When I became a professional musician in Autumn 1962 I had been a useful amateur for ten years. But being entirely self-taught as a conductor, and not being a pianist, I knew next to nothing about harmony or orchestration. I felt urgent need for more education, and wanted also to, as it were, legitimise my professional status. “Where did you study Mr Norrington?”

I applied to Thomas Armstrong, a family friend from Oxford, now Principal of the Royal Academy of Music. He was very stern: I would have to do a 4 year full-time course with the 18 year olds. Perhaps he was right, but I fled in terror.

Luckily a very nice teacher and conductor, called John Russell, who I met on a summer course, saw something in me and introduced me to Keith Faulkner, Principal of the Royal College of Music. Faulkner had also seen me conduct something and took a very different view from Armstrong. He simply said: “If we haven’t got room for you here we are in the wrong business. You’re old enough to know what you need. Come for a year, study what you like; no exams. Come back again the following year if you wish.” Marvellous.  I accepted at once, and remain very grateful for his imagination and his trust.

I chose to study conducting, under Sir Adrian Boult, Harmony, History, and Keyboard.  With a bit of manoeuvring I soon managed to fit these all into one day, leaving me free to fit in singing engagements as well as homework on others. Being ten years older than the normal intake, but with more experience, meant that I tried not to stand in the way of the younger ones. But John Russell did ask me to sing the Evangelist in his performance of the Bach Matthew Passion. And I occasionally played the fiddle in First Orchestra rehearsals under Boult. I also recall smashing out the tambourine part in Walton’s Portsmouth Point Overture. (Well, I assumed it was meant to be a solo!)

Boult’s conducting class was really only at the level of helping a few organ scholars to direct their choirs at Oxbridge. And his style of conducting, cool, effortless, and magisterial, was not really my style. But I did learn things there, and of course I was in the presence of someone who had seen Nikisch, and met Steinbach, Richard Strauss, and Debussy, and who knew Elgar well. He’d also had a huge career. He remembered when orchestras played without vibrato, often saying he didn’t quite know where it came from; it “just arrived”. He also always maintained the old tradition of separating first and second violins across the stage. At the time of course I thought all that was old-fashioned; now I realise how right he was.

The RCM was valuable for me. I didn’t learn nearly enough I’m afraid. I still don’t know much about harmony names; the sounds I recognise well, but I couldn’t teach Grade 1 Theory. I probably was easily the least qualified conductor on the international circuit.

Much later I went back often to take the orchestra, teach conductors a bit about history and receive the odd gong from the Queen Mum and Prince Charles. When I once gave the speech at the Graduation Ceremony, there were a few professorial white faces when I told the students that they all knew far more about theory than I did. More importantly I told them that talent, musicality, sheer hard work, and above all enthusiasm would probably do the trick.

Pleasant to have been at the same college as my violinist maternal grandmother. She knew Vaughan Williams, Holst, and Taylor-Coleridge there in the 1890s.