Quintin Ballardie
Viola player and maverick leader of the English Chamber Orchestra for more than half a century
QUINTIN BALLARDIE, who has died aged 93, was a cantankerous musical entrepreneur who helped to start the English Chamber Orchestra, an enterprise that he ultimately owned; he was also an accomplished viola player, meaning that unlike most orchestral managers he could take the temperature of the rank-and-file players from the concert platform.
“I am in the best possible position to know whether the orchestra is playing well,” he said, adding that being a member meant that the “them and us” feeling towards management was largely obviated. “If I had been outside the orchestra, it would have been far more difficult to appreciate everyone’s point of view.”
The ECO had emerged from the Goldsborough Orchestra, which was founded by Arnold Goldsborough after the Second World War to play the baroque repertoire, but by the late 1950s its international ambitions were being hampered. “We wanted to go abroad but people weren’t interested because they had never heard the name: they couldn’t even pronounce it,” Ballardie recalled.
The first concert in their new guise took place at the Royal Festival Hall in October 1960 and quickly led to the hoped-for change of profile. The orchestra played for the Queen on two occasions in 1967, at the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and at the Aldeburgh Festival’s inaugural concert at Snape Maltings, while the Prince of Wales became a patron. It also became closely associated with Benjamin Britten’s later works, including his opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
There was no chief conductor, and in the early 1960s the musical directorship was effectively divided between Britten, Raymond Leppard and Daniel Barenboim, who helped to create their distinct style of performing Mozart. Jacqueline du Pré came to regard the ECO as her favourite orchestra.
“It was just after she had met up with Daniel and there was this incredible explosion of emotion when they played together,” Ballardie told Elizabeth Wilson for her biography of the cellist. In recent years the orchestra has been closely associated with the pianist Mitsuko Uchida.
The ECO is unusual among London orchestras in not being controlled by its players, reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit of its maverick owner, whose opinionated views ran counter to the norms of the subsidised orchestral world. “We believe very strongly in free enterprise,” Ballardie said. “It is up to us to make it work and make money, if possible, as well as making great music.”
Colleagues joked that the pipe-smoking Ballardie’s natural office was the Little Ship Club on the Thames, within a mile of the South Bank. However, the orchestra’s official headquarters was an old coach house that, according to one player, was “part stable, part dog kennel” and could be found “down a narrow alleyway where motorbikes go to die” in West London.
For such a large man Ballardie had a curious ability to become invisible, especially when pursuing what he felt was his true vocation, that of practising string player. Some regarded him as a benevolent despot. Others highlighted his incredible energy, fantastic ear for talent and generosity of spirit. “I am basically a viola player and I suppose a very good fixer,” he told the International Journal of Arts Management. “Those are my real skills, and that is what I enjoy doing.”
James Quintin Ballardie was born on May 5 1928 on the Wirral. He was 18 months old when his father died from tuberculosis. He was brought up by his mother Ethel (née Jones), a hairdresser who moved with her son to Croydon. There he attended Whitgift School, along the way picking up the B flat fife, and the violin.
He claimed to have left with no qualifications but studied violin at the Royal Academy of Music, switching to viola on the advice of his professor, Frederick Grinke, a change he never regretted. One of his first jobs was as principal viola with the Sadler’s
Wells Orchestra, which he held down for a year before briefly joining the Philharmonia.
There were others, all of which he claimed to have been sacked from except the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where he moonlighted as principal viola between 1963 and 1971 while running the ECO.
By then he had become known for his talent at selecting string players who blended perfectly with each other, creating orchestras of outstanding quality.
“His ability rests partly in a clear vision of the sound he is looking for,” wrote Nicholas Kenyon, the Daily Telegraph opera critic, some years ago. Ballardie, meanwhile, always stressed that he was of the “old school” and had no management background or training; what he did know about orchestral management was “learnt on the job”, including skills he acquired as an orchestral manager for West End theatres.
Over the years he owned several yachts that he enjoyed sailing from Chichester; he sometimes gave the impression that he would rather be playing on the water than playing the Water Music. He was also passionate about animals and would never miss the opportunity to promote a concert in support of animal welfare charities.
Quintin Ballardie never retired from orchestral management, though he had vacated his viola seat. He was appointed OBE in 1985.
In 1949 he married Margaret Parry, an artist and art restorer, who died in 2017. He is survived by their daughter; their twin sons predeceased him.