Edward Clark (conductor)
He was responsible for producing a number of important world and British premieres (some of which he also conducted), and he was associated with most of the important European and British composers, such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, William Walton, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Peter Warlock, John Ireland, Constant Lambert, Arthur Benjamin, Humphrey Searle, Denis ApIvor, Alan Rawsthorne, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Frankel, Roberto Gerhard, Luigi Dallapiccola, Christian Darnton and others.
His personal integrity in regard to the use of official funds also came under question more than once, in one instance leading to a public scandal and court case in which he sued Benjamin Frankel for slander.
His father, James Bowness Clark (1863–1934), was a coal exporter and amateur musician who supported his son's musical interests and for two decades was the secretary of the Newcastle and Gateshead Choral Union.
[3] Clark's first exposure to the music of Arnold Schoenberg was at a performance of his symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande on 31 October 1910 at a concert by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Berlin.
[6][7] He became Schoenberg's champion and, along with people like Artur Schnabel, Ferruccio Busoni, Oskar Fried and others, he convinced him to move from Vienna to Berlin, because of the greater opportunities and contacts there.
[26][27] Clark attended the inaugural session of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Salzburg in 1922, and remained a significant figure in the organisation for the rest of his life.
His imagination, creativity and innovative approaches to programming were soon noted, attracting praise from local Newcastle musical circles; but so too were his administrative shortcomings.
[5] The Newcastle station orchestra was disbanded at the end of 1926, and Clark transferred to London in January 1927 as a programme planner, at the request of Percy Pitt.
[25] In November of that year he was able to secure Oskar Fried his first British conducting engagement (the programme included Weber, Brahms and Liszt).
)[4] In April 1929, Edward Clark along with Julian Herbage of the BBC's Music Department devised a plan for a 114-piece orchestra that was especially suited to broadcasting, and one that could be split into four different smaller groups as required.
[25] It was Clark who suggested to William Walton that he invite Paul Hindemith to be the soloist at the premiere of his Viola Concerto in 1929, when the dedicatee Lionel Tertis declined.
On 21 August 1929 he asked Walton for a work suitable for broadcasting, written for a small choir, soloist, and an orchestra not exceeding 15 players.
[39][40] On 3 March 1930, Edward Clark played a major part in the first complete broadcast (18 poems) of Walton's Façade, at the Central Hall, Westminster, with Edith Sitwell and Constant Lambert (speakers), Leslie Heward conducting.
[6] As well as Schoenberg, Clark invited Anton Webern and Alban Berg to visit England several times to conduct their own works.
[6] Between November 1932 and January 1933, while staying in Barcelona, Schoenberg wrote a transcription for cello and orchestra of the Keyboard Concerto in D by Georg Matthias Monn.
Schoenberg received an offer of a teaching post at a Boston music academy, and decided to quit Europe, sailing for the United States on 25 October 1933.
[49] The same year he was instrumental in arranging a series of BBC broadcasts, in which the émigré German composer and musicologist Ernst Hermann Meyer was engaged to present important revivals of 17th century consort music.
[55] Under the direction of Edward Clark and Constant Lambert, some of Bernard van Dieren's larger works were performed by the BBC in the composer's last years, and just after his death in 1936.
The immediate cause of this protest was some alterations to the concert programmes for the BBC Symphony Orchestra's forthcoming European tour, in which he had invested much time and great care.
These changes were made without his knowledge and while he was on sick leave, and they included the complete removal of Béla Bartók's Four Orchestral Pieces from the Budapest programme.
[57][58] However, this parting of the ways suited many people in the BBC, as it came in the wake of very strong criticism that had been building over a long time about Clark's poor work habits, his general inefficiency, his unpunctuality and missing of important deadlines, his administrative bungling and his unwillingness to communicate with his colleagues about what he was doing, thinking or planning.
His conducting was also the subject of criticism, on the basis that he could not quickly establish rapport with or give strong and unambiguous directions to his players, and he was discouraged from this activity.
Edward Clark's departure had the effect of relegating Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and other members of the Second Viennese School to fringe composers as far as British audiences were concerned, and they were not brought back into the mainstream until William Glock's appointment in 1959.
[5] The BBC Symphony Orchestra's repertoire was similarly affected; it became more focused on the works of Romantic and post-Romantic composers for the next 25 years, leaving contemporary music to struggle for limited hearings.
[62] Clark produced concert versions of Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust (1937) and Arlecchino (1939), many years before the British stage premiere of either work.
She was also prepared to scrub floors to help make ends meet; but Clark would consider nothing but conducting, even though all offers dried up early.
It was in this capacity that in March 1940 he approached firstly Clifford Curzon, who declined, and then Moura Lympany, who agreed, to be the soloist at the UK premiere of Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto in D-flat.
[88] John Reith was strictly puritanical about such matters (although his own private life was questionable), and he was most unwilling to have a senior staff member on the payroll who was known to be conducting an adulterous affair or in the process of divorcing his own wife.
He travelled throughout Europe constantly in a quest to expand the reach of international radio broadcasts; he claimed there were no sinister political motives behind his activities, but that they were simply his attempt to make himself very rich.
From November 1939 the transmitter he had arranged to put in place at Osterloog transmitting station, which became the vehicle for William Joyce's broadcasts to Britain and Europe.
