Eric Wetherell
| Eric Wetherell | |
|---|---|
| Born | Eric David Wetherell 30 December 1925 Tynemouth, England |
| 31 January 2021 (aged 95)31 January 2021 (aged 95) | |
| 🏫 Education | Trinity School, Carlisle, The Queen’s College, Oxford, Royal College of Music |
| 💼 Occupation | Composer • conductor • producer • writer |
Eric Wetherell (born Eric David Wetherell (30 December 1925 – 31 January 2021) was an English composer, conductor, arranger, BBC Radio 3 producer and writer.
Early life and education
Eric Wetherell was born in Tynemouth and attended Carlisle Grammar School for Boys (now Trinity School, Carlisle). After a spell in his late teens as assistant organist to Dr FW Wadeley at Carlisle Cathedral, he attended The Queen’s College, Oxford where he studied music with Thomas Armstrong (musician), Egon Wellesz and Bernard Rose (musician).
Wetherell went on to train as an organist and pianist at the Royal College of Music, studying orchestration with Gordon Jacob, the organ with Harold Darke and composition with Herbert Howells.
A chance encounter with Ralph Vaughan Williams whose 6th symphony Wetherell conducted as a student, led to Vaughan Williams recommending Wetherell as ‘bumper-up’ French horn in the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1949, at the age of 24. Here he encountered Thomas Beecham and thus began a wealth of anecdotes that were to pepper Wetherell’s career.
French horn freelancing 1950s
In his early career as a French horn player, he spent the decade performing regularly with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, under such conductors as Adrian Boult, Serge Koussevitzky, Eduard van Beinum, George Szell and Victor de Sabata. By the end of the 1950s, a longstanding mastoid problem had forced him to change career path altogether. He became organist and choirmaster at Kendal Parish Church for a time, regularly broadcasting services for the BBC Home Service, before heading back to London.
Royal Opera House and Welsh National Opera 1960s
After attending the National Opera Studio (at that time the National School of Opera) for a year, he began his career as a conductor in 1960, as a répétiteur at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, coaching singers and playing the piano for music and production rehearsals and working with such artists as George Solti, Rudolf Kempe, William Walton, Carlo Maria Giulini, Antal Dorati, Jascha Horenstein, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten. He went on to become Assistant Musical Director and Conductor with Welsh National Opera and regularly conducted for the various BBC orchestras. During this time and into the 70s and 80s he also ran two rehearsal big bands in Cardiff and Bristol, on a voluntary basis, both twenty-piece ensembles using local professional musicians.
In the mid 1960s Wetherell was broadcast on the BBC Radio 'Light Programme' on 'Music in the Air', conducting the London Light Orchestra with Edward Rubach and Robert Docker on piano. He later worked with Robert Docker again on the popular radio programmes, ‘Melodies for You’ and the long-running Friday Night Is Music Night on BBC Radio 2 in the early 1970s.
Broadcasting 1970s
He then spent six years as Musical Director for Harlech Television (HTV) (now ITV Wales and West) where he wrote incidental music to accompany dramatic works, including The Inheritors, Thick As Thieves and a popular programme that has become a cult drama, Sky (TV serial).
He went on to become Principal Conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra, now the Ulster Orchestra, where he worked on regular concerts, many recordings and live broadcasts. His association with the BBC took him from London to Cardiff and Belfast and then to Bristol where he was Senior Music Producer, Radio 3, until his retirement.
Composing 1980s – 2020
Eric Wetherell composed throughout his life, producing orchestral suites, jazz scores and arrangements, wind band and brass band compositions, choral works, children’s songs and music for films and TV. The period after his retirement from the BBC resulted in a proliferation of new works, notably Bristol Quay Suite (1987), the jazz influenced Three Shakespeare Sonnets (1994) and his two operas A Foreign Field (2010), based on the Ben MacIntyre book of the same name, and The Snow Child (2014), based on the novel by Eowyn Ivey. Richard Morrison, writing in The Times about A Foreign Field, remarked upon the ‘clarity with which this compelling story is dramatised, and the craftsmanship that has gone into Wetherell’s score, which he conducts (very ably) himself'.[1]
He also worked on reduced orchestrations of full-scale operas for smaller forces, notably Un ballo in maschera, Les contes d'Hoffmann, Carmen, Macbeth (opera), and almost all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
Biographer 1990s
In the 1990s, several biographies were commissioned from Wetherell, including those of the British 20th century composers Gordon Jacob (with whom he had studied at Royal College of Music), Arnold Cooke, Patrick Hadley, and also one of the great British violinists Albert Sammons. He contributed entries on all four to the latest edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
References
- ↑ Morrison, Richard (24 September 2010). "A Foreign Field, Redgrave Theatre, Bristol". The Times. Retrieved 24 September 2010.
Sources
Wetherell, musical polymath who was a BBC producer and wrote operas and TV music – obituary 15 March 2021 Telegraph Obituaries accessed 16 August 2024
Michael Quinn: Eric Wetherell 31 March 2021, www.thestage.co.uk; Obituaries, accessed 16 August 2024
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