School music recording

In December 1960 Mark Wigram, as Head of Music, ambitiously put on Handel’s Messiah.

The School Orchestra was bolstered with imported musicians, and the School Choir (I was a treble) with imported voices – probably some from Willie Perks (Sir William Perkins’ High School) but I can’t remember. The performance, in the Gym and Assembly Hall (as it was then, i.e. The Aviary), was preserved for posterity by being recorded on state of the art (or Ark) equipment by John Hassell Recordings. Hassell, from Nassau Road, Barnes, was best known then for recording school, college and small professional classical ensembles. Amazingly his later (post-1977) claim to fame was for capturing the UK Reggae ‘big bass sound’.

The discs produced were, if I am correct, 10” shellac discs, which played at 45rpm! I for one didn’t buy any of them as my record player at home only played 78s. One piece from the Messiah was unusual in that Mark Wigram stamped his foot heavily on his wooden dais to get us moving, and this drumbeat figured prominently on the recording.

Not put off, he invited John Hassell back in July 1963 to record Raymond Monelle’s cantata John Gilpin, based on the poem about John Gilpin’s Ride. Raymond Monelle, who eventually became Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, taught Music and other subjects at Ottershaw. He was not in good health, as I remember, but was not helped when admitted to Chertsey’s St Peter’s Hospital only to find Richard Ironside (OT 633) and myself standing at his bedside asking after his health. I didn’t, mercifully, sing on John Gilpin, although the work certainly gave some of the school’s virtuoso singers an opportunity to shine. Does anyone know who the solo tenor or treble was?

As assistant Housemaster of East House, Raymond Monelle wrote the excruciating Green Singlet for the inter-House Music Competition. Early in this century I wrote him a chatty epistle about his time at the school, but never received a reply! He died in 2010.

Some time ago, Peter Neve (OT 644)  sent me a cassette tape of parts of the two performances, and more recently has since supplied a direct digital recording of them taken directly from his own original records which he has allowed us to reproduce here. High fidelity it ain’t, but they make for interesting listening.

The tracks are:
Pastoral Symphony / Since by Man came Death  / Hallelujah Chorus (1963) /  6 x John Gilpin tracks
Total running time is about 30  minutes.

Does anyone recognise any of the soloists?

Peter White
OT 658 - West