Herbert Chappell obituary
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Herbert Chappell, who has died aged 85 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, had a flair for music that made him a gifted jobbing composer. The ideal outlet for his talents came as a television director and producer with the BBC at a time when classical music was prominent in its programming, and in producing commercial video recordings, notably of the Three Tenors in Rome.
He made an early mark with a BBC Two Workshop programme (1967) that introduced British viewers to the vivid personality of the conductor Leonard Bernstein in an explosive studio rehearsal of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra. Both conductor and orchestra benefited from Chappell’s camera treatments.
At the time the controller of BBC Two was David Attenborough and I ran the music and arts department. We watched from the viewing gallery and Attenborough was so impressed that in a highly unusual move he immediately telephoned his planners to ensure that the programme’s length be extended.
For a series of documentaries in the Omnibus series, Chappell worked with André Previn, the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor. Mozart Had a Car Crash at 171 Seconds (1971) told the story of film music, from the pianist accompanying silent movies through lavish scores to synthesisers and modern stereo. In Who Needs a Conductor? (1973), Previn unexpectedly walked away from the rostrum, leaving the orchestra to continue playing Beethoven’s Fifth without a maestro.
Other collaborations with Previn included Oscar Peterson and André Previn (1974), a delightful conversation between two greats of the jazz world, swapping notes around a Steinway about their idol Art Tatum, and Fidelio Finke, Where Are You Now? (1975), an exploration of forgotten composers considered geniuses in their day.
In 1977 Chappell took over production of André Previn’s Music Night, a performance series in which the conductor presented outstanding soloists and unusual repertoire, his introductions often scripted by Chappell.
Their most substantial achievement came in the series Sounds Magnificent – The Story of the Symphony (1984), a survey featuring Previn’s newly adopted orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic. The symphony performances (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc) were shown on BBC and accompanied by a book; later they were released on DVD.
Chappell’s gifts as an impresario were recognised by Decca, which hired him to develop projects suitable for video-cassettes and laser-discs. The most successful of these was the celebrated concert of the Three Tenors, televised from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome during the 1990 World Cup. BBC colleagues remember Chappell turning up one day at TV Centre on the way to the airport brandishing a leather suitcase that he claimed was stuffed with rolls of dollar bills intended to pay the wages of the three great tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras.
Born in Bristol, Bert was the son of Reginald Chappell, a warehouseman, and his wife, Brenda (nee Clark). His twin sister died shortly after birth, and his father had died of an ear infection three days before they were delivered. Bert won a scholarship to Bristol Cathedral choir school, where he was encouraged to compose by the cathedral’s organist and master of the choristers, Clifford Harker. Aged 12, Bert had two choral compositions performed at the cathedral.
A state scholarship enabled him to continue his musical studies at Oriel College, Oxford, for seven years from 1952. After gaining first-class honours for his first degree and a BMus, he embarked on a DPhil thesis on orchestration in British music, which he did not complete. He was reluctant to attend lectures, but shared tutorials with Dudley Moore.
Also among his contemporaries were Ken Loach and Richard Ingrams and most of his time was given to incidental music for college play productions, and musicals and revues for the Oxford Playhouse and the Edinburgh Fringe festival. The arrival of independent television in 1955 brought the opportunity of freelance work for Granada and composing music for TV commercials.
This activity continued while he was a music teacher at Cumnor House, a prep school in West Sussex (1959-61). The dedication of his most frequently performed composition, The Daniel Jazz (1963), is to the school’s headteacher, Hal Milner-Gulland, who was determined to provide music that would capture the imagination of his pupils.
In 1962 Chappell was appointed music producer and programme assistant for BBC schools broadcasting, and was soon giving Adventures in Music talks for the BBC Home Service, introducing young listeners to popular orchestral music. He also obtained an interview with Huw Wheldon, then the BBC’s overall director of television programmes, who was on the lookout for potential directors to work for the new BBC Two channel.
Wheldon recommended Chappell as a researcher for the BBC Two Workshop programme I was preparing on Zoltán Kodály, Carl Orff and musical education. I warmed to Chappell’s enthusiasm and brought him into the production team for a salute to Benjamin Britten on his 50th birthday, in 1963. Three years later he became a producer in music and arts.
There he established his berth with Omnibus. As well as his collaborations with Previn, there was a television version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tell Me on a Sunday (1979), starring Marti Webb, and a portrait of the American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, Call Me Flicka (1980). The starting point was the Decca recording session for Von Stade’s beautiful singing of Joseph Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne. Chappell travelled to that region of France with an Omnibus camera crew, and Von Stade’s voice warmed the soundtrack winningly.
For African Sanctus (1975), Chappell flew with the composer David Fanshawe to Cairo and filmed him recording local people at wedding ceremonies in and around the Pyramids and in equatorial western Sudan. The camera work of Peter Bartlett was outstanding and Fanshawe’s soundtrack, mixing his specially composed choral music with his African chant recordings, was truly powerful. Julian Bream, A Life in the Country (1976) won Chappell a Prix Italia award for his portrait of the great guitarist.
His own output ranged from music for a popular BBC TV drama series, The Pallisers (1974), and a new signature theme for Songs of Praise in 1980, to a Caribbean Concerto for guitar. From 1984 came two popular works for narrator and orchestra: James and the Giant Peach, setting the story by Roald Dahl, and Paddington Bear’s First Concert, with a text by Paddington’s creator, Michael Bond (originally narrated by Stephen Fry).
In 1976 he married Julia Cleare. She survives him, along with their children, Simon, Katy and Olivia; two children, Ben and Alison, from his earlier marriage to Claire Snow, which ended in divorce; and seven grandchildren,
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