Below are a selection of quotes from people who knew Janet. Many of these are taken from broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 for programmes celebrating her life and legacy.
Quotes from BBC Radio 3: Janet Craxton: A Growing Legacy (1991)
On Janet Craxton’s Approach to Music and Composers:
- Nicholas Daniel:
“She didn’t want to inhibit people who wanted to write for her by saying no. She wanted to be open to any kind of composer being good.”
On Janet Craxton’s Standards and Teaching:
- George Caird:
“It was the standard that she brought to everything… Only the best will do, and the best has to come from within yourself, and she applied that to teaching you the oboe.” - Celia Nicklin:
“She had no push, she didn’t have an agent. She was just Janet Craxton, and she played beautifully.” - Gareth Hulse:
“As well as being a marvellous human being… She was very self-disciplined, very self-critical, and honest, and just trying to serve the music.” - George Caird:
“She really did take an overall interest in the person, and she certainly wanted to make sure you were being really healthy about the way you approached life.” - Lady Barbirolli:
“She was a perfectionist. She had an enormous respect for anything she was playing.”
Of Janet’s Mozart Quartet recording: “Nobody played this work as she did, with such impeccable musicality and technique. The rhythmic pulse is always there, vital and springy. Phrasing is technically finished and so musical. Nothing is overdone. Everything seems exactly right.“
On Janet Craxton’s Influence and Legacy:
- George Caird:
When asked if Janet’s pupil’s sounded alike: “No, but I think there is a quality of Janetness about the way certain people play, and I think that relates to the intensity in the sound that she had.”
“I think you will hear in distinguished students of hers, Nicholas Daniel, Gareth Hulse, Celia Nicklin—you’ll hear a quality which I sometimes think, well, I can hear something of that. They are also intensely themselves.” - Lady Barbirolli:
“Well, sadly she didn’t make enough recordings for that to be a serious legacy, alas. I think her teaching, her pupils, will teach other pupils, and they will teach others, and I think that’s where her legacy is.”
