The Tablet Interview
Music please, maestro
If he is not in his office at London’s revitalised Wigmore Hall, he may well be at Mass round the corner at St James’s, Spanish Place. Director John Gilhooly tells Rick Jones how his faith has helped him cement a global reputation for his intimate charge
fter the pianist Arthur Rubinstein stood up at the end of his recital in London’s Wigmore Hall in 1976 and declared both that he loved the venue and that he had just given his last concert, it made international headlines the following day. The pianist’s news was not unexpected, as he was 90, but it was a turn- ing point for the hall. Suddenly everyone seemed to notice what
A
a jewel lay behind the austere, iron-and-glass awning that protruded on to the pavement at 36 Wigmore Street, in central London. The then director, William Lyne, cannily built on this new recognition. In 2000 he handed over the executive director’s reins to the current incumbent, the tenor, Irishman and Catholic John Gilhooly, before retiring completely in 2003. Since taking over control, Gilhooly has not only maintained Lyne’s success, but has built on it. Concerts this year celebrate both 110 years since the venue was built and a decade since Gilhooly’s arrival, and include 100 years of German song, a residency by the cellist Steven Isserlis and Beethoven chamber works by the Nash Ensemble. A gentle modesty attends the rise of both hall and Gilhooly to pre-eminence. No flashy makeover has brought success, but the qual- ity of the work and a respect for tradition in each. One senses this on arrival, both in the box office’s quaint, wooden cubby hole at the end of the entrance corridor, in the grand and infallibly accurate clock that has hung above the entrance to the hall since the beginning, and in the almost invariable presence of the impeccably well-dressed director himself, who makes it part of his role personally to greet
8 | THE TABLET | 5 February 2011
those who, through his efforts, have been attracted to the place.
Although the vast
audience largely comprises those mature citizens traditionally associated with the Wigmore Hall, it also now includes a con- siderable younger element of which Gilhooly is himself a part. Even after 10 years in the job, he is still only 37. Born in Limerick into an Irish Catholic family, he was educated by the Christian Brothers, “who were good men despite what one hears”. “It’s devastating, what’s gone on. I read recently that only 20 per cent of Irish now call themselves Catholic,” he said. “It was 90 when I was growing up. Being Catholic was part of who you were. The basic principles of Catholicism teach you to love your neighbour and treat every person you encounter as unique, unrepeatable and sacred, and if we lose that we lose a great deal. “That’s how I operate with the staff and in
every business transaction. It’s how I’ve always operated and I think it’s helped me suc- ceed. I don’t take chunks out of the altar rail, you know – I’m not pious – but the basic belief that you have to treat people properly comes from my early education and upbringing as a Catholic.”
Gilhooly became the hall’s artistic director in 2005 and describes his time in Wigmore Street as “10 wonderful years”. He says he couldn’t be happier, explaining: “It doesn’t feel like a job; it’s a way of life. My whole day, whole week, has a rhythm to it.” As a Catholic, he once lapsed (“that too was an important part of growing up”), but his ritual now includes
daily Mass either at Spanish Place or Westminster Cathedral. “I’ll talk to The Tablet about faith, but not
The Telegraph or The Independent. It’s not something I want to push in people’s faces. The staff are aware I nip out to a service once a day but I don’t talk about it; it’s a personal matter,” said Gilhooly. As it happens, an increasingly popular part of Wigmore programming is devoted now to the choral repertoire. “Church music is very important to me,” said Gilhooly whose intro- duction to music was as a choirboy. “My birthday is the Feast of the Assumption so Byrd’s Assumpta est Mariais close to my heart. This is who I am.”
A Byrd season is in the offing. Choirs were not something that the old regime went in for particularly, but Gilhooly knows how far he can go: “You look at your core audience, you see what they want, you give them what they want, you give them more than they need and then you can do what you like. Those are the pillars.
“So I have Schubert song cycles planted throughout the season, Beethoven late string quartets and basically what I refer to as the whiff of old Vienna. But to stick only to that tradition – and I could: there’s an endless demand for string quartets – would be bad for us and bad for London. So I’ll have a full day around the music of Kevin Volans, say, or Brett Dean, which is coming up, or we’ll focus on the counter-tenor as we did last year. Then
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