Julian Bream Last Interview ( with John Williams )

this edition of the big red book contains the story of a child prodigy a south london boy he loved the classics he loved jazz he was given his first guitar at the age of 11. by the time he was 15 was playing in concerts and performing music for feature films [Music] tonight is at the queen elizabeth hall here on the south bank giving a special concert to celebrate his 50th anniversary as a performer the fact that he can still play to packed audiences in this his golden jubilee year is a tribute not only to his skills but also to his determination just over 10 years ago a car crash almost robbed him of the ability to play but within months he was back at the concert hall and these days he's playing as well as ever and let's hope he enjoys our little tune [Laughter] [Applause] i don't have to say this is a very special occasion and i i'm here to tell you that there are a few very special personal tributes that are waiting to be made as i say tonight julian bream cbe this is your life [Applause] well it actually is so hard getting a taxi around here so i would be delighted [Music] [Music] as you've seen another enthusiastic audience here friends and colleagues like stanislav heller who's come from france and family including your nephew noel flown in from canada and of course your partner june axen all here for the story of the battersea boy who defied the musical establishment to make the guitar a recognized instrument and played his way through hard times to international stardom and this is julian bream at work [Music] so [Music] for that uh that last performance saw you teamed with another famous guitarist who has something for the record your good friend john williams [Music] i want to say that it's been the greatest honor and pleasure not just to be your friend but your professional colleague sometimes yeah to be your doubles partner you're also i want to say on behalf of not just the general public but us guitarists that your dedication and love of the instrument are an inspiration for us really you're a great guitarist a great musician and a great fellow and we salute you on this wonderful yeah well that's very nice of you john well now we're going to hear from someone who's been an admirer of yours for more than 40 years man and boy for much of that time he was the face of the bbc at the proms richard baker i will remember the first time we met julian i was a baby announcer on the third program remember the third program michael and you came along to give a recital you were about 17 and a very cheeky cockney lad quite a character even in those days the recital was wonderful of course and now you're one of the world's best ever guitarists it's very interesting i think that in these days when a lot of leading musicians are playing unplugged you've never needed amplification you've always been quite electric enough [Applause] well julian alexander bream this is your life you were born at home in bolingbrook grove battersea south london on july the 15th 1933 the first of four children for henry breen a commercial artist and king musician and his wife violet and you'll be very interested to know that i was born in battersea at the same time and my mother's name is violet isn't that extraordinary why are you born near the dog's house very close [Applause] or the power station very close like my granny's house anyway there you are with your parents and your sister on an early holiday uh soon you were having to hit the road without your parents because with the outbreak of world war ii like many other london kids you were evacuated you and your sister were sent to shropshire and even there julian you were stringing me along with your brothers tony and paul your sister jan [Music] so john your big brother played you up did he well you see i probably played him up actually you were very uh characterful we had a very passionate and strong character if you didn't want to do something he didn't i didn't do it but julian you've added so much to our life you know so much color and we we've enjoyed having you as a brother it's been fantastic and my sons love it too well you've been a wonderful sister you and jan getting your hands dirty down on the farm and last year you went to wales to go to concert and you went back to the shropshire farm that had been your wartime haven and you spotted a figure at work in the field they recognized you at once now age 78 the son of the farmer who took you in jack hughes [Music] come and join us how did you recognize julian after such a long time oh are you recognized in advance sneaking to the fair but you knew what he'd been up to all these years haven't you yes i have been watching him on telly and you found something on the farm after all these years what was that a bit of a menu for him remember that national savings book yes in your name that's your pay when you was at the firm how extraordinary but i never got my money back i've got in like 15 shillings well that is wonderful well that's terrific never work again jack thank you very much the seeds of a career that spanned five decades took root in the front room of the family home in hampton middlesex during the war your father worked as a draftsman in a munitions factory oh he was a tool maker a tool maker yeah for aircraft oh what was his but he wasn't name extra money in a dance yeah that's right not that thank goodness he started to teach you the piano but you have no no he never told me he he told me the rudiments of jazz guitar playing my father played this jazz guitar and had this little dance band when he was away i used to hold the guitar and just bang the strings and i have the radio on and then my father came home early from work one day and saw me with his best guitar you see banging away and i thought oh my god i'd be in trouble and he but he was his reaction was extraordinary he just said well do you enjoy playing that and i said yes but he said you want to learn and that's how i started fair enough and it says here that your ambition was really fired when he played you this record by the famous gypsy jazz musician django reinhardt [Music] we're playing alongside the great django and that record was another legend and it was a dream come true for you when years later you played with him now aged 89 he sends this message from his home in paris jazz violinist stephen grappelli you play with me and i had their call from 70 birthday it's nearly 20 years ago i hope you remember and i will remember your talented for that evening it was a joy for me to listening to you when you play this beautiful music of bach then you managed to play some jazz music with us i'm glad wish you all the very best for this that is your life program i am the as a matter of fact now in my next visit in england i hope to see you oh wow i dear julian [Music] on your 11th birthday julian your father gives you your first classical guitar yeah there you are together you and your guitar yeah well a year later you start saturday morning lessons for juniors at the royal college of music and when class was over you would cross battersea bridge to a very different venue your granny's pub it was a beer house really no no spirits and there was this wonderful or a terrible really upright piano with most of the ivories off you know to come and glowed and i used to play uh a little bit of shopper and uh and a few popular trends and you got paid for it i i got uh biscuits and it gave me some feeling of uh audience participation and by this time it was the guitar that had become the love of your life and your father wrote to the bbc telling them about his son the prodigy his faith was rewarded when you got your first radio broadcast that was january 7th 1947 on children's hour you were 13. still finances were tight and it was a continuing struggle to win wider recognition for the guitar despite your broadcast and your first recital at cheltenham art gallery but in december 1947 came another breakthrough the greatest living guitarist of the day segovia came to london he grants you an audience you play for him in his hotel room which must have been a nerve-wracking experience certainly did you play well badly terribly bad did he like what you did no right nevertheless in 1947 at age 14 by now and still at rectory school in hampton you head off to ealing film studios to play background music for the stuart granger for a robson movie sarah band for dead lovers [Music] [Music] another star of that film only discovered your off-screen role years later although i didn't know him then the child prodigy became a lifelong family friend the distinguished actress jill bolton [Music] joe your father michael balkan ran the studios of course but you never actually met julian at that time i know i didn't meet him then uh i met him later and we had terrific times doing recitals together with my husband c day lewis what i really want to say most of all is that i'll never be able to thank you for your generosity in offering to play at cecil's funeral it got me through the worst day of my life and it was your doing you know thank you very much well by the time that film was released you'd applied for a full time place at the royal college of music and after your interview the principal wrote glowingly at the top of your application admit no exam no fee now you were to study piano and composition not the guitar though no they didn't recognize it well there was no in that time there was no chair for the qatar the royal college and in fact most people didn't consider the guitar of really a serious vehicle for classical music but one of the first to recognize your talents and the potential of the guitar at this time was a musician who wrote a serenade especially for you and later a concerto one of our top composers he won an oscar for his score for the film bridge on the river kwai so malcolm arnold the first piece i wrote of course was the when you were about 14 or so was the serenade the string from guitar which was for an amateur orchestra and you came over i asked you to talk are you really children behind me said yes mate of course i am i said well how last you pray this heart i said i just changed a bit and i feel very dearly and wherever you are i wish you well thank you i told you when when julian was still making his way your father had a special dream for him when it was to come to the london platform you know musical um platform of the wigmore hall or for the first you know objective the queens would have been destroyed so that was his hope i imagine well the dream came true but sadly your father didn't live to see your london debut at the wigmore hall in 1951 a year later you leave the royal college and you receive your call-up papers for army service with the help of your friend and patron tom goth you get a transfer from the pay corps to the royal artillery band to play the electric guitar but bombardier breen you did have trouble keeping time now viola player with the world-renowned delmy quartet your old sparring partner johnny underwood [Music] i thought the timing was julian's speciality well musically yes musically yes but other things we weren't so good were we no good we did have though these alarm clocks yes three or three of them on sources very nasty yeah very nasty thing they got assaulted regularly they got across the room in there none of them work we were awkward late but never mind your time is still perfect while you're in the army you still manage to fit in some private concerts and your austin van comes in handy even serving as a bed when you couldn't afford a room once back in civil street you're soon crossing the atlantic and in 1958 you play for the first time in new york you've been back there almost every year since as your international reputation grows you work with another musician making a name for himself yehudi menu in i will recall our first meetings with benjamin britton peter pierce ben peter as we will always remember them at their festival in alderworld then you were good musician when they saw and heard one and you've lived up to their highest estimation you've committed yourself to your calling with a devotion with a sense of adventure with a desire to get to know every kind of music and you have given us all a very great example of great inspiration in the 50s with your friend actress peggy ashcroft you give poetry and music recitals and you persuade some more great composers to write for you including benjamin britton william walton and linux barkley in 1960 you formed the julian breen consort featuring another of your passions the elizabethan guitar the lute [Music] [Applause] 1964 you were awarded the obe over the years you devote a great deal of your time to transcribing 16th century music and increase the repertoire available to modern players of the loot and guitar you record more than 40 albums often with producer of the late jimmy burnett and engineer john bauer who is here your achievements are acknowledged by television's top arts programs including the prestigious series monitor putting you in the spotlight was award-winning producer humphrey burton [Music] hunter you have a chance to tell me it's quite inevitable we would make a film about you because you were kind of the number one british musical export in those days you were the kind of margot fontaine of the guitar they knew your name it was absolutely marvelous and the way you inspired people like william walton and benjamin britain they didn't write frilly things they wrote really great music yeah it must be great for you to feel that you've inspired composers of that hill to write music yes i i i i'm very pleased about that uh uh and i've performed our pieces a lot so they must be fairly pleased thank you you went on to establish your own music festival in your home village assembly in wiltshire but one evening in 1984 something happened that could have destroyed everything that you worked for you're driving home and you're open top sports car when disaster strikes and with your total recall i'm sure you remember what happened these little cars there's just no room in them so you've got to drive them like this you'll see and i had my arm outside of the door and as i was turning into this bridge the car somehow skewed like that and i think it was oil on the road but we'd had a dry summer and i hit my uh elbow uh a terrific blow on the side of the wall well i can pick it up there because you were rushed to salisbury hospital and your most serious injuries were fractured bones around your elbow which of course needed surgery astonishingly you asked for a local anesthetic so you could see what the surgeon was doing as he screwed in a metal plate but after all this you were told that you would never play the guitar again amazingly you were able to perform again just three months after the operation but you still needed extensive physiotherapy and the expert who helped you to recover is kate bray [Music] hey was julian a good patient i can't really take the credit for his recovery from that initial operation because it's his determination and dedication and hours of practice i know you put in keeping the same position on the qatar which tends to lead to postural problems as well that's right um that's made the success of the album that it won well good work all around us yes thank you very much thank you very in much after two marriages you were living the single life and wiltshire when june comes into your life and one of the many fascinating things you learn june is that when a guitarist cuts his fingernails it's a science of his own right isn't that sir yes there seems to be a moment when the nails have to be cut because apparently if they're long and thin the sound is quite different on the guitar it's awful so julian actually sort of i think he cuts his fingernails about three days before he's going to perform well i tell you when i do it once a week i i have a cup of tea on a sunday morning and i listened to alistair cook letter from america and i think

Channel: Daniele Magli

Views: 10,653

Rating: 4.9749999 out of 5

Keywords: julian bream, interview, guitar, john williams, last, television, program

Id: BN-i-MS3gbI

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021