<<  -- 9 --  Adrian Williams    JOHN RUSSELL FRCM (1916-1990)

The day of truth arrived, Tippett Sonata No 2 98% memorised, telegram from John waiting at College: It's only the Chappell! Ordeal over. I was told that David Willcocks, then Director of the RCM, had slipped into the back of the hall astonished first to see one of the contestants for the Chappell Gold Medal trip up the top step of the concert platform and lurch across into the piano -- only to give a hyperventilated crash-through of English Country Gardens. I got the Hopkinson Silver. Thank you Louis Kentner, Jimmy Gibb, Eddie Kendall-Taylor. It was more than I had ever imagined for myself.

Then back to Burghfield, evening glow to the west over rolling countryside, with the sort of satisfaction and relief that only third place can give.

'Fon's Belly! You horrid child' wrote John, reacting to my spoonerism; I could hear his explosive burps as I read his letter. Those letters, like little friendly missiles containing some small thought or anecdote or expression of affection. His response was a photocopy of a competition from The Spectator in which entrants had to be Lord Spooner himself, telling off his slow undergraduates -- 'this will make you splutter into your cornflakes'. Indeed it did, what with 'showing tightness in your breasts' but now 'limply sagging behind' or threatening to stop the authorities from 'greying your pants' ... I can still hear John's own spluttering, loud blowing, accompanied by red face, watering eyes, degenerating into prolonged wheezing and use of handkerchief beneath collar. John was familiar with such old-fashioned English tomfoolery, having known personally the inimitable Stanley Unwin. The same letter went on: It reminds me painfully of a real clanger. Yesterday I got a charming letter of thanks from Peter Pears in reply to condolences on the death of BB -- addressed, of course (in his own handwriting) to 'Ben's Folly'. How clumsy can one get? O dear!

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