Julian Bream obituary

Britain had to wait a long time for its great classical guitarist. But the debut at the Wigmore Hall, London, in November 1951 of Julian Bream proclaimed the arrival of a seminal figure in the history of the instrument, not just in Britain, but around the world.

In the half century that intervened before his return to the Wigmore Hall for an anniversary recital in 2001, Bream’s achievement went far beyond that of the previous British-born virtuoso of note, Ernest Shand (1868-1924): as performer and developer of the guitar and its repertory – and as a leading reviver of the lute’s Renaissance repertory – Bream, who has died aged 87, was one of the instrument’s towering figures of any generation.

Bream was born in Battersea, south-west London. His mother, Violet (nee Wright), was of Scottish descent. His father, Henry Bream, was a Londoner, a commercial artist who also played the plectrum (jazz) guitar in local dance bands. When he returned home one day to find Julian strumming on his guitar, he decided to teach him to play. This engendered an interest in jazz that culminated many years later in his performing with the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli at the Royal Albert Hall.

It was on hearing a recording of Andrés Segovia that Julian’s love affair with the classical guitar began. Though his father recognised Julian’s musical potential, he visualised his future as being with the piano, on which Julian was by then taking lessons. However, Henry bought a “finger-style” guitar (as it was then commonly known) for Julian on his 11th birthday. In the same year he was given a junior exhibition award to study the piano at the Royal College of Music, with the cello as his second instrument.

Although he gave a groundbreaking demonstration recital there, he was asked not to bring his guitar in by the front door. There was no question of his studying the guitar at the RCM – there was no one capable of teaching him. His first lessons were with Boris Perott, a polymath Russian émigré who founded the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists in London. “They were of cursory value and didn’t do any harm, but I had to unlearn the right-hand technique he taught me,” Bream said. “They may have given me some measure of discipline at a time when I needed it.”

Thereafter Bream continued to develop his own technique. His father and several people who were influential in the microcosm of the guitar by virtue of their writings vied for the distinction of becoming Bream’s mentor. He quietly let it all flow past him and made his own decisions, as he continued to do in all important matters.

Related: Julian Bream, British classical guitarist, dies aged 87

The number of his recitals for guitar and musical societies steadily increased, and with them his reputation. In December 1947, he met and played for Segovia, who was so impressed that he offered to take Bream under his wing, teaching him during his travels. Not long afterwards he withdrew his offer, for reasons that remain obscure. Nevertheless he continued to speak highly of Bream’s musicianship, and Bream did not waver in his deep respect for Segovia’s accomplishments; indeed, in what he did for the guitar he became the maestro’s truest successor.

By 1949, his father’s commercial business approached bankruptcy. Bream’s parents divorced, they each remarried, and Henry won custody of Julian and his younger sister, Janice. Financial assistance from the Artists’ Benevolent Fund averted disaster, and in 1950 a benefit concert in London to be given by Julian was arranged. A week later, Henry died, but not before he heard of his son’s great success at his London debut. A year later, his Wigmore Hall debut recital took place; this was the concert, with very positive reviews, that really launched Bream’s career.

His international career began with recitals in Switzerland in 1954, and his American debut was in 1958. Thereafter it extended to all parts of the globe. His first performance of a concerto, Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with the BBC Opera Orchestra, was in April 1951, and in 1957 he gave the first European performance of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Guitar Concerto, a year after meeting and playing for the composer – from whose widow he received the Villa-Lobos gold medal in 1976.

Another seminal event occurred in 1950. While in Manchester, Bream visited the Henry Watson Music Library, where he came across a volume of lute solos by John Dowland, transcribed by Peter Warlock, and was astonished by the beauty of the music. He immediately transcribed some of the pieces for the guitar, but such was his passion for his new discovery that he acquired a German six-string lute and taught himself to play it. “I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.”

In 1960 he founded the Julian Bream Consort, initially devoted to performing Thomas Morley’s First Book of Consort Lessons, but it was a highly versatile group that was capable of various instrumental combinations, and it was largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Elizabethan music at that time. The consort continued in three phases, marked by changes of personnel, until 1990.

In Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in 1952, he met the tenor Peter Pears, with whom his association, until 1970, made a pioneering contribution to the revival of the lute-song. Bream was criticised for the inauthenticity of his lute and his playing technique, but he was more successful in popularising the music (not least that of Dowland) than the traditional, academically focused lute fraternity had ever been.

In 1959, he felt the need to remake his guitar technique, and began to do so during a coast-to-coast train journey across America – “Five days doing nothing in which, paradoxically, I did plenty!” The process continued thereafter, “a legacy of being largely self-taught”.

Although he was a naturally ebullient and sociable man, he deeply valued the privacy that enabled him to study, practise and gather his thoughts. Finding this increasingly difficult to maintain in London, in 1964 he moved to a rural home in Wiltshire, close to the Dorset border.

This move also enabled him to keep in closer touch with his interest in the design of the guitar. He had first met the luthier David Rubio in New York in 1965, and had asked him to “make me a guitar that will do what I want it to, not one that tells me what I may do”. Thus was born “the English sound”, one of clarity and balance, as opposed to the then-prevalent Spanish one with a “candle-flame” treble and “fruit-salad” bass – higher sounds quickly swelling to a maximum volume before dying away, and big, overpowering lower sounds, giving an overall bass-heavy effect ideal for displaying heart-on-sleeve “emotion”.

Rubio worked for 18 months in premises near Bream’s home. When he left, the workshops were taken over for a while by the harpsichord maker Michael Johnson and the guitar maker José Romanillos.

Bream’s first recordings had been on the Westminster label (1956-59); he then moved to RCA, with whom he remained until 1990, making a historic “archive” of recordings that were reissued in their entirety as a 28-CD box-set, The Ultimate Guitar Collection, in 1993.

A motoring accident in 1984, in which no one else was involved, nearly ended Bream’s career – and even his life. His right elbow was shattered, and it was due only to prolonged and expert surgery and rehabilitation that he was able to resume his activities.

After he left RCA, his recording career continued with EMI until, in the mid-1990s, he retired from it, having “recorded everything I want to record”. It was characteristic of an artist whose objectives were always clear. His output was distinguished not only by its volume but also by its quality, as four Grammy awards and two Edison awards testify.

As an important factor in securing the future of the guitar, he commissioned new works from, among others, Benjamin Britten (Nocturnal After John Dowland, which Bream described as “very nearly beyond me”), William Walton (Five Bagatelles), Malcolm Arnold (Guitar Concerto, Fantasy), Michael Tippett (The Blue Guitar), Hans Werner Henze (Royal Winter Music), Lennox Berkeley (Guitar Concerto, Sonatina, Theme and Variations), Alan Rawsthorne (Elegy), Richard Rodney Bennett (Guitar Concerto, Impromptus, Sonata) and Toru Takemitsu (All in Twilight); many of these have become standard repertory. In this respect he made a greater contribution than any other guitarist of his generation.

In 1997, he became the first classical guitarist to feature on the BBC’s This Is Your Life. His radio and television appearances, both alone and in company with others, made him familiar to audiences all over the world. Formal honours included appointment as OBE in 1964, advanced to CBE in 1985. In 1996 he received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s instrumental award and in 2013 the Gramophone magazine lifetime achievement award.

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He retired from performing in 2002. Unlike many of his professional colleagues, Bream had a wide range of interests outside music. He was passionate about cricket, and for many years captained a local village team. As a member of the MCC, he gave the first classical guitar recital in the Long Room at Lord’s in 1995. He was also a formidable opponent at table tennis. Apart from his interests in gardening and his famously well-stocked wine cellar, the visual arts were a constant stimulation – he had a fine collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century English and Scottish paintings – and he was a knowledgable collector of English period furniture.

The companionship of his dogs became increasingly important to him, particularly after a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1998, when his doctors recommended a routine of regular exercise. Thereafter he became a familiar sight on the North Dorset Downs, striding along with his beautiful flat-coated retrievers at heel.

His marriages to Margaret Wilkinson (1968-73) and Isabel Sanchez (1980-83) ended in divorce.
John Duarte

John Amis writes: Julian Bream was well known for his directness. After he had played in one embassy concert, the German ambassador came up to him and asked: “Mr Bream, you play this Spanish music so marvellously, you must have some Spanish blood in you.” “What, me?,” said Julian. “I was born in Battersea, between the power station and the dogs home.”

I first met the boy Bream in the house of the singer-guitarist Victoria Kingsley, one of several benevolent people who had heard the brilliant prodigy and decided to help him financially. Some years later he came to the music summer school at Dartington, where the set-up suited him; he came year after year, and loved it so much that we found it difficult to get him to leave.

Julian’s great thing as a performer was his power of communicating with the audience. He dug deep into the music and the spirit behind the printed dots. His playing was not always technically perfect –there was the odd squeak and squelch – but the music truly got across. He liked the atmosphere at Dartington: friendly, the chance to play all night if he wanted, a few “tubes of narcotic joy” (as he called his endless stream of Gauloises), the odd packet of Smith’s crisps, and the cricket.

His masterclasses were instructive and fun. On the first day one year he tried to correct a student, playing the passage on his own guitar, saying: “Go on, more like that. See what I mean?” At which the student replied: “It’s all very well for you. You’ve got a good box to play on. Mine’s a soap box.” Julian conceded the point, so went round the whole circle of students, playing on each of their instruments and making almost as lovely a sound on the first lad’s guitar as he had on his own custom-built instrument.

• Julian Alexander Bream, guitarist and lutenist, born 15 July 1933; died 14 August 2020

John Duarte died in 2004; and John Amis in 2013