Antisocial Hours

I am asked, more and more frequently these days, what it would take to convince me to ret

ire (I am 72). The straight answer is a run of bad concerts. Another answer, not quite as straight, is the itineraries which start with us having to get out of bed at 0500 and sing a concert maybe 16 hours later.

One way to save money is to ask us to travel on the concert day, thereby removing the need for an extra night in a hotel. This argument in fact cuts both ways. It saves a hotel night, while increasing the chances of us not arriving in time for the concert. It also increases the chances of all my preferred singers being able to do the engagement, since they will then be free to work for someone else on that previous night. More often than not we therefore grin and bear the itineraries handed us, which will require us to appear bright and fresh on stage at the end of a long day. A standard day might run as follows: 0500 alarm; 0600 transport to Heathrow; 0800 check-in for flight; 1030 flight to somewhere in nearer Europe; 1300 arrive (remembering the time change); arrive at hotel any time during the afternoon depending on local conditions; 1800 – 1900 rehearse in venue; 2100 concert starts (2200 if in Spain); 2300 finish and prepare for an early start on the following day, so that we can get home to work later on that day, and maybe do it all again on the following day.

This suicidal way of doing things can only work if the actual concerts are up to standard and don’t, for example, sound tired or suffer from voicelessness. It is an enduring tribute to generations of my singers that this system has been made to work – the risks involved would never be allowed by the groups I work with abroad. It is often commented that we are like an army unit, battle-hardened, for whom defeat is unthinkable. The impressive truth is that once on that stage we are prepared to give everything; and I think that in all our 2,700 concerts over the years we have only totally missed two – and these were caused by the weather.

So, given the experience of years, why would this reality make me think of retirement, when the concerts at the end of those days remain so good? You might think that the alarm at 0500, the energy needed to do that sort of travelling, and then to have to perform at the end of it all, was a young person’s game; but I’m not so sure. I have learnt to sleep almost anywhere on the journeys (which some of my younger colleagues haven’t); and is the 0500 moment really worse for me than for someone 40 years younger? I’ve never liked it, but I think I did it just the same 40 years ago. So here are some actual incidents from the Journal. See how you react, whatever your age:

June 8^th 2025 (en route to the Boston Early Music Festival)

Such easiness was not replicated when trying to get to Heathrow from home on public transport early on a Sunday. I was out of the house at 6 am, to find Angel tube station shut. By good fortune the only bus in the next 20 minutes was a 4, which immediately went on a diversion. I eventually got to Farringdon tube station, which was shut. In desperation I summoned an uber to Paddington, to travel on the Elizabeth Line, entry to which was barred, an employee telling us that there wouldn’t be a train for 48 minutes. In heightened desperation I did the one thing I hate to do, and caught the Heathrow Express. Total cost for a journey which should have been free: at least £50.

June 19^th 2022 (en route to Cremona, Italy)

It took me ten hours^[1](and Oscar eleven) to get from bed to hotel room (7 am to 6 pm), and when I got there I had 30 minutes to recover before going to the venue where the concert followed the rehearsal more or less without break. At one point I was cutting my finger-nails while sitting on the loo. Nothing on the journey was delayed, but every stage was unpleasant, not helped by the extreme heat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in a space as there were in the metal detecting part of Gatwick South: Amy reckoned they were processing 5000 people an hour;^[2]and the sense of being treated like a brute beast was not encouraging. Then the Easyjet flight was packed, of course. The plane had been loaned by a Latvian company which, Ryanair style, ensured there were no pockets to put papers into on the back of the seats in front of one, this used as an excuse to push them further together even than normal. Even Amy’s knees were compacted; Robbie (at 6’ 3’’) was so crammed that he did himself an injury and had difficulty getting onto the stage. He was still hobbling the next day (the flight back was in normally configured seating). The bus which took us from Malpensa to Cremona was a 12-seater (for 12 people with the driver) without proper air conditioning or space for luggage. After this experience we had the 30 minutes to turn round. If anything had gone wrong we would not have had 30 minutes.

June 26^th 2023 (concert in Nuremberg)

My journey on the 24^th had involved flying to Frankfurt and taking a train to Nuremberg. On the 26^th this journey was replicated in part by the singers who had left home at perhaps 0500, flown to Frankfurt and then boarded a bus. Exhausted already, they then had to endure the post-Brexit immigration queues, which delayed them in total about an hour. At 1630, when our private rehearsal was scheduled to begin in St. Sebald’s Church, there was no sign of them, though by 1700 they were all in position, carrying their cases, pale and out of sorts. It was an old style, terrible concert day, aggravated by heat. We duly lined up for the microphones, from which there was no escape.

And so on, and on.