2025 Waterhouse Bassoon Day Review by Susie Herman

May 2nd, 2025

We received this lovely very personal overview and review of this year’s Waterhouse Bassoon Day (26 April 2025) and felt it evoked the day so well we couldn’t resist giving it a wider audience. So with Susie’s permission (and photographs), here it is:

Bassoon cases full of thanks to Oliver and Jacob Ludlow for organising yet another splendid day of Bassoonerie. And to Elizabeth, Graham and Celia Waterhouse for their warmest of warm welcomes to Whittall Music Barn.

Oliver Ludlow with Elisabeth Waterhouse during the introduction.

Whittall is an Aladdin's Cave of musical delights. If Aladdin had been a maverick collector of keyboard instruments, sheet music, books, artefacts, that is.

Just such a maverick collector was the late, great William Waterhouse, and his son Graham gave a fascinating talk about WW's acquisitions. Usually crammed into the back of a clapped-out Volkswagen Beetle, as in the case of Erika Mann's music library in Lugano, or the sidecar of an equally clapped-out motorbike, ideal for transporting orchestral scores dumped into BBC skips!

And always acquired with an eye to a bargain ~ see the organ, rescued from a Northampton Church undergoing conversion into flats, and the pedalier, spotted in a Paris flea market, both displayed, and played, in the Whittall Barn Music Room.

For WW, there were three aspects of being a complete musician ~ the manual, the mental and the material. Technical skill, knowledge of the repertoire in its entirety, and the collection, in all its various forms. Together, these represented his identity, an extension of his own persona.

And more than that, his library represents not just a complete musician, but a complete human being, brimful of passion ~ for travel, languages, architecture, art, history, swimming, climbing, diving, skiing... You can browse books on any of these subjects ~ whilst sitting on a saddle.

Surely he wasn't an Olympic show jumper as well? Nothing would surprise me!

If mention of WW's clapped out vehicles had you worried, the legendary Roger Birnstingl's account of Travels with Bill would only have confirmed that. Either he was so completely engrossed in conversation that his attention was not entirely on the road. Or he would suddenly announce that there was a simply MARVELLOUS statue of Bellini that they had to see ~ despite his passengers preferring to reach their digs than stop off at a museum!

Milde and kippers are now forever entwined in my mind. Roger told a charming anecdote of going to visit WW's mother with him, in Croydon. The two would play Milde studies to each other until the clock struck five, and it was time for tea. Kippers. Always kippers. Milde and Kippers!

Eleven months apart in age, Birnstingl followed in Waterhouse's footsteps. RCM, National Service in the AirForce, RCM. Three years in the orchestra in Lugano. They skiied together, climbed mountains, swam in lakes... Clearly it was a very special relationship, both professional and personal.

The four handed bassoon!

"Bill is one of the most amazing people I've met in the 93 years of my life" That's some tribute.

Next we were treated to a performance by three players from the CBSO. Nikolaj Henriquez, Tony Liu and Margaret Cookhorn.

Glorious trios by Julius Weissenborn (to whom Mendelssohn wrote a letter concerning his Midsummer Night's Dream ~ that letter is in the WW collection, of course!) and a Tango encore, clamoured for by their delighted audience.

Wouter Verschuren's engrossing talk, "Per Bassone Senza Basso: the Art of Borrowing" or, as he elaborated, the ‘Art of Sharing', contained one of the most encouraging phrases ever: 'Leave out everything that is difficult' Although in this case, it was to do with the very specific problem of how to play the double stops, and all that is too "stringy" in Bach's Cello Suites. So not advice for life!

I also liked his idea of comparing musical interpretations with tweaks to recipes. They're not necessarily set in stone, and can be adjusted to taste.

Did you know that Telemann published a two- weekly musical magazine? So you had to wait for the next instalment before you could play through to the end of a piece! Cliffhangers, like Dickens. Or Eastenders. I didn't, so thank you for that too, Wouter!

After a picnic lunch in the sunshine, surrounded by bluebells and primroses (which reminds me ~ Graham was somewhat uncomplimentary about his dad's viola playing, saying that there was a considerable gap between the vibrato technique of William Waterhouse and William Primrose!).

Nikolaj Henriques shared his experiences of undergraduate, postgraduate and professional life in A Journey Across Borders. Within a tiny bassoon department at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, inspiration was often to be found in the playing of friends ~ flautists for vibrato and double tongueing, a french horn player for resonance. A teacher just six years older, Sebastian Stevenson, convinced him of the value of a young mentor.

From Denmark to Germany: "I didn't know what to prepare" he told Ole Kristian Dahl. "Play any note you like" came the reply. And so began The Drills: Play a little bit of everything every day. And listen to yourself. Too, too much to write here, but Nikolaj had many interesting stories about the different ways orchestras rehearse around the world, about the thrills and spills of recordings, about Nielson...really we need a Waterhouse Weekend!

Dr Will Peebles from the School of Music at the University of Western Carolina showed artfully photographed and amusingly captioned slides of his extensive collection of historical bassoons, illustrating their design and construction, and including some unusual ones that show the influence of the Boehm system.

The detective work that has gone into working out the missing links between the many adaptations is intriguing, and Almenräder's Thumb is now up there with Schrödinger's Cat and Pascal's Wager in my mind!

Last, but an ocean away from least, Jim Kopp conducted a group playthrough of some of Lisa Portus' wonderful arrangements for Bassoon Choir, handing over to Graham Waterhouse when he had "licked them into shape"!