Ian MacCarthy

  • Instrument

    Cello

  • Outside of BPO, what is your occupation?

    Recently retired, from a career in steelframe buildings and then timberframe buildings

  • How long have you been a member of BPO?

    Since 1969

  • What inspired you to take up your instrument?

    Encouragement from parents, who were already involved in non-professional music-making - from orchestras to shows and choral gigs - and having found an excellent teacher I began this journey at the age of 8. The Cello has always been such a sonorous instrument with an impressively wide range, so access to some amazing original and arranged music for this instrument was always very exciting 

  • How did you come to join the orchestra?

    I had been playing in county-level and local orchestras throughout my schooling, and at 6th-form age I was able to join the Ernest Read Orchestra - an affiliated senior orchestra linked and based at Royal Academy London. Got into that with an audition.

    Such close links to the RAM was exhilarating.

    Having decided on a career in engineering this brought me to Birmingham initially, before embarking on a degree course, and as soon as moving to this area I joined the BPO - it being clearly the best non-professional orchestra - as well as getting known for gig and shows.

  • Most treasured occasion with the BPO?

    Leading a cello section of 16+ players (including some professionals) for BPO's first performances of Mahler Symphony of a Thousand at Royal Albert Hall in 1984 - closely followed by ending my stewardship as principal cello playing the same symphony 32 years later up here in the Midlands.

    Classy bookends to my stewardship as principal, I think.

  • Any moments you would rather forget?

    I have always been an orchestral cellist, not a soloist, so the most challenging was the slow movement of Post-horn symphony at St John, Smith Square, London where the solo cello obligato was just too technical for me to execute in the polished manner I demonstrated for all other solo lines throughout my principalship.

  • Favourite composer? Least favourite composer?

    Favourites would be Brahms, Mahler (earlier works) and Richard Strauss


    Least favourite: anything discordantly modern

  • Work(s) you would like to play before you die?

    I think the criteria would more accurately be "before I lose technical and physical ability to reach the notes"!

    One of the fantastic opportunities that the BPO has brought to music-making is the diverse programming plus the ability to put on biggest and most challenging works that lesser orchestras just would not be able to manage.


    Berlioz Grande mess du Morte

    Re-perform other R Strauss works (I think BPO has performed almost all by now)


    In other musical genres I would still like to perform Grand Opera - there are a few of the big-ticket operas that I didnt get to play-in while Royal Sutton Opera Group was at full strength under the batonship of Tony Ayres

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