Stephen Layton: Interview (The Times, 2007)

Stephen Layton interviewed by Richard Morrison (The Times, 16 November 2007)

Master and Commander

Every child should have the chance to sing, the choral supremo Stephen Layton insists

One of Handel’s most spectacular, and spectacularly challenging, choral works will be heard in London tomorrow. It is Israel in Egypt, a gloriously flamboyant depiction – virtuosically written for eight-part double-chorus and a Baroque big band that includes three trombones as well as trumpets – of the plagues, pestilences and assorted ailments inflicted on the Egyptians as the Israelites made their famous dash for freedom across the Red Sea.

Few amateur choirs attempt it these days, preferring the safer, and more marketable, prospect of Handel’s Messiah. But the Holst Singers, who are performing tomorrow, are no ordinary amateur choir. As their conductor, Stephen Layton, points out, the 40 to 50 members include “people who sang to a high standard at university, and could even have made careers as professional singers, but decided to earn real money as barristers or whatever”.

Layton even questions the use of the description “amateur” in this context. “It’s true that no money changes hands,” he says. “But amateur is a bit of a dirty word, isn’t it? The Holst Singers represent the English choral tradition at its absolute best. And if there is another national tradition of unpaid choirs to rival the quality of Britain’s, I would like to know where it is – because I would like to hear it.” Under Layton’s 14-year direction, the Holst Singers’ repertoire has become highly eclectic. This was the choir that stayed up all night a couple of years ago to give the world premiere of an extraordinary eight-hour, dusk-to-dawn choral epic by John Tavener, and which is now pioneering Britain’s belated discovery of the remarkably rich and (in the West) largely unknown choral heritage of the Baltic states.

Its next disc (scheduled for release by Hyperion in the spring) will highlight the gloriously expressive and politically charged choral music of the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis.

Like his choir, Layton is also something out of the ordinary. Though he has only just turned 40 he already has something of a legendary reputation, built on the uncompromisingly high standards that he demands from his choirs (he also runs the professional group Polyphony, and last year became director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge, with its superb chapel choir). His attention to detail is microscopic and obsessive. He planned the all night Tavener epic, for example, like a military operation, compiling a vast list of entrances, exits and movements for his choral forces during the course of the performance.

But he has gained a certain notoriety, too, for his abrasive rehearsal methods. “Yes, I’m known to take no prisoners,” he admits. It’s an open secret in the choral world (though Layton diplomatically maintains a discreet silence on the subject) that the BBC management offered him the conductorship of the all-professional BBC Singers two years ago, then whisked it away when faced by a revolt from the alarmed singers themselves.

His background makes him seem the essence of a musical toff – choir-boy at Winchester Cathedral, pupil at Eton, organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, member of the Athenaeum Club. But that is deceptive. He was born on a council estate in Derby, and won a string of music scholarships that paid the fees for those illustrious educational establishments.

“All this stuff has happened to me because I could sing as a little boy,” he says. “Someone heard me, and said to my dad: ‘Have you thought of putting him in for a cathedral choir?’ Of course he hadn’t, because it wasn’t part of his life’s plan for me that I should leave the council estate and become an Etonian. When I went to prep school at Winchester, I found the transition difficult at first: obviously I spoke with a northern accent. But I was so passionate about music that it took over my life completely. And by the time I went to Eton I found that playing the organ brought me respect, even if I wasn’t very good at football.”

This explains, perhaps, why Layton now talks so passionately about kids from all backgrounds being given the chance of a proper music education. “I am myself the product of what the Americans call meritocratic enablement,” he says, “and I want others to have those sorts of opportunities.” He admits, however, that he is “painfully aware” that the candidates he now assesses for choral scholarships at Trinity, Cambridge, “almost invariably come from private schools, because unfortunately singing doesn’t take place in state schools, and you also need all those A grades at A level”. So what’s the remedy?

“The universities are the finishing schools of the choral process,” he says. “It’s the beginnings that we need to get right. I’d like to see cathedrals throughout the land throwing open their doors every Saturday morning, and running singing courses for hundreds of kids from all sorts of backgrounds – giving them a taste of using their voices in those great places.”

It’s a good idea. But why don’t the well-endowed Oxbridge colleges set the ball rolling in their own magnificent chapels?

Israel in Egypt is at St John’s Smith Square, London SWI (020-7222 1061), Saturday 17 Nov 2007 at 7pm