Edward Downes cut an unusual figure among the conductors of his generation. The sad news of his death, together with his wife, at the Swiss clinic Dignitas may have placed him in the media limelight, but Downes was essentially a very private man, devoted to music, politics (very much old Labour) and his family. He rarely gave interviews. And though he learned much from the high-powered, jet-setting maestros he assisted – among them Rafael Kubelik and Georg Solti – he never acquired their superstar aura. Instead he achieved his remarkable musical results through something far less glamorous, the painstaking craft of rehearsal.
I first heard Downes conduct in 1992, soon after his appointment as the Royal Opera's chief conductor. The production was Peter Hall's new Salomé, with Maria Ewing in the title role. But the real star of the show turned out to be Downes himself, who produced such a vivid, sharply focused reading of Strauss's volatile score that the house orchestra practically caught fire.
Hall's conceit was to have Ewing dance not so much for Herod as for Jokanaan (John the Baptist). As stripteases go, this one seems rather menacing and cold, but with the sense of rhythmic urgency rising from the orchestra pit you can see that the music infects Salomé. The final scene is presented with a control of timing and texture that Downes makes seem almost effortless.
Downes's appointment as chief conductor at the Royal Opera House was in some respects belated, since his career really began there as a répétiteur, a pianist who plays the orchestra part for choral and non-orchestral rehearsals, in 1952. His conducting debut came soon after with La Bohème, and he gained a great deal of acclaim the following year for a production of Weber's Die Freischütz. Working under Kubelik and later as the official assistant conductor to Georg Solti, Downes came to conduct pretty much every opera in the house's repertoire, gaining a reputation for versatility and quick learning. But it was Kubelik who gave Downes his two biggest breaks: first, in 1953, with Verdi's Otello, leading to a lifelong relationship with the then much under-appreciated composer; and second, in 1958, with Boris Godunov. Kubelik, who was required to stage Modest Mussorgsky's opera in the original Russian, sent Downes off to learn Russian himself so that he could properly instruct the chorus.
It was Downes's informed and rare passion for Russian opera that led to his greatest lime-lit moment. Passed over for promotion at the Royal Opera in 1969 in favour of Colin Davis, the British conductor eventually surfaced as music director of the Australian Opera, conducting the inaugural 1973 production of Prokofiev's momentous War and Peace (in Downes's own English translation) at the new Sydney Opera House. He remained in the city, though with frequent invitations to conduct in Europe and North and South America, until becoming music director of the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra (now BBC Philharmonic) in 1980 and, at long last, chief conductor and associate music director of the Royal Opera House.
Once there, Downes embarked on a project to perform every one of Verdi's 28 operas, beginning in 1993 with Stiffelio and Attila. The project was never quite completed, but Downes can certainly be held responsible for making London one of the main centres of Verdi interpretation during this period.
Although Downes's recording legacy is not as great as it ought to be, video and audio clips on the web abound from his final period at Covent Garden. One of the best tasters is the above clip of the overture from Stiffelio. The essence of Verdi, in the contrast between peasant dance, high drama and inexorably pulsating melodies, is all perfectly captured by Downes and his orchestra. And, as luck would have it, much of the footage is of the man himself at the podium. Hunched over the score, he often appears more like a caretaker than a director. And yet, when you hear the orchestra's exceptional lightness of touch and energy, it's clear who is in charge. He will be greatly missed.