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FROM BEECHAM TO THE BEATLES - THE LEO BIRNBAUM (1911 - 2008) STORY |
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FROM BEECHAM TO THE BEATLES - THE LEO BIRNBAUM (1911 - 2008) STORY |
Several of Mantovani's virtuoso musicians came from classical music backgrounds, among them viola players Jack Fleetcroft (already profiled on this site) and Leo Birnbaum (the handsome fellow pictured above taken while Leo was a regular sessions player with Mantovani). Leo is possibly the longest serving Mantovani musician still alive, having first played with Monty in 1940 during a musical career which has taken him all over the world with leading symphony orchestras.
Now aged 91, Leo still resides in his native north London - he was born there in Hampstead on 9 February 1911. He was part of a musical family: his father was a professional singer until ill-health overtook him and two elder sisters played piano and violin respectively. In the early days Leo studied at the Guildhall School of Music under his tutor Ernest Yonge, and played violin on occasions in the light orchestra at Gatti's, a well-known restaurant in The Strand.
When Sir Thomas Beecham formed the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932, Leo was accomplished enough to be a founder member. He remembers that in 1935 several of the musicians were invited to play at private functions at the home of Lady Cunard in Grosvenor Square. One week they entertained the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson and soon afterwards performed for Von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. In the following year the orchestra was invited to Germany at that country's expense so Leo accompanied Beecham there. That 1936 tour was recalled by Leo many years later - while appearing with the Bee Gees in Berlin - when he and fiddler George Hurley (also a Mantovani player) came across the bombed out Vaterland restaurant in the ruins of East Berlin. George told Leo that he had played there with a dance band in 1928, whereupon Leo replied that he, too, had visited this restaurant to eat with some of the LPO players.
Leo remembers that the orchestra players
and Beecham had to wait for a lengthy period at the opening concert for the arrival of a certain Herr Adolf Hitler. After several minutes of waiting Beeecham observed testily "The old bugger's late". Unfortunately he had failed to notice a microphone sited just above him and his colourful observation was overheard by the listening audience back in England! When Hitler eventually did turn up, the audience turned their backs on the orchestra and to a man gave him the Nazi salute!
Leo also visited Paris in the same year to help the orchestra launch the refurbished Opera House. It was quite unusual in those days for a British orchestra to be heard on the Continent of Europe, and the French President recognised the occasion by being present, but only for the first half of the performance; a communist riot elsewhere in the city took him away from the rest of the musical proceedings!
In late 1938 Leo Birnbaum resigned from the LPO after some reshuffling in the viola section and was immediately taken up by the London Symphony Orchestra. Upon the outbreak of war he joined the Coldstream Guards and became a bandsman while fulfilling his professional engagements when he could. In 1940 he had his first encounter with Mantovani when Walter Ashworth, who booked Monty's musicians, rang him to offer six broadcasts at the Paris Cinema in Regent Street with an orchestra consisting of saxes, brass and a smallish string section.
In July 1941 Leo was in the orchestra pit under Mantovani for the West End show "Lady Behave" at Her Majesty's Theatre. It starred Bernard Clifton, Sally Gray, Pat Kirkwood and Lupino Lane, and the music was written by Edward Horan. This production had its difficulties for impressario Jack Hylton wanted to bring in another musical director, his friend Freddie Bretherton, for the opening night, but the musicians refused to play under anyone else but Monty, and Hylton had to back down. When Mantovani began his musical association with Vera Lynn at Decca the following September, Leo played on some of the 37 wartime recordings they made together. In the mid 1940s he toured parts of Europe with the band of the Coldstream Guards.
Having previously played occasionally with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Leo joined them on the day he left the Army in 1948. With the Philharmonia he toured Switzerland and Italy, where he appeared at La Scala, Milan, and played under the baton of the renowed Arturo Toscanini when he visited London in 1952 to conduct two Brahms concerts.
When he became a freelance musician in 1958, one of Leo's first jobs was to rejoin Mantovani at the Elstree film studios where a series of shows was being filmed for eventual world wide TV transmission. At the Royal Variety performance in November 1958 Leo was a member of the Mantovani viola section which also included Lou Rosen, Charlie Kahn, Alfie Freedlander, Jack Fleetcroft and Ben Bowe. Around this time he linked up with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, formed by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1946, and later played again for the London Symphony Orchestra in such exotic places as Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. He toured on many occasions with Mantovani and visited Japan and Canada in 1963 and Germany in 1965 with the orchestra. Leo also appeared in his numerous TV shows and took part in many recording sessions at the Decca West Hampstead studios. He was still in Mantovani's viola section with Jack Fleetcroft, Maurice Clayman, Max Burwood, John Denman and Tom Lister when Monty toured the UK for the last time in 1974.
Among Leo's many other musical credits in an amazingly varied career are film sessions with Muir Matheson at Denham studios in 1938 and appearances with the light orchestras of George Melachrino and Robert Farnon. He accompanied Frank Sinatra in London and The Bee Gees in Switzerland, Germany and London, and recorded at EMI studios for The Beatles. He worked for world famous conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwangler, Herbert von Karajan and Leopold Stokowsky, played on the soundtrack of the first "Star Wars" film and appeared briefly with the Mantovani Orchestra after Mantovani's death. During the 1970s he made an extensive European tour with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Leo's musical activities were abruptly terminated in 1986 at the age of 75 while on holiday in Malta when he suffered an accident which damaged his back and ribs and affected his bowing arm. Leo doesn't hold it against Malta, however, for he goes back there with his wife twice a year!
He attributes his longevity partly to being able to mix with younger people in Malta who keep him feeling relatively young. He has a fine memory and keeps himself alert by practising on piano twice daily. He is thinking about becoming a "silver surfer" in the near future, even though he confesses to being "non-mechanical." We can hope that in time he will be able to look up his own entry on this site, but in the meantime we are delighted to have the opportunity to salute a fine musician while wishing him many more years of good health.
Colin MacKenzie. With thanks to Alan Dixon and, of course, Leo Birnbaum.
This was just completed. There was a part missing at the bottom.
The following are recollections from Leo Birnbaum of his tour through the communist countries with the Royal Philharmonic during the 1960s.
During the sixties the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra asked me if I would like to do a concert tour of several communist countries. I accepted right away. After several rehearsals in London the Orchestra went to West Germany and gave some performances. After one in Nuremberg, the next was in a spa town, Marienbad, in Czecho-Slovakia. We had changed trains at the frontier of West and East Germany and as it frequently came to a halt, we arrived in Marienbad only just in time to give the performance. The next was to be in Prague. This time the train reached there when the concert was due to end, so the Orchestra was taken to a hotel for a meal and then back to the station. We then went on to Bratislava in Yugoslavia where we gave two concerts and were able to do some sightseeing.
We then travelled on to Poland and played in Cracow, a very picturesque town probably rebuilt after 1945. This must have happened to most of the towns in which we played after leaving West Germany. We stayed several days in Warsaw where, despite the fact that it was a communist city, an enormous number of shops were selling pictures of Christ, bibles and everything relating to Christianity. People were worshipping in all the churches to which we were taken. Something most unexpected happened at the hotel on the morning we were leaving for the Soviet Union. I went into the diningroom and saw a number of the "boys" just standing and talking. I then noticed none of the tables had been prepared for breakfast. On enquiring what was going on, someone told me to look at the service area. The waiters were all there, dressed in their uniforms and calling out to us in Polish. The agent who was travelling with us eventually found someone in authority who told the waiters to go home and lose a day's pay. He then told us to go into the kitchen and help ourselves to breakfast.
On the way to the station I asked the agent how far we were from Russia. He said just a short journey to the frontier where we would have lunch. As it happens it was an extremely long journey and there was no lunch for us. When we reached the frontier the train came to a halt for several hours outside a station and were told Russian railway lines were a different gauge from other tracks. However, we did eventually reach Moscow and were taken to an enormous hotel which had a post office and a shop for foreigners. The three comcerts were in the famous Tchaikowsky Hall. In our first free time the "boys" raided the gramaphone shops for records we couldn't get in the West.
From there we travelled to Leningrad, now St. Petersberg, which we realised had been rebuilt due, of course, to the intense bombing during the war. We stayed at a large hotel just across the road from the Concert Hall. The Librarian to the Orchestra, George Brownfoot, whom I had known for nearly twenty years, was passing me and stopped to tell me it was his birthday. I replied, "To-day is the 9th February and is my birthday". He told me the Russian interpreters and security men who accompanied us everywhere, had arranged a birthday meal for him before the concert and he would ask if I could join them. I was invited.
We all sat at a large table on which were bottles of Russian champagne, vodka and other drinks and masses of food. It was most enjoyable and I managed to stay awake during the whole concert! I spent some time in the Hermitage which has one of the world's greatest collections of paintings by the most outstanding artists. As I left I saw one of the "boys" holding a camera in the direction of several tall steeples the other side of the river. Immediately people swarmed around him and in no time a policeman appeared and took him away. I heard later he was locked in a cell for several hours until someone from the British Embassy or Consulate persuaded the police to release him. He was then taken back to the hotel where he locked himself in his room and wouldn't leave it until the Orchestra departed for Kiev in the Ukraine. Earlier someone had nicknamed the Tour "The Iron Curtain Tour" and this name has stuck. A violinist whose parents had settled in London from Kiev was delighted to meet an elderly relative for the first time. At the end of our visit a reception was arranged for us and speeches of course were made which we, of course, could not understand. Our conductor, who I never liked and shall not name, then gave a speech of thanks on our behalf. We then flew back to Moscow for our final performance and many of the "boys" bought Russian fur hats to take home. We were taken on a very interesting tour of the Kremlin where we saw the famous cracked bell, a tiny chapel made entirely of precious stones, committee rooms and the Hall, also in the Kremlin, where we were to give the last concert. We ended this performance with Tchaikowsky's Pathetic Symphony and it amazed me that even in Russia audiences begin to applaud at the end of the Third (March) Movement.
The Orchestra, except for two members who refused to fly, returned to Heathrow next morning in a few hours. It took the two members who refused to fly four and a half days. A couple of days' later I was recording with Mantovani again.