The Fiddle Comes Home
BBC Radio 4 - 15 August 2000, 5th May 2002

Several years ago Peter Hanson, British violinist, had the special opportunity of being asked to play a 1757 Giovanni Batista Guadagnini violin, after it had lain unplayed for many, many years. The violin had been owned and played by Fred Brough in the Halle Orchestra. Fascinated by the violin, Mr. Hanson decided to explore the history of this violin during the years it was played by Mr. Brough during the World War I era. He also speaks to Simon Morris of J & A Beare Ltd. about the Guadagnini.
This BBC Radio 4 broadcast was first aired on 15th August 2000, and again on 5th May 2002. Peter Hanson was the presenter and the producers were Rex Brough, grandson of Fred Brough, and Paul Kobrak, Senior Producer of Features, BBC Factual & Learning Radio.

Peter Hanson: This is a very special occasion for me, I've been asked to lead the Halle Orchestra, and this is the first time for me, so to a certain extent I'm nervous, but I'm also very excited. One of the wonderful things about today is that I'm playing on this wonderful Guadagnini violin, which used to belong to Fred Brough and he used to also lead the Halle in the 1930s, so to a certain extent the violin is coming home.
It's a quite interesting story how I got the violin. I'm a very good friend of Harvey Brough's, who's actually the grandson of Fred Brough, and I was round at Harvey's and he said, "Come and have a look at this." And on top of his wardrobe was this old battered case, and inside the case it was instantly recognisable as something of great quality. You could tell by the old varnish and the grain of the wood and the way it's been made. Plus the fact that it's got a label that says JB Guadagnini. Harvey said he wanted it to be played by a player, and I was very grateful that he chose me, I suppose.
Fred Brough's voice (speaking to his grandsons in an old audiotape recording): Hello Terry, Lester, and Harvey and Rex. This is grandpa speaking. Oh, I can see a canary flying over here, a rather bright one. I was born on the 5th of April 1896, and my parents told me that when I was 2 years of age I played on two spanners and pretended to play the violin. I probably heard my father playing the violin many times. He was my first teacher and he taught himself to play. My father had a very hard life, working down the mine. I still remember him coming home from his work in an ambulance, injured, cuts and bruises, blood. Then he decided enough is enough. He started to learn how to tune a piano and organ. He became an expert tuner and put a sign on the window: Pro Dip, which was short for professional diploma. We teased him about this, but I remember I had a bit more food after this.
PH: Fabulous sound, beautifully made. When I found out I was going to come play here, I felt it was a great opportunity to find out more about the violin, more about Fred Brough, so I thought about taking it to Beare's in central London, the violin dealers. And a very good friend of mine, Simon Morris, works there. I thought it'd be great to have a chat with him about it.
This is a lovely room, huge mirror, banks of violins, ah! This looks like another one.
Simon Morris (CEO of J & A Beare Ltd.): This one's dated 1755, which is a couple of years before the one you're playing on. Also made in Milan, but this yellowy-orange varnish is quite typical of the period. But it was a very prolific period for the maker in Milan. We don't know how many he made, but he could quite well have been the most prolific maker of his day.
PH: From looking at the violin, is there any way you can tell its history?
SM: It's interesting, you can tell a certain amount from the wear and damage on the instrument what may have happened to it. With this violin, it has suffered damage over the years. It's rather typical that you get cracks in the front of the instrument from the pressure being put on the bridge. This is not uncommon at all to have some damage here. There's more than you would expect here. Of course, another part of the indication of the period it came from is the wear pattern, which partly comes from just being left in a case all those years, but also at the time, it would have been played without a shoulder rest. The modern shoulder rest keeps the violin suspended above the shoulder in effect, so you don't get that wear pattern on a new violin.
PH: Do you think these old knocks and bumps, in the end, causes magic that these old master violins have that modern violins don't seem to have? You know, the constant debate, why do they have this magical sound?
SM: I think for many a violinist and many a violin maker the key lies in the varnish, that is, it's very, very difficult to reproduce, really, and it's not a question of the recipe, although many people have spent many hours trying to analyse the varnish that's used on the instrument. But one just doesn't know how they applied it at the time. It's the real key to it in many ways. But one has to think in terms that these makers were very, very talented with wood. These are very beautiful violins, the ones made in Milan and he was a very talented maker.
PH: I noticed it's got a new neck on.
SM: Yes.
PH: It's not the original neck.
SM: Almost all the 18th century violins have been modernised at some stage and it's quite rare for us to find one that hasn't been modernised for present-day players. The more steeply angled neck allows for more pressure and, hopefully, to make a bigger sound in a modern-day, dry concert hall, where you would be struggling with the old-style setup to be heard.
(Sound of violin playing).
PH: I think it was unplayed for about twenty years, something like that? It's been in a bank for awhile, I've been playing it about six years now.
SM: And it's coming back to life.
PH: Yeah, it's amazing how that's happened because at first it was very dead, very…very, sort of slovenly. Gradually, as it's been played and played, I've been able to go deeper and deeper into it and find out more things about it. It's fantastic, really, it's a wonderful, wonderful…wonderful violin.
(Sound of violin playing).
Fred Brough: About this time I had a nice notice written about me in a London magazine. It read, 'Young Freddie Brough knows how to spread the cat gut to perfection and shows signs of becoming a second Strauss.' I was rather proud of this. Eventually, I went to the Royal College of Music London and gave an audition to the principle teacher, a Frenchman named [Archille] Rivarde. He was very impressed and thought I had a fine future. Unfortunately, this was not to be as I contracted neuritis through overwork. I was practicing then about eight hours a day, which is far too much. I could not hold the violin for long, only a few minutes. (Sound of violin playing). The war of 1914 had just started, and I thought, if I can't be a musician I will fight for my country and take a chance, whether I come back to Blighty or not. In ten weeks I was fighting on the Somme, fighting in the 23rd Division. We were shelled every night and each night I wondered if I wouldn't come through.
PH: As musicians we all have to earn our living by one thing or another, and it's seems my fate that I have a lot of different eggs in lots of different baskets. I play in orchestras, I do a few jingles, film sessions, I play in baroque groups, I do all sorts of stuff. Just in the same way as people in the 30s used to play in pier orchestras to earn their money, like Fred for instance. My main love is the Eroica String Quartet. We rehearse as much as we can.
Gustav's trying a new viola out at the moment, 'cause there's three of us in the quartet who have old instruments, and you've been playing on a new one. I think the older instrument you're trying, which is possibly Italian, seems to blend in better. Yours is a… (Speaking to violinist Lucy Howard).
Lucy Howard: It's Italian.
PH: …a Grancino, isn't it?
LH: Yes.
Gustav Clarkson: Mine is anonymous…
PH: Anonymous.
GC: …ends in a vowel, and it's probably late 19th century. But I mean, it's got that quality of feeling really, really played in.
PH: Yes. Actually the earliest instrument in the quartet is the cello, isn't it, a Rogeri…16…
David Watkin: Yes, 1660 or 70, in there.
PH: Well, I prefer an old instrument because I find what happens, it's…it's to do with inspiration. As you start playing an old one, I find in that Guadagnini, I find there's depths there, there's sounds there that I still looking for, I'm still searching for, and they're still coming out, there're surprises still happening .
Lucy Howard: There's something that must mature in the facts that these plates of wood have had sound resonating through them. If the sound board, the table' been resonating day in, day out by a good player playing in tune, then the instrument will give that back to you.
DW: There's definitely something that happens to the molecules in the wood, that they somehow line up in tune like filings with magnets. My new cello, which is about 19 years old, definitely sounds incredibly much better just after playing it for nineteen years…
PH: Yes, yes.
DW: …and no one else has played it.
PH: Holding an instrument like that, Gustav, does it make you feel like playing the violin again?
GC: Well, having been a violinist as well, I might well, if I'd had a violin like this, I might have stayed a violinist. (Everyone laughs). You see more violins like that, although you don't see many violins like this at all, but you see more of this quality than you see violas of this quality. It's very hard to find violas of this quality that are not in seven figures. As regards the price…
PH: Seven figures…blimey.
GC: …well, the latest price on the 'Archinto' Strad viola is 7-1/2 million.
PH: Pounds…
GC: Yes. I had it on my fingers for five minutes a few weeks ago. It's not even one of the best instruments, but it's a Strad and it's a viola and I'd love to have a viola that was as beautiful as this. I did play one. I played on a Grancino viola once and when I gave it back, I filmed it and I took photos of it. I really didn't want to let it go at all.
PH: Kind of like a love affair, isn't it?
GC: I do enjoy playing viola, but what I don't enjoy about it is that it's very hard work to get the sound out, and I feel that the sound comes from me much than the instrument. I'm doing all the work all the time. The Italian viola that I'm trying today does seem to have qualities of its own. You just put the bow to the string and the sound just drifts out and I'm not having to work for it as much.
GC: But still, the same instrument played by two different people will sound completely different. There's the famous story about Heifitz, and somebody saying, 'Your violin makes a beautiful sound.' And he holds it up to his ear and says, 'I can't hear it." (Everyone laughs). And you know, of course, that is a fabulous violin and it makes a wonderful sound, but it's definitely something to do with the player as well.
PH: I think it wants to be played. Right.
(Sound of Eroica String Quartet playing).
Fred Brough: It is rather strange, while taking one turning in your life, leads you to this or that. I remember going to St. Helens to the Pilkington works, I was looking for work. They asked me to give a sample of my writing. 'Write your name and address on this piece of paper.' After a short time she came back and said my writing was not good enough, so in the end, I had to be a musician, a violinist.
(Sound of violin playing). I'm sure, thinking back, I have had more pleasure playing the violin, but what is better still, I've been paid for it.
PH: One of the things I wanted to do up here, of course, is to try and find some people who played with Fred. And we managed to get hold of a phone number of Paul and Brenda Cropper, who both worked in the orchestras with Fred and who are now in their 80s.
Paul Cropper: Fred…Fred was known by some people as 'Dead Rough'. He wasn't rough in any way, but it's Fred Brough and Dead Rough, it's quite good. (Laughs).
Brenda Cropper: He was always precise. He was always polite with everybody. I never heard him ruffled at all. Never.
PC: He was friendly, but in those days people somehow didn't socialise very much.
BC: He belonged to the old school, you see Paul, didn't he? My father was the same. I mean, they go down, do their job and they'd be friendly with people there, but they didn't socialise afterwards, as they do now.
PC: And they treated the work with a different…
BC: …orchestras were different in those days.
PH: Well, you probably both remember this violin, then. It's got a few cracks down here.
BC: Yes, I see that.
PC: But apart from that it's looking magnificent, isn't it. I think it's a wonderful aristocratic colour.
PC: Is there a label in?
PH: There is, yes, JB Guadagnini 1757.
PC: By Jove, he bought this at the right time.
PH: He did, didn't he. We've got some recordings of him, actually, he's very good! (Sound of violin playing). What have we got here, another photo. Is this him, here?
PC: That's me.
PH: That's you?!
PC: Yes.
PH: That's wonderful.
PC: There's Fred.
PH: Oh, there he is, yeah.
BC: Am I on that, Paul?
PC: Yes, there she is.
PH: Oh, right.
BC: In those days they didn't have women in orchestras, apart from harpist.
PH: That's right.
BC: No women. But you see, the war was very kid to the women. I mean, the men went into the forces and women got into orchestras. And I think they realised that women could sort of pull their weight and they were kept on.
PH: So, as professional players, you had a contract with the Halle, presumably, and then you could work outside that, could you do?
PC: Oh, you weren't supposed to.
PH: Oh, you weren't supposed to? That's interesting, yes.
PC: People did. There were only twenty concerts before the war, Halle concerts.
PH: Ah, I see. So Halle only had twenty concerts a year?
PC: Twenty concerts in Manchester. Plus one pension concert for which we didn't get paid.
PH: Oh!
PC: But the Halle was such a different outfit in those days. I joined after Harty had left, you see, and we had guest conductors, and we had Barbarolli when he was a very young man as guest conductor. And it was a very interesting life. And we had world top soloists, Kreisler, Heifitz, Casals, Rachmaninoff…
PH: Wow.
PC: Oh, all the big names.
Fred Brough: …Sir Edward Elgar, about five times, I've played all of his works, his symphonies and concertos and everything. Vaughn Williams, Sir William Walton, Strauss, Sir Richard Strauss, and Gustav Holst to Benjamin Britten's teacher, Frank Bridge, I played…and also Sir Arthur Bliss.
BC: Though, the funny thing is that, sitting in the orchestra is terribly thrilling. All these sounds around you, I think it's wonderful. When we retired we went to the concerts expecting it to be a lovely, big sound, but it sounded so small. You know sitting amongst it is so different.
PC: We both feel that we're so lucky to have been earning a living, doing what we like doing best, you see.
PH: Yes, yes, wonderful.
BC: I think we've been extremely lucky.
PC: I think we're privileged.
PH: Well, the orchestra's starting to go on stage at the moment, and time is running out, I'm feeling a bit apprehensive, but I think it will be alright. There are a couple of solos I've got to deal with straight off. And always when you have a solo, it's one of those situations where you feel nervous, but if you're confident enough and you know you can do it, it'll be fine. The story of Fred Brough and this violin certainly wouldn't complete without the visit to the North Pier at Blackpool. Fred played at the North Pier. He lead the orchestra there and there's a famous occasion when it burnt down and all the orchestra's instruments were burnt, but it was because of that fire and because of his losing his instrument, that Fred finally got hold of the Guadagnini. And I'd arranged to meet local historian Brian Crompton to tell us something about the North Pier fire.
PH: I'm looking at a plaque here, designed by Eugenius Birch. The pier opened in 1863. Blimey, the 1877 Indian Pavilion was capable of holding 1200 people, built for concerts. This was later destroyed by fire in '21, we know about that, and replaced by a larger theatre renewed in '38. Always the most selective piers …it specialised…in the early days by a quality visitor. The working classes frequented the neighbouring south, later-century pier. Oh, and here's Brian.
Brian Crompton: Hello.
PH: How do you do, Brian?
Crompton: Nice to meet you.
PH: A bit windy today, but we're alright, aren't we?.
Crompton: Yeah, but not too bad, it's a typical Blackpool day today.
PH: We're on a mission.
Crompton: Yes?
PH: We're trying to find out the history of this violin that's in this case. That last owner was a chap called Fredrick Brough, who was the leader of the pier orchestra here…
Crompton: Yes.
PH: …and he got this fiddle because the pier burnt down…
Crompton: …the theatre…
PH: …oh, the theatre burnt down, did it?
Crompton: Yes, the pier burnt down, or theatre I should say, has burnt down on two occasions. The first occasion was when the original Victorian theatre and concert hall burnt down in 1920 and was rebuilt in 1921. Then that in turn, that suffered destruction by fire in 1938, and the present theatre that we see today was opened the following year.
PH: Do you know anything about the orchestra?
Crompton: Well, there were orchestras all over Blackpool. And they tended to be staffed, if I can use that word, by musicians who often had other jobs. You'll see in a lot of the contemporary documents that people were with the Halle Orchestra and all this kind of thing. Certainly in Victorian times it was often the practice to send your deputy to deal with tiresome things like rehearsals, and the main musician could work in Blackpool during the day and do his Halle concert in the evening.
PH: Fantastic. So I suppose this theatre we're going into would have been used as a theatre for shows and plays, but also for serious classical music as well? Or was it mainly light music?
Crompton: It would be mainly light music. The original structure was principally a concert hall, but then the structure that replaced it in 1921 was much more a conventional theatre, and this present structure from 1939 is pure theatre. Hello there, can we pop into the theatre? Thanks very much. Right, I'll give you a shout when we are going. OK, thanks.
PH: The musty smell of a theatre here, old photos on the wall.
Crompton: There you are. That's the fire.
PH: Blimey. Pretty serious, isn't it? Pretty comprehensive fire. We've got some photos to show you as well.
Crompton: Yeah?
PH: Here's a photo of Fred Brough himself…
Crompton: Uh huh.
PH: …looking extremely dapper and mysterious and rather romantic.
Crompton: Oh, yes, very, very much the Valentino heart throb of the 20s-look there.
PH: There's a photo of the orchestra. He's the Concertmeister there.
Crompton: …entire and complete orchestra. Ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, there's about an orchestra of about 20 people. Couldn't afford that today, could we now.
PH: There you are, 'Special Concert-Fred Brough'-"On With the Show".
Crompton: "On With the Show." That makes it sort of in the mid-20s because Lawrence Wright, of course, the composer and music publisher ran on with the show here [as the show's producer] from the mid-20s right the way through until the 60s until Bernard Delfont* took over, so that again is the Pavilion. It ["On With the Show"] was the title for the summer season show each year, the summer variety show.
PH: Now that's a photo of them on the pier, I think, isn't it, there he is.
Crompton: Ah, yes.
PH: That's Fred there…haven't got any instruments with them, though.
Crompton: No instruments. Not any instruments, nor their raincoats.
PH: They probably, well, they probably left them in the Pier, that's probably why they went up in the fire.
Crompton: Yes.
* Bernard Delfont, the famous impresario. [Although he had been involved in Blackpool's entertainment from an earlier date, in 1983 he formed a company, First Leisure, which took over Blackpool Tower, Winter Gardens and piers. He died as Lord Delfont in July 1994. Information courtesy of Ted Lightbown, Blackpool local historian].
Fred Brough: When they gave an audition to Sir Hamilton Harty in 1920, I had just lost a fine violin in a fire at Blackpool North Pier. The public responded by having a mile of pennies for us, they were all very sorry for us. And the next day they actually gave instruments that had been collected from the town. Some of the violins they brought were pretty terrible. I couldn't even tune mine, it was so horrible. Eventually, I bought a fine JB Guadagnini violin.
PH: …the auditorium itself…almost like a cinema, isn't it?
Crompton: It is, yes, very, very 30s.
PH: Do we know what sort of music was played here?
Crompton: That would be whatever was needed for the shows that took place in the theatre for the revues. I would imagine that was fairly light stuff. They did have the Sunday concerts with, perhaps, a notable singer as the principle guest and there was a slightly sort of higher tone to what was played and sung there, but it would be from a relatively popular repertoire because it had to appeal to people who were on holiday here. They were the people who were buying tickets. It was a primarily working class audience.
PH: Yeah, it was much more of a sort of holiday audience, yes.
Crompton: That's right. Dancing was for the central pier, that was where the let-your-hair-down brigade were. The North Pier was a very, very respectable establishment and certainly would have been sitting and appreciating.
PH: It's wonderful sitting here, you can almost hear, well, you can hear, actually hear the sea.
Crompton: You can indeed, yes.
PH: And we're right above the water at the moment.
Crompton: That's right.
PH: Shall we see what the violin sounds like?
Crompton: Okay, I'd love to hear that.
PH: Okay, seventy years ago when it was last here.
(Sound of Peter Hanson playing Fred Brough's JB Guadagnini violin).
Fred Brough: Lillian said, 'That violin has made you. You must not sell it.' (Sound of Fred playing). You can turn this down, Jimmy. I only wanted to find out if I could still play the violin at nearly eighty-four. I can, but only just. Good night, Terry. Good night, Rex. Good night, Lester. Good night, Harvey. Good night.
PH: The amazing thing about this violin is that it is 250 years old and it's still playing superbly. Meeting the people who knew him, and getting to know about the story of the violin and where it's come from and how he played and who he played it with, where it was used, I just feel very close to Fred and close to the violin. And now I'm going to be very, very close to the Halle. Amazing to do all that research, but I've gotta go, I've gotta go and play now. So, here we go. (Sound of applause).

Reproduced with permission of BBC

Peter Hanson is a member of the Eroica String Quartet Website

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