ALTHOUGH he possessed a virtuoso technique and impeccable musicianship, it was the astonishing toughness of Ifor James’s jaw muscles that astonished his fellow horn players. Whereas most of them would deliver one of Mozart’s demanding concertos before retreating in a storm of well-earned applause, he would often perform all four without cracking a note, throwing in for good measure the fragment of the fifth concerto.
Richard Ifor James was born into a musical family in Carlisle. His mother, Ena Mitchell, was a distinguished soprano and singing teacher. His father, William, was the registrar for Carlisle county council who played solo cornet with the prize-winning Carlisle St Stephens brass band. Having taken up the cornet as a three-year-old, James made his professional debut at 7, alongside his father in the pit of His Majesty’s Theatre in Carlisle.
At Carlisle Grammar School music took its place beside another of James’s lifelong loves, football. As a teenager, he switched to the trumpet and was a chorister in Carlisle Cathedral, later becoming assistant organist. He was later to remark, tongue in cheek, that if he could sing, he would not play the horn. Such was his proficiency as a sportsman that he was offered a trial for Carlisle United. But music was to triumph. At 17 he exchanged the trumpet for the horn, and began travelling to London by train to take private lessons with his mother’s friend, Aubrey Brain. He became a full-time student of Brain’s at the Royal Academy of Music between 1951 and 1953.
After graduation, James joined Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra as fifth horn, moving to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic as principal. The rewards of this move were not purely musical, as it was here he met his wife, Helen Rimmer, a violinist in the orchestra. In 1961 he resigned, to return to the Hallé as principal on a freelance basis. He had already given the first performance in modern times of Weber’s Concertino for Horn and Orchestra for the BBC in Belfast in 1961, and in 1963 he left the Hallé again, moving to London to concentrate on a burgeoning solo and teaching career, during which he appeared as a soloist with all the major orchestras.
James and his wife eventually settled in Essex, and he was appointed principal horn of the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. He was professor of horn at both the Royal Academy of Music in London and Colchester Institute of Higher Education, besides continuing to teach privately.
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Teaching remained a passion. His most distinguished pupils are Michael Thompson and Frank Lloyd, but there are few accomplished horn players in London over 30 who he did not coach at some time. Indeed, orchestras seeking a horn player would telephone him to ask for recommendations, and his students occupy principals’ seats all over Europe. He was professor of horn at both Aberdeen University, which gave him an honorary doctorate in 2003, and the Musik Hochschule in Freiburg, Germany, from 1983 until his retirement in 1996.
He was a hugely humorous and generous teacher. In the early 1970s an impoverished student drove to a concert venue in rural Essex to buy the instrument on which James was performing, James handed over the instrument as he left the platform, warning his pupil to take care as it was still hot, and promptly lent him enough money for the petrol to return to London.
But teaching and solo work were only two of myriad interests. For some years James was the principal conductor of the Besses o’th’Barn brass band, leading them to victory in the BBC band of the year competition in 1978. A love of chamber music led to membership of the Ifor James Horn Quartet and the Schiller Trio, and a series of lecture recitals partnered at different times by Wilfred Parry, Jennifer Partridge and John McCabe. He leaves behind a substantial discography, including 30 recordings with the renowned Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, with whom he played for 15 years. His interpretation of Richard Strauss’s Second Horn Concerto with Antoni Wit is widely considered to be among the best available.
Ten years ago lung cancer forced him to stop playing and to undergo radiation treatment. Four years later, having read extensively about faith healing, he became determined to recover and took up the instrument again, for six hours of video-taped lectures on the basics of horn playing — something he was determined to leave for posterity. In the past two years his health deteriorated rapidly, but he had already defied a doctor’s prognosis in 1999 that he had only six months to live. He is survived by his wife, Helen. There were no children.
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Ifor James, french horn virtuoso, was born on August 30, 1931. He died on December 23, 2004, aged 73.