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DAVID EVANS
MUSICAL INSPIRATION
Music was paramount to David Evans, and in the 1950s and 60s he ran a small classical music record shop, Record Roundabout, at 291 Brompton Road. He was friends with many musicians including Pete Gage, best known from his time in the 1990s as the lead vocalist of the R&B band Dr. Feelgood. Gage has written an intimate account of his friendship with Evans which is included in a comprehensive catalogue of David Evans’ oeuvre accompanying the exhibition.
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In his interview with Three Highgate’s founder, Irina Johnstone, Gage comments "Listening to music with David was always an exciting experience that needed all one's attention. He was an educator who took no shortcuts as allowing [a listener] to ‘relax’ for example to the slow movements or to be reminded of pleasant or sentimental moments that the music may conjure. A beautiful slow movement had to be absorbed in the context of the complete work of art. I am sure David would have expressed extreme disdain at the ‘instant gratification’ served up by Classic FM for example. But this decline in listening to the whole of a classical work has been reflected in many other art forms and other ways of life. How we value artistic endeavour has changed so much since David’s death; there is so much to mourn as regards David´s era of record buying and listening to great music."
The exhibition at Three Highgate pays homage to Record Roundabout and Evans’ love of music by displaying alongside his art a selection of his favourite vinyl albums kindly lent to the show by Pete Gage. This selection, annotated by Pete Gage, is also collated below to offer an insight into the artist's mind and the source of his musical inspiration. ​
"David was a purist in his musical tastes. He loved Ernest Ansermet for his accurate interpretations of a composers’ intentions.
Similarly, he recognised and liked Erich Kleiber’s non-sentimental, studious approach to conducting all of the Beethoven symphonies.
Kleiber studied the scores assiduously and never lost his whole view of a work. Also, Kleiber refused to indulge in romantic or sentimental interpretations as a means of self-projection.
So this recording was pure unadulterated Beethoven and probably David’s favourite of all the nine symphonies."
"The legendary English organist E. Power Biggs became a household name in the US when his Sunday morning CBS broadcasts introduced radio listeners all over the USA to the sound of historic North European pipe organs and the classical organ repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe.
Refusing to perform on electronic organs in studios, he sought out and recorded historic church organs associated with the music of many early composers. This authenticity of instrumental dedication David loved, but also, he especially loved the first “Classical" era composer, Josef Haydn.
On one of the many days in the mid-60s when I would call in to Record Roundabout, David was waxing lyrical about this new recording by E. Power Biggs of Haydn's 3 Organ Concerti, recorded on an Austrian organ built in the early 1700s. He played it on the shop gramophone and entered an ecstatic sound-world all of his own as E Power Biggs spilled out of the door into the Brompton Road. He loved this record.​"
"Bruckner’s wonderful, but unfinished, Symphony No.9 has a first movement of great power and maturity, interspersed with such beautiful lyricism. It’s one of many spiritually expressive works by the great man. It’s no wonder that this was David’ favourite of all the Bruckner symphonies.
All the expansiveness and seriousness of Bruckner’s lilting melodies, and his sweeping statements of non-sentimental passion, are brought to life, particularly in this, Eugen Jochum’s first cycle of the complete Bruckner symphonies, of which this symphony was for David the highlight.
I discovered David’s love of this particular recording with the Bavarian Radio symphony orchestra, when I took his afternoon mug of tea to him one afternoon at Potash Farm. David liked to work in the afternoons on his latest “opus”.
On this particular afternoon in April 1974 David had put his brush down and was looking ecstatically out of the window listening to this very record, his eyes awash with tears at what he was hearing. It was a very moving moment for me, and clearly for him too."
"The only recording available in 1965 of the American composer Roy Harris, was that composer’s Symphony No.3. It was a pre-war recording on RCA Vittriola by the brilliant Boston Symphony Orchestra under Sergei Koussevitzki, coupled with Symphony No.5 of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
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David was so taken with the Harris symphony that he sent off to the States’ Columbia Records for as much of Roy Harris’s music as possible. The coupling of Eugene Ormandy’s reading of Harris’s Symphony No.7 and Koussevitzky’s brilliant recording of Harris’ s "Symphony 1933" was one of Davids’ prize possessions.
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He would paint with passion and with fire when Harris was on the turntable. And this Symphony 1933, Harris’s first symphony, was no exception as regards inspiration to David. David loved the way Harris would drive the composition forward - a totally original voice in orchestral music.
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What I’ve had to remember when considering how a particular work would influence David in his painting is this: David would not identify with one piece of music as a means to drive one of his own paintings forward. But his love of authentic music was, I believe, what drove him to be as authentic in his own work as possible. Like Roy Harris."
"David loved the early 20th century English generation of composers that included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Herbert Howells. In the early days of the 60’s at Record Roundabout, David was already moving through his “middle period” paintings as I now call them.
He would often put a record on in the shop without saying what it was and watch to see if I was responding positively or not. On this occasion, it was the very spiritual, ethereal and beautiful sound of a large choir and two vocal soloists with a wonderfully sympathetic orchestral accompaniment. It was a profoundly moving sound. I couldn’t hide my liking for what I was hearing.
David was always wanting to educate and share the joy that he experienced in the music he loved, instilling a "feel" for a piece of music that he himself experienced.
It was this masterpiece by Herbert Howells, written in memory of his five year old son, that EMI made available to us in a stunning performance by Sir David Willcocks that brought out all the drama and grief that the composer was experiencing at the time. Sir David Willcocks conducts the Bach Choir and King’s College Choir with the New Philharmonia Orchestra."
"Honegger's Symphony No. 4, containing melodies from two Swiss folk songs, expresses the composer's happiness during a pleasant stay in the Swiss countryside after the end of World War 2.
The pastoral and often joyous mood throughout much of the symphony was exhilarating to David, despite the closing minutes of some rather tragic elements that reflect the horror of the war.
David was already a huge fan of Ansermet’s precision-of-performance according to the composers’ instructions. In this symphony there is so much colour and lively, sometimes light, but intricate interaction between different sections of the orchestra. This beautiful recording, for which Decca’s SA-X series was already renowned as being the most dynamic of record labels, David immediately recognised as having a combination of great performance, great recording and such a beautiful composition. I wouldn’t mind betting that this would be the one record he would have taken to his 'desert island'."
"Another 20th century composer that deeply touched David was the Hungarian, Bela Bartok.
With such innovations as Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste” and his “Concerto for Orchestra”, not to mention his iconic six String Quartets, three piano concerti and two violin concerti, all of which David loved, and introduced me to, it was this recording of the “Dance Suite” by Ernest Ansermet & l’Orchestre de La Suisse Romande that I think he was most fond of.
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Bartok started collecting Hungarian folk songs & tunes, with their driving rhythms and melodies, at the age of nineteen, incorporating their essence into all of his works. But especially, the Dance Suite, containing five different traditional Hungarian rhythms, incorporating large scale orchestration with the kind of energy that only David’s beloved Ansermet could inject into this great work."
"The 60’s was a great time for the “cleaning up” of surface sound from earlier 78rpm shellac records of classical and jazz. The re-releasing of such classical masterpieces as the symphonies of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in performances by such eminent conductors as Sir Thomas Beecham. This was good news for collectors and lovers of authentic recordings.
In Robert Kajanus’ recording of Sibelius’s 3rd and 5th Symphonies, more especially in the 3rd, Kajanus’s early recording took the symphony at much slower pace than the later post-war recordings. This was a revelation to David who had previously only a distant memory of hearing the old 78s with all their surface sound.
What David loved about this latest release of Kajanus’ early Sibelius, was the attention paid by the conductor to the composer’s intention as regards pace and “feel”, bringing with it a distinctive ring of conviction and authenticity. Not to mention of course David’s deep love for all things Sibelius, namely his vast soundscapes and drama."
"Another of David’s great loves was the music of the great English composer, Gustav Holst. A lesser known and criminally overlooked choral work, more so than Holst’s jubilant Choral Symphony written a few years earlier, was the Choral Fantasia, directed here by his daughter Imogen Holst.
This work has a rather desolate and bleak feel to it. A mezzo-soprano, the wonderful Janet Baker, sings an accapella coda, “Rejoice Ye Dead where-e’er your spirits lie”. It is a requiem for poet’s and composers of all generations, with a text by Holst’s friend, 30 years his senior, the poet Robert Bridges, to whom this wonderful work was dedicated.
David Evans was extremely serious about the need for the arts in any society, and this work of Holst’s reflects a similar sentiment. It’s an emotional statement of such dignity that was the attraction for David of this profound and moving homage to the artist, the poet and the composer."
"Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto, in two movements of such lyrical intensity that the listener could easily forget that its composer was writing 12-tone music since studying with Arnold Schoenberg, 20 years earlier in his tragically short life.
It’s no exaggeration to say that David loved the Berg Violin Concerto as much as any other 20th century concert piece, but of all the recordings of this great work, the Arthur Grumiaux reading was the one he adored the most.
The experience and understanding this relatively traditional concert violinist brought to Berg’s masterpiece shines through in this glorious Phillips recording that was dear to David’s heart.
I here am reminded of David’s gift to my old school friend Costas and I to share a performance of Berg’s phenomenal opera “Lulu” in 1966 at Sadler’s Wells, East London. Both Costas and I were mesmerised.
By way of a thank you to David we thought he should hear some of OUR music. So, in late 1966 we took him down to Ronnie Scott’s for a champagne filled evening of free-jazz with the Ornette Coleman Trio. David loved every minute."