Humphrey Burton's Dream Birthday Performance

Humphrey Burton CBE, former Arts Supremo at the BBC, tells how his dream performance at the Royal Albert Hall became a gala event to raise funds for Prostate Research Campaign UK.  This combined, under his baton, the Philharmonia Orchestra and nearly 600 voices from five choral societies in a magical evening and made £70,000 for our charity.

Dreams are elusive things, and I can't remember any more where or why I conceived the crazy notion of conducting the Verdi Requiem for my seventieth birthday.  Indeed Ned Sherrin dubbed me 'the virgin maestro' when I appeared on his Radio 4 programme.  All the same, the Requiem, this grandest and most awesome choral fresco of the Last Judgement, is in my blood like no other piece of music: I was still a schoolboy when I first heard it at the Royal Albert Hall and I was overwhelmed by the drama.   This was to be re-enacted in March this year.

To be realistic, I doubt whether I would have persevered with my birthday concert had it not been for the discovery back in 1996 that I was suffering from prostate cancer.  In a way I was fortunate: the cancer was detected early after a routine blood test.  Then I had a stroke of luck.  When I was researching my best option I received considerable help from Prostate Research Campaign UK.  It publishes books and pamphlets and has a website.

Men tend to be ridiculously stiff-upper-lipped about this horrible illness.  I liked the Campaign's no-nonsense style.  So I approached its organiser, Tony Kilmister, with the idea of turning my birthday concert into a fundraising gala.  Tony knew about mounting big charity concerts at the Albert Hall from his days in the Film Industry and once he and his committee of Trustees agreed to back my dream, I swing into action with my plan to mount the Verdi Requiem.  I wanted my concert to be special, something close to the occasion when the composer himself conducted the British premiere in 1875, at what was then the newly opened Albert Hall.

An old friend, Hilary Davan Wetton, offered me the two big choirs he directs in Guildford and London: that was a nucleus.  Then I approached the London Symphony Chorus, who sang in the first Verdi Requiem I televised, Leonard Bernstein conducting, back in 1970.

The London Choral Society was just as responsive, and a few weeks later the Leicester Philharmonic Choir asked if it, too, could take part.

I trained as if I were going in for a marathon.  I used my exercise bike every day from Christmas until our concert, for half an hour, and running from West Kensington to Hyde Park Corner and back.  I also lost one and a quarter stone.

During the performance I concentrated on being as efficient as I could be.  But it also had to be a performance with spiritual vigour and intellectual continuity.  I wasn't nervous and I didn't tremble.  Above all, the experience thrilled me.

I was lucky to discover that a fellow Bernstein scholar, the American Bob Mandell, who lives in semi-retirement in Leicester, is a superb master of the art and craft of stick-wielding.  I couldn't have done this concert without his lessons - we met twice a week or more for two months.  I was never given conducting lessons by Bernstein, but in the past I did hundreds of programmes with him and I think some of his quirks may have rubbed off on me because several people told me both feet left the rostrum more than once.  That is something he used to do.  I was unaware I was doing it.

When I was able to take a swig of my water the tenor, Rhys Meirion, whispered, 'it's going bloody well, boyo.'  Just like a manager at a rugby match!  Over the months of study I had come to think and behave like a conductor and to feel like one.  Wherever I looked they were looking at me.  This is power.  Naked power.  They say all power corrupts but the power of the baton does not corrupt.  I was inflamed by it.

Prostate Research Campaign UK salutes Humphrey Burton and warmly thanks him for his splendid result.  It also thanks Nycomed Amersham (who are heavily involved in brachytherapy for prostate cancer) for their financial support of the event.  Thanks, also to Mr John Studzinski of the Genesis Foundation for his generous sponsorship.