Jack Brymer

John Alexander Brymer OBE (27 January 191515 September 2003) was an English clarinettist. ''The Times'' called him "the leading clarinettist of his generation, perhaps of the century". Goodwin, Noël
"Jack B nimble, Jack B quick"
''The Times'', 27 January 1995, p. 32. He was largely self-taught as a player, and he performed as an amateur before being invited by Sir Thomas Beecham to join the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1947. He remained with the orchestra until 1963, two years after Beecham's death.

Brymer later played in the BBC Symphony and London Symphony Orchestras. He was also associated with several chamber music ensembles, and maintained a lifelong pleasure in playing jazz. He held professorships during most of the period from 1950 to 1993, first at the Royal Academy of Music, then at the Royal Military School of Music, and finally at the Guildhall School of Music. He was a frequent broadcaster, both as a player and a presenter, and made recordings of solo works and with orchestras and smaller ensembles. He published two volumes of memoirs and a book about the clarinet.

Biography

Early years

Brymer was born in South Shields, County Durham, in the North East of England, the son of John Alexander Brymer, a builder, and his wife, Mary, ''née'' Dixon.Holden, Raymond
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/nowiki> (1915–2003)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, January 2007; online edition, January 2011, accessed 12 February 2012 Brymer senior played the clarinet, and his son started to attempt to play the instrument at the age of four."Obituary of Jack Brymer: Doyen of clarinettists who was dragged from teaching by Beecham and was as happy with jazz as the baroque"
''The Daily Telegraph'', 17 September 2003 He had no formal instruction as a clarinettist, but discovered music and worked out an instrumental technique for himself. ''The Guardian'' wrote of him, "Struggling with an inadequate instrument (a sharp-pitch A clarinet with a bit sawn off in the school woodwork room) and playing in local bands and amateur orchestras with people much older than himself, he learned his craft in the most practical way."Emerson, June
"Jack Brymer"
''The Guardian'', 18 September 2003 While still a boy he encountered, and appreciated, a wide range of musical styles from jazz and light music to brass-bands and circuses. He later insisted that all these genres had been of great value to him professionally.

Brymer was educated at Westoe Secondary School, South Shields, excelling at rugby football."Jack Brymer – Obituary"
''The Times'', 17 September 2003 He hankered after a musical career, but as a profile in ''The Gramophone'' put it, "The virtual collapse of the orchestral profession when sound entered the cinema, and musicians were thrown out of work by the hundred turned his thoughts elsewhere."Wimbush, Roger
"Here and There"
''The Gramophone'', May 1968, p. 33 From 1933 Brymer trained at Goldsmiths College, London University as a generalist teacher. He joined the teaching staff of Heath Clark School, Croydon, and in his spare time played in amateur musical ensembles. Among his fellow students at the college, and later his colleague in the amateur groups, was a string player, Joan Richardson. They married in 1939 when they were both 24. There was one son of the marriage.

Although he had no formal tuition as a clarinettist, Brymer maintained that nobody was entirely self-taught: "I learnt from everyone I heard play. Frederick Thurston and Reginald Kell unwittingly betrayed their methods to me, but I also decided that I wanted to play in certain ways that they had never done. The ability to play the clarinet is the ability to overcome the imperfections of the instrument. There's no such thing as a perfect clarinet, never was and never will be." Other clarinettists whose technique Brymer observed and learned from were Charles Draper and Haydn Draper. Brymer wrote of his predecessors, "They would have been astounded at the things they taught me, without a penny piece changing hands."

During the Second World War Brymer served in the Royal Air Force. After his basic training he was promoted to corporal and posted to Morecambe on the north west coast of England as a physical training instructor.Bullamore, Tim
"Jack Brymer – Principal clarinettist in Sir Thomas Beecham's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra"
''The Independent'', 20 September 2003 When not on RAF duty he frequently played in the Morecambe Central Pier dance band dressed in his corporal's uniform. Among those he met in the Air Force was the horn player, Dennis Brain, who admired Brymer's playing, and who later had a decisive influence on his career.

Royal Philharmonic

In 1946, Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Among his principal players were Kell and Brain. The following year Kell announced his forthcoming resignation, and Brain suggested to Beecham that Brymer would be a suitable replacement. Brymer had returned to his teaching post after being demobilised from the RAF, and was incredulous at receiving a telephone call from Beecham inviting him to audition. Brymer's first reaction was to think it was a practical joke, with one of his musical friends impersonating Beecham's familiar lordly drawl. Having realised that it was indeed Beecham calling, Brymer accepted the invitation to audition. Having heard him play, Beecham appointed him to succeed Kell. His first appearance with the orchestra was in EMI's Abbey Road Studios, recording Richard Strauss's ''Ein Heldenleben''. Brymer recalled "an old man in a raincoat leaning over my shoulder to mark the part of his ''Heldenleben'' – Richard Strauss in the last year of his life". Many years later Brymer crossed swords with the conductor, Norman Del Mar over interpreting Strauss. A historian of the London Symphony Orchestra wrote, "Rehearsing ''Don Quixote'', Del Mar had the temerity to admonish Brymer for playing a phrase too loudly: 'Just a memory, Jack, just a memory,' Del Mar called out. 'Why are you playing it mezzo-forte?' 'Because Strauss told me to,' Brymer retorted. 'And I'm surprised that you don't remember, Norman, because you were playing second horn at the time.'"

''The Times'' said of Brymer in this period, "After his appointment to the RPO in 1947, the balding, affable Brymer was certainly Great Britain's pre-eminent clarinettist, … whose mellifluous playing style and unruffled platform manner charmed even those usually impervious to classical music." In the RPO, Brymer joined Beecham's starry line-up of wind players, Terence MacDonagh (oboe), Gerald Jackson (flute) and Gwydion Brooke (bassoon); collectively they became known to colleagues and audiences as "the Royal Family". A clarinettist of a later generation, Alan Hacker, wrote that the sound produced by Brymer and his colleagues was "expressive and instantly recognisable, even in just one solo note." With Beecham and the RPO, Brymer made the first of his three recordings of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in 1958. When the recording was reissued on compact disc in 2001, '' The American Record Guide'' said,

BBC, LSO, chamber music and jazz

After Beecham's death in 1961 Brymer and other members of the RPO including MacDonagh became unhappy about the management of the RPO. The BBC
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