Julian Bream
Andrew Green pays tribute to the late, great Julian Bream, whose supreme talent and colourful personality were combined with an insatiable desire to explore every corner of his instrument’s repertoire
Andrew Green on the English guitarist who combined a natural gift with an insatiable musical curiosity
‘Music has been my real solace. And that’s why I play music’. Through his final illness, Julian Bream’s daily consolation was listening to music on the radio. He delighted in making new discoveries, having his horizons extended over and again. And amid all the words that sum up the qualities which typified this unique artist, one that constantly comes to mind is his curiosity. Bream was smitten with curiosity. The impulse , if one can say this without seeming naive or simplistic, was that he simply adored music. And he never tired of exploring what it had to offer.
Jazz guitar led to classical guitar led to lute led eventually to historic Spanish guitars.
Never mind that he had to teach himself new skills along the way. Unhappy with what a conventional modern Spanish guitar allowed him to express? Give a brief to a maker in England and see what he can come up with.
What happens when you’ve scoured the centuries-old repertoire from top to bottom, arranging things and transcribing things to squeeze more toothpaste out of the tube? You apply that curiosity to composers of your own time. Bream encouraged them to investigate with a contemporary ear whatever unexplored potential the classical guitar still had under the bonnet (to use a metaphor you can imagine Bream, a classic car enthusiast, employing). Imagine the anticipation as he waited for the latest new score to arrive in the post – from William Walton or Malcolm Arnold or Michael Tippett or Hans Werner Henze. Or Benjamin Britten. No one among those who wrote for
Bream explored the guitar and its emotional range more than did Britten in his haunting 1963 Nocturnal after John Dowland – although getting brain and fingers round the tricky corners caused the guitarist the odd sleepless night.
Not content with all this, Bream relished moonlighting. That evening off from the serious stuff to hang out with jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli onstage at the Royal Albert Hall.
Or the jamming with legendary Hindustani classical musicians Alla Rakha and Ali Akbar Khan in the nowhere-to-hide glare of television lights. Yes, Bream was gregarious as well as curious in performing terms. Form an ensemble to explore period repertoire? Why not? The Julian Bream Consort duly arrived in 1960 – well in advance of the main battle-charge of the early music brigade. There were the longstanding partnerships with tenor Peter Pears (which Bream said taught him the virtues of phrasing like a singer) and fellow superstar guitarist John Williams. Bream savoured the fact that he and Williams had contrasting musical personalities. Curiosity again… how might that work exactly?
Of course, being a genius helps you indulge your curiosity – which takes us back to the start of the story. No performer can steer round the hard graft, but with Bream, the sweat was offset by the priceless currency of an indefinable, extravagant natural gift. After early explorations of jazz guitar the young Londoner decided this gift wasn’t to be focused on what was then the most obvious field of work – so-called ‘commercial music’. Andrés Segovia was his boyhood idol and example: one hearing of a 78rpm disc of the maestro was enough. His
‘‘ With Bream, the sweat was offset by the priceless currency of an LQGH QDEOH extravagant natural gift ’’
Dream Bream
Six great recordings Vivaldi Concerto for Lute and Strings in D
The detail, range of colours and virtuosity on display make this 1964 disc with the Julian Bream Consort an enchanting listen.
Sony G0100029919854 Villa-lobos
12 Etudes for Guitar
The Brazilian wrote some of the most ravishing of all 20th-century guitar music. Bream is fully equipped to bring alive every mood.
Sony G010002996342V Rodrigo
Concierto de Aranjuez Bream magically shapes the slow movement in this 1975 recording with the Monteverdi Orchestra and John Eliot Gardiner.
Dutton CDLX7333
Britten Nocturnal after
John Dowland
Any survey of contemporary works written for Bream has to start with this
1967 recording. Dark, searching, spellbinding.
Sony G010002996118A Elizabethan Lute Songs
The recorded fruits of Bream’s long partnership with tenor Peter Pears deserve to be re-discovered by a new generation.
Sony G010002996204E
Julian and John 2
A taste of the famed partnership with John Williams as they tackle Albéniz and Granados.
Sony G010003389312L father Henry was less sure, reckoning that if only one classical guitarist had a significant following, what chance was there of anyone else earning a living? Henry was ignored, but still helped his son further classical guitar studies. Bream Jr was nonetheless essentially self-taught.
The combination of genius and a brash youthful confidence meant Bream thought nothing of jumping into broadcasting when barely in his mid-teens. There he is in the Radio Times archive, making what appears to be his first broadcast (alongside AP Sharpe’s Honolulu Hawaiians) for the Light Programme in June 1948. He isn’t yet 15 years old. Plenty of BBC re-engagements followed… and you can see how necessity must have been one mother of curiosity. There were limited opportunities to play straight classical, so if that meant tagging along with a tango outfit or the Southern Serenade Orchestra, then he soaked it all up and had fun.
The teenage Bream was already a familiar figure on the London concert scene before his Wigmore Hall debut in 1951 – ‘a mature and remarkably finished musician’ said The Times.
By the mid-1950s the career abroad was under way, with the US notably welcoming. The international appeal was stoked by an ever richer, wider discography which netted him Grammy and Edison awards. Here is the evidence for how Bream achieved his goal of building on Segovia’s pioneering work by developing the ‘fibrous’ side to the typical concert or recording – ‘meat and potatoes’, as he put it.
Even so, it’s tricky peering back through the decades to recapture fully the sense of Bream’s larger-than-life presence on the scene as one of the world’s finest performers on any instrument.
Photographs at least help bridge the time gap. The photogenic, sharply dressed Bream oozes style and charisma, not least on the covers of dozens of LPS. And we can sample those guitar masterclasses that seem to be in permanent residence on BBC iplayer – merely an example, though, of the many television films which in themselves testify to his ‘household name’ status.
Bream largely disappeared from public view following his withdrawal from major concert appearances nigh-on 20 years ago. It wasn’t why he retired, but he had misgivings about the modern international concert scene. What he knew as a profession had become a business, he said. There were reservations about the need for sponsorship of the arts, not least in the UK. And it was ‘Don’t get me started…’ on the demise of the golden age of classical recording.
Tucked away in rural Dorset, then Wiltshire, Bream was never happier than when dogwalking in the countryside. He took enormous pleasure in collecting paintings, many of which were donated to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He had an eye for antique furniture, including the Blüthner piano which always seemed to have a Bach volume open on it. Until illness intervened, he would play every day.
But Bream didn’t hide himself away. It gave him great satisfaction to set up the Julian Bream Trust to support young talented guitarists and fund the commissioning of fresh music for the instrument. If he had reservations about the lack of curiosity among new generations of performers in the breadth of the guitar repertoire, at least he was doing his bit to put things back on track. The Trust’s sterling work continues.
Last but most definitely not least among the objects of Bream’s curiosity was the Test Match score. There was no prouder moment than when he gave the first ever classical concert in the Long Room at Lord’s cricket ground, for the Lord’s Taverners charity. No one present will forget the sight of him striding on stage, clutching bat rather than guitar and wearing cricket cap, gloves and pads over his concert dress. When the laughter died down, there was only one quip Bream could deliver: ‘I’ve always wanted to play at Lord’s’.
When Bream stopped performing in public, he continued practising every day – a discipline lightened when possible by simultaneously watching cricket on television. To the end he was capable of employing purple-hued vernacular to describe any passing England cricketing disaster. Close of play… and the musical world loses one of its most colourful characters. Life will be that bit more monochrome without him.