prestigious of them all. He conducted the Proms in 1973 and from 1980 he has conducted at the Proms every year.

"It is very scary because the audience is so close to you. It is a wonderful experience and something you cannot take for granted. It is a wonderful showcase.

"The thing that gave me enormous pleasure was conducting at the Royal Opera House just before it closed."

Richard's mantelpiece is just buckling with the number of awards he has been presented with over the years. He received the Sir Laurence Olivier Award and the Evening Standard Award in 1998 for his contributions to the Royal Opera House's production of Britten's Paul Bunyan. He has also received a a clutch of other awards including the Sir Charles Groves Prize for Services to British Music, The Royal Philharmonic Society Music award in 1995 and again in 1998 for his part in the Royal Opera House's production of Vaughan Williams' Pilgrim Progress.

There is, however, a down-side to conducting.

Richard can spend months abroad and away from Pamela and their son Adam who is two.

"At the moment Adam is young so they are able to come away with me."

Richard also has a son Tom, who is 17-years-old, from his previous marriage.

In December Richard and his family are leaving to go to Australia. Richard is taking the City of London Sinfonia Chorus to open the Sydney Festival, he does not return to England until April.

"It is a long time to be away. Next year I will be away for eight months of the year, luckily Pamela and Tom are coming with me, if my family could not go with me it would be very lonely for us all."

To keep a balance and to get away from it all Richard and his family head for their home in Cornwall.

"I adore surfing and we spend a lot of time down there.

"We go all through the year for breaks. That is our spiritual home. It gives us some normality."

Richard Hickox is conducting the City of London Sinfonia and Wooburn Singers in Choral & Orchestral Concert at Wycombe Swan on Sunday, October 18. For more information and tickets telephone: (01628) 524243

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