Hospital is cleared of blame in Lunchtime O’Boulez death
OrchestrasThe inquest has been held in Cheltenham into the death of John Boyden, former manager of the London Symphony Orchestra and the New Queens Hall Orchestra, and a prolific independent record producer.
John died in September 2021 after a fall.
At the time of his death, he was exposed as Private Eye’s Lunctime O’Boulez correspondent.
Cheltenham General Hospital was cleared by the coroner of neglect. Report here.
Many have claimed the mantle of Lunchtime O’Boulez and some may even have made contributions. The best was many years ago when the LSO moved into the Barbican. They called poor Kurt Hans Goedicke, the LSO tympanist, the Reichfhurer but after performances of Stockhausen’s Gruppen he suddenly was renamed The Gruppenfuhrer. All a long time ago now.
I remember that Gruppen in early 80s at the Barbican – Abbado, Edward Downes and somebody else. And the timpani player certainly played with aplomb
” somebody else…”Now a distant memory, but John Carewe ?Although that may have been a subsequent Gruppen,with Simon Rattle?
John was great fun, scabrous too: his Wally Stott story will likely die with him. Or perhaps me.
He dished a lot of dirt on a Former Great Record Company (we’re back in days of Previn here). His source has never been identified to this day and was likely more than one person, given that we at the FGRC all knew JB was LO’B.
My favourite story concerned a querulous A&R meeting in which at some point the late Peter Andry allegedly knocked things on the head by announcing: “OK, that’s enough: we’ll do ‘Tod und Verklärung’ *and* ‘Death and Transfiguration’.”
While working for EMI, Boyden founded the record label “Classics for Pleasure”, which – unusually for a budget label at that time – released many new recordings as well as reissues of the back catalogue. I am therefore eternally grateful to him for giving us one of my most treasured Mahler recordings, namely the Fourth Symphony with the LPO, Horenstein and Margaret Price. OK, the playing isn’t perfectly polished, partly because there wasn’t enough money for lots of rehearsal, and partly because “Horrors” didn’t seek such perfection. But the spirit of the piece is captured magnificently.