This is an interview between Jeremy Polmear and Nicholas Daniel about Janet and her legacy.
The following is reproduced from the Oboe Classics website with kind permission by Jeremy Polmear
On Janet’s death, the pianist Denis Matthews related an anecdote about her. “In 1957 I was on a tour of Canada with Léon Goossens and we chanced to overhear a broadcast recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, not knowing what orchestra was playing. Suddenly Léon said: ‘It must be the BBC from home – only Janet can play like that’ – and so it turned out to be.” For insight into what made Janet’s playing so immediately recognisable I turned to international oboe soloist Nicholas Daniel, who from an early age was a visitor to her house in Kidderpore Avenue for oboe lessons, and studied with her at the Royal Academy of Music. “As a player, she didn’t immediately strike one close to as having the biggest sound,” he said, “but there was a luminous, projecting quality that could come through an orchestra without any harshness; and always the musical honesty and integrity shone through.” Janet’s honesty and integrity as a player, and as a person, was to be a recurring theme in our conversation. “She was always faithful to the composer’s intention, sometimes to an obsessional degree. As a teacher, she demanded loyalty to the composer first, to the creator. I imagine she thought of herself as a re-creator.” And this put her close to composers. “I remember hearing her and Alan Richardson her husband perform the Poulenc Sonata when I was fifteen, and being struck by the intensity of it, by the lack of unnecessary rubato. The same went for her recording of Benjamin Britten’s Metamorphoses, which she made in his presence.”
Naturally, this makes her a great advocate of the pieces she plays. “Right from the first track on this CD”, said Nicholas, “the Francis Routh Quartet, I thought ‘I’ve got to play this!’ And I felt that about each of the works.”
Composers were inspired by her and wanted to write for her, as the CD demonstrates. “For example, Lennox Berkeley,” Nicholas remembered. “I was working with him in the 1980s. He was heartbroken by her death. And I think his Quartet was written with great insight into the nature of Janet’s playing. There is a terrible wistfulness about it that I used to find just depressing, but now, with the benefit of a few years of distance, I find an appropriate and valuable expression of a response to the mechanised world we find ourselves living in. This piece, and this performance, deserves repeated listenings.”
“What comes through again and again on the CD is the sheer emotional power of Janet’s playing. And to help her is an incredibly strong technique and a distinctive, warm yet flexible sound. Ten years ago that sound might have seemed dated, perhaps being thought of as being too light in quality. But more people nowadays are beginning to see that the thick sound favoured in many European orchestras – including Britain – with its stodgy, single-colour timbre is ultimately inexpressive – and really rather boring. Janet’s sound developed from her English background, her studies in France, and her use of the soft, long-scraped reeds that are favoured in America.”
She never shows off her technique for simply virtuoso purposes, though. “I suspect that at heart she was not a natural soloist,” said Nicholas “she was more comfortable in chamber music. She didn’t want the spotlight, or at least was more than happy to share it with the composer. To take one specific example, in the last movement of the Maconchy Quartet (at 1:00), she comes in on an incredibly quiet top E. Not just because she can, but because it creates an incredible musical moment that gives me goosebumps.”
“And this musical integrity is another reason to celebrate this CD. It’s an important disc in terms of style, because she understood the language of these composers so well. I would like to think that she would have been happy for Oboe Classics to release this disc of pieces she had a hand in creating and inspiring.”
