Donald Hunt
Organist and choirmaster who specialised in the music of Elgar
DONALD HUNT, who has died aged 88, was master of the choristers and organist at Worcester Cathedral from 1975 to 1996, a post which comes with triennial responsibility for the Three Choirs Festival that rotates between Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester.
It fell to Hunt to programme the event on eight occasions. As well as the choral music of Elgar and Vaughan Williams for which the festival is well known, he was particularly keen to include music by French composers such as Pierre Villette and Olivier Messiaen.
Hunt had a direct link to Elgar through his teacher Herbert Sumsion, the last of the Three Choirs conductors to have worked with the composer. This and his warm accounts of Elgar’s great choral works such as The Dream of Gerontius marked him out as one of the leading Elgarians of his day.
Donald Frederick Hunt was born at Gloucester on July 26 1930, the younger of two sons of a decorator. His brother, Maurice, became a lay clerk at Gloucester Cathedral.
Young Donald, who played cello and piano, was educated at King’s School, Gloucester. He sang treble in the cathedral choir under Sumsion, to whom he was articled at the age of 13. Towards the end of his National Service with the Royal Army Medical Corps he was stationed in Gloucester, enabling him to assist Sumsion with the 1950 Three Choirs Festival. The headline on one review read: “Donald opens the Festival in his Army boots.”
In 1954, having become a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, he was appointed director of music at St John’s, Torquay.
Three years later he moved to Leeds Parish Church, where much of his time was spent ferrying choristers around the city. He also worked with local choirs, conducting the Halifax Choral Society in The Dream of Gerontius in 1957 and preparing the Leeds Festival Chorus to sing Mahler’s Eighth Symphony under Leonard Bernstein at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970.
Hunt had long hoped to succeed Sumsion at Gloucester and was dismayed in 1967 when the dean said that he would only consider an Oxford or Cambridge graduate. He was also rejected by Hereford, but in 1975 applied successfully for the vacancy at Worcester, Elgar’s own cathedral. His first festival included the premiere of Richard Rodney Bennett’s Spells, although Hunt considered the best piece to have been Messiaen’s Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine, “a wonderful work which brought out the best in the cathedral choristers”.
He set in train many changes, such as arranging for the programme book to include the first names of chorus members rather than Mr, Mrs or Miss. Another was inviting to the festival the brass bands he had encountered in Yorkshire. However, he nearly missed his first concert, recalling how “an enthusiastic doorkeeper initially refused me entry as I had forgotten my pass, even though a score and baton were clearly visible”.
Hunt’s retirement in 1996 was a reluctant one, but he remained active in music. He had been making regular visits to South Africa, and these continued with him being appointed guest conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. He also spent a decade as principal of the Elgar School of Music and played a prominent role in the 150th Elgar anniversary festival at Worcester in 2007.
He enjoyed poetry and gardening and was a committed supporter of Worcester Warriors rugby league club. During the summer he could be seen rushing from the cathedral across the river to catch a cricket match at the New Road ground.
Donald Hunt, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds in 1975, was appointed OBE in 1993. In 1954 he married Jo Benbow. She survives him with two sons and two daughters.
Donald Hunt, born July 26 1930, died August 4 2018