Sweet music for heavenly strings

Nov 6 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

A wonderful music library gives new life to a string orchestra whose sweet sounds will not be heard by the public. David Charters reports on a Liverpool cultural phenomenon

OUTSIDE, the insistent feet squelch the wet leaves of early winter, as the buses judder and then shudder to a halt for steam-breathed children in hoods and stiff-kneed pensioners in woolly scarves, their sticks held in nut-knuckled hands.

Inside, she stands on one of those wooden, bone-bruising chairs of the sort found only in churches, schools and village halls, where comfort is discouraged. Above her is a ceiling domed magnificently for Truth, philosophers and God.

Soon, she will scrape her violin to bring Heaven to Earth, that return-trip made from time to time by good music.

This is a suburb on the fringe of the city. But behind the Welsh-brick protecting these walls of local sandstone, is found a part of old Liverpool, where culture has never needed a badge or a special year. It is here, always.

Fine musicians are playing great music in a church built by and for free-thinkers and philanthropists, whose names are forever associated with the emergence of this city as a place, where mercantile ambition had coupled with an unquenchable desire for learning.

Together, with people from many different religions and social backgrounds, they made Liverpool one of the world’s most respected cities.

We are in the library at the Unitarian Church, on Ullet Road, near Sefton Park, where, at times of contemplation, even the spiders have to scuttle quietly. But there are sounds now, as the woman rests the violin on her shoulder for photographs.

Isla Cameron has good reason to smile on this day. For the Liverpool String Orchestra (LSO), which meets weekly in the Unitarian Church Hall, has just acquired a superb library of sheet music.

This is an orchestra with a big difference. It does not give public performances because a lot of the musicians are shy. Some are in their mid-80s. They prefer playing for each other. In this way, affection has grown between them.

Some are better than others. They accept this without comment, as true friends. But with their vast array of new scores, the LSO is looking for new members, emphasising that people of all ages are welcome.

The music, about 1,000 compositions, came from Len Davis, a venerable Londoner of 92, who had to sell his vast collection to move into a Musicians’ Benevolent Fund Retirement Home.

“He had built it up to give access to community orchestras,” says Isla. “But he felt that its true home was the LSO.

“So now,” she adds with a grateful smile, “when he gently plays his viola in his retirement, there’s a happy smile on Len’s face, knowing that community access to the music he preserved lives on in good hands.”

Among the composers whose works can now be played by the LSO are Beethoven (with the initials LV delightfully following his name on the official inventory, as though it was a school roll-call), Bach JC, Bach JS, Britten B, Delius F, Elgar E, Handel GF, Mendelssohn F, Haydn FJ, Schubert F, Sibelius J, Tchaikovsky P, Vaughan Williams R, Mozart WA, Rimsky-Korsakov N, Brahms J and Vivaldi A.

As she speaks in the library, Isla, the orchestra’s 50-year-old leader, looks at the ceiling which depicts the Triumph of Truth spreading her wings. Over the mantelpiece is the figure of Time soaring above the clouds of Earth to raise Truth who is leaving behind her enemies of Envy, Calumny, Intolerance and Ignorance. The ceiling also includes the great people of science, religion, philosophy and literature. Moses, David, St Francis of Assisi, Milton, Shakespeare, Luther, Franklin, Aristotle, Galileo, da Vinci and SW Paul are included in their number.

For the moment, at least, none is quite as important to Isla as Len, whose collection has brought new life to the orchestra, which developed from a night-class about 50 years ago.

But it would not have been possible if Isla and the other 25 members had not been successful in their application for £2,500 from the National Lottery’s Awards for All grant.

“Len, a professional musician, who had played for BBC orchestras and at Covent Garden, was basically sleeping with barricades of music around his bed,” says Isla.

“Although it was a beloved collection that he had gathered over his entire life as a conductor and viola player, he needed to sell it. It is a library of string and chamber music. It is a very specialist collection which would have been very expensive to buy as new.