I interviewed Richard Hickox last week for Music Matters. He was in rehearsals for Vaughan Williams's miniature, masterful opera, Riders to the Sea, and was enormously excited by the chance to get his hands on this music in the opera house. Typically for Hickox - but uniquely among today's conductors - this recherché repertoire was music that he knew and loved, and had already performed and recorded.
His sudden death on Sunday is a massive loss for the English National Opera's production, which was due to open on Thursday: director Fiona Shaw called him "our wonderful master". It is also a huge blow for those British composers - Rubbra, Dyson, Alwyn, Bliss - who Hickox championed but who other conductors rarely go near.
Hickox's death also robs Opera Australia in Sydney of their music director, a post he had held since 2005. There was recent controversy in Australia over his casting decisions, in hiring his second wife Pamela Helen Stephen in leading roles; he also faced accusations of declining musical standards. But his performances of Britten's Billy Budd and Janácek's Makropoulos Case in recent months had steadied the ship. Besides, Hickox could point to a list of musical achievements that would put many other maestros in the shade: founder of the City of London Sinfonia and Collegium Musicum 90, and associate guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for more than 20 years.
In his huge catalogue of recordings, there were five Gramophone award winners, including the original version of Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony. And at the time he died, his reputation was unsurpassed in British music: from Elgar to Tippett, from Britten to Holst - whose Choral Symphony he was recording with his former orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
I have more personal reasons to lament Hickox's death. When I was eight, he conducted the first concert I ever saw, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Glasgow's City Hall. I'll never forget the all-Mozart programme: the A-major symphony K201; Exsultate, Jubilate; and the Requiem. But it was the first movement of the symphony that was a seismic shock to my system. I'd never heard anything like this music. It seemed to cut to my core, and transport me to a new world of experience. That single moment opened up the universe of music to me, and nothing was ever the same again. I only had the chance to thank him in person last week. I'm grateful I was able to - and even more thankful for the life-changing gift of music that he gave me, 24 years ago.
