Orchestra to play wrong notes in Les Dawson tribute

A BBC orchestra was last night due to deliberately play the “wrong” notes during a performance in celebration of the genius of the comedian Les Dawson.

Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire was hosting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for the world premiere of Les at Leisure, a comedy overture by Thomas Hyde, the British composer.

The performance, being recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3, came 25 years after Dawson’s death at the age of 62. One of Dawson’s signature routines was his deadpan delivery of off-key piano-playing.

Hyde, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, explained: “Les of course, had to find the right ‘wrong’ note. That’s the skill of it. It’s a note that’s clearly going to make you laugh and it’s got to be put in a certain place, which is unpredictable enough.

“The genius of Les was that he found the place where you weren’t quite sure for a split second, and then you realised it had gone horribly wrong.”

Despite an apparent lack of musical proficiency, Dawson was in fact a talented pianist with roots in the music halls of northern England.

Dawson claimed in his diaries to have moved to Paris where he became a pianist in a brothel, although a 2012 biography by Louis Barfe suggested the story was only partially true, stating he “almost certainly” played piano, unpaid, for a couple of nights in a brothel but it was while he was on holiday in the French capital.

Comedy overtures have a tradition in British orchestral music, with examples such as William Walton’s Scapino and Portsmouth Point.

Hyde, a concert composer and teaching fellow in music at King’s College London, said: “Comedy overtures were often written by British composers. They were light-hearted and slightly tongue-in-cheek. We really need a bit of that in the current climate.”

Hyde’s overture begins straight, before the “wrong” notes are introduced à la Dawson. He said listeners might also notice a homage to the Blankety Blank theme tune, a show presented by Dawson on BBC One.

Hyde added that pieces by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich, also being recorded, would not be “Dawsoned”.