From the Spring 2005 MT
In memoriam
Susan Bradshaw
Susan Bradshaw was central to many developments in post-war British musical life [writes David Wright] and her career covered a range of distinct but interlocking facets. She first made her name as a pianist and was noted for her astonishing facility at sight-reading. As well as her work with the BBCSO she was particularly associated with the concerts and recordings she did with the Mabillon Trio and the Vesuvius Ensemble, with which she gave many premieres. She also taught, and for many years was a stimulating musical mentor (more than just an instrumental teacher) for several generations of students at Goldsmiths College. Her musical perspective was shaped by her enthusiastic but never uncritical response to the thinking and aesthetic values
of the post-war avant-garde, and she became widely respected as a serious and formidably well-informed thinker and writer on music.
Studies at the Royal Academy of Music (with Harold Craxton, Howard Ferguson and Matyás Seiber) were followed by study with Pierre Boulez in Paris (together with Richard Rodney Bennett). One result was the translation, with Bennett, of Boulez on music today, a period piece whose impenetrability parallels the translations that Cornelius Cardew (a fellow RAM student) did of articles in Die Reihe. Boulez on music today makes an interesting point of comparison with the clear exegesis Susan was to achieve in her chapter on Boulez’s instrumental and vocal music for the 1986 symposium on the composer edited by William Glock. The distance between the two is indicative of the critical independence that she had gained for herself. The calm lucidity she had attained in the symposium chapter was not at the expense of any seriousness
or depth in the treatment and discussion of the music, but instead demonstrated her rare gift for being able to translate a close, critical reading of a score meaningfully into words. This ability to penetrate and focus into the musical essence made her an invaluable critical friend to several composers who came to discuss their scores with her at different compositional stages.
Susan will be remembered also for her participation in a radio hoax that has gone down
in the history of BBC music broadcasting. With Hans Keller, she recorded in 1961 a clowned improvisation on percussion instruments that was released as a new composition by the non-existent avant-garde composer, Piotr Zak. Effectively a polemical statement straight from the European Dadaist tradition, it clashed head on with William Glock’s ‘fiduciary’ principle of performance, his policy that audiences should be able to take a BBC broadcast performance on trust (whatever the idiom), as a faithful representation of the composer’s intention, and so offer a basis for critical evaluation. Bradshaw’s and Keller’s intentions were serious, but they were not lightly – if ever – entirely forgiven for this episode. Her own brand of vital artistic scepticism was something she continued to carry with considerable honour. It meant that when, later on, she took up a range of very different composers in Contact, The Musical Times and Tempo, including Arvo Pärt, and the Russians Schnittke, Firsova, Smirnov and Ustvolskaya, her championing of their work ensured that their music was listened to with a new awareness and respect.
Susan was an unforgettable presence to all who encountered her, for her artistic integrity and indomitability went together with an immensely generous spirit. She would always be prepared to help colleagues or students, often making light of it with a characteristically self-deprecating phrase, and she was a founding member of the Park Lane Group. Susan was genuinely admired and regarded with great affection by those who knew her at different stages of her career: those who had played with her in the Vesuvius days remember her with as much warmth and immediacy as do those of us who knew her as a stimulating commentator and critic after she had finished her distinguished performing career.
Susan Bradshaw, pianist, writer and teacher: born 8 September 1932; died 30 January 2005.
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