Vernon Handley: Conductor and champion of British music whose extensive discography includes 100 premieres

The conductor Vernon Handley was celebrated for his championship of British music. Over a 50-year career, he enjoyed a special relationship with a number of British orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Ulster Orchestra. He leaves a substantial legacy of distinguished recordings on CD.

Known to all in the music business as "Tod", Vernon Handley was born in the north London suburb of Enfield, the son of a skilled worker in a paper mill. Handley's father had been born in Cardiff and sang in Llandaff Cathedral as a child; when Handley wanted to emphasise his volatility or passion, he would remind one of his Welsh roots.

Handley taught himself a vast musical repertoire from the scores in Enfield public library. He was encouraged by the music librarian Eric Cooper, who provided "tons and tons of scores during the war". Handley went to Enfield Grammar School and then Oxford, where he read English at Balliol College, and met his wife Barbara Black. A friend of Jack Good, later the pop music impresario, Handley became musical director of Ouds. Later, his instrumental study was an idiosyncratic juxtaposition of double-bass (with James Merritt senior at the Guildhall School of Music in London), trombone and violin.

I first encountered Tod Handley in December 1961 when he conducted the Morley College Symphony Orchestra under the orchestra's "conductors' scheme". He was hailed next morning by a critic as a "musician of unusual talent". His choice of repertoire of music by Anthony Milner, Holst, Delius and Arnold Bax's Third Symphony heralded what was to come.

He once remarked to me, "Being a British music specialist has harmed my career without any doubt and my image as the British music man has got out of proportion. I only do this music, and a lot of it, because I believe that a native conductor ought to. There are British composers who are close to my heart, but the first reason is much more important. I am a conductor, not just a 'British music conductor'".

He described to me how he followed conductors around as a boy "and couldn't understand a thing they were doing. What on earth have they got to do with the sound? In other words, I was in the same position as any layman." Then he got a pass to a BBC rehearsal at the Maida Vale studios, and saw Sir Adrian Boult for the first time.

I thought, "Good gracious – what he does with the stick comes out in the sound". I didn't want to watch anyone else after that. After I had been

to Oxford and was doing a lot more technical study, I used to ask to go to his rehearsals, and he was very kind and discussed everything with me. He was wonderfully helpful in every way.

Handley admitted, "My stick technique is modelled on that of Sir Adrian, though there is one big difference. I'm much fussier than he is. I beat a whole lot more beats. But I think that is possibly because almost everything I do . . . is single-rehearsal work". He added that his other mentor was the danceband leader Joe Loss. "When Loss used a stick, the bounce and freedom within a beat was masterly. I learned a great amount about one-in-a-bar watching him".

In 1962 Handley successfully applied for the post of municipal Director of Music at Guildford, Surrey. There he was very active with a choir as well the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra (which he made a fully professional group), and was successful with his pioneering programmes – Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, Bax's Symphonic Variations (with the pianist Joyce Hatto), Martinu's The Epic of Gilgamesh. He built up an enthusiastic following with an enormous catchment area.

Handley was responsible for many such revivals, at Guildford (and soon with BBC orchestras). A notable piece was Bliss's Morning Heroes (1930) given in the 1968 season. "I started to learn it, and I think no work that I've conducted has ever moved me so much from the first reading of the full score". Handley rang the composer, and a remarkably close friendship began, with, Handley conducting many of Bliss's works and the Blisses coming to stay.

His earliest recordings were of Liszt, Chopin, Bax and E.J. Moeran for the Delta label, and then more Bax, including the Fourth Symphony, for William Barrington-Coupe's Revolution label. A variety of recordings followed for labels such as Virgin, Stereo Gold, Enigma and EMI.

He was then taken up by Richard Itter for his Lyrita label, which specialised in revivals of British music by composers including Finzi, Geoffrey Bush, Edmund Rubbra, David Morgan, Bax, Hamilton Harty, Cyril Rootham and Josef Holbrooke; the whole catalogue has been reissued on CD over the last few months. For EMI on Music for Pleasure, he started his remarkable cycle of the Vaughan Williams symphonies.

While he was married to Barbara the couple had a large house near Aberystwyth and a flat in Guildford. Handley began to feel the pressure of driving enormous distances in those days before the M4. Just when Handley's career was taking off in a big way he suffered the tragedy of the death of his son Gareth at the age of 13 months from "unexplained childhood death syndrome".

During his time at Guildford, Handley also became Professor of Conducting at the Royal College of Music, 1966-72. It ended in typical Handley disagreement when he challenged the non-attendance of some student players who objected to his choice of unusual repertoire. A proposed performance of Herbert Howell's huge choral work Hymnus Paradisi was abandoned until the students promised Handley a full complement, which resulted in a quite remarkably intense reading of the work.

"I never expected my career to take off in quite the way it did", he said. In the 1970s, suddenly Handley became the conductor who appeared with the leading London orchestras when other conductors failed to do so, starting with an André Previn-announced performance of The Rite of Spring.

Handley always said he had recorded more British music than any other conductor; out of 160 discs, more than 90 are of British repertoire, including 100 premieres. His understanding of this repertoire was profound, and especially regarding Bax, Vaughan Williams and Elgar but also the complete symphonies by Malcolm Arnold, Stanford, Robert Simpson and the whole of E.J. Moeran's orchestral music. The master of rubato in a large structure, he single handedly transformed the reception of the music of Granville Bantock in a remarkable orchestral series on Hyperion.

Handley's recordings were recognised with a variety of awards starting with a Grand Prix du Disque for a French programme with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the 1970s. He was nominated eight times for Gramophone Record of the Year, winning with the Bax Symphonies on Chandos. In 2003 he received the Gramophone's Special Award for Services to British Music. He twice received the BPI classical award and in May 2007 he was given a lifetime achievement award at the Classical Brits. He was appointed CBE for services to music in 2004.

However, the pressures of an international career resulted in the dissolution of Handley's marriage to Barbara in the mid 1970s, as well as his two subsequent marriages, to Victoria Parry-Jones and to Catherine Newby (the flautist Catherine Handley).

Handley was beloved of orchestral players and worked with all the leading British orchestras; with his remarkable memory he usually addressed everyone by their first name at sessions. He enjoyed a close relationship with both the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ulster Orchester, and was Conductor Laureate of the latter. He had a longstanding relationship, too, with the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic. As Associate Conductor of the LPO he conducting their Malcolm Arnold memorial concert at the Royal Festival Hall in 2004. With the RPO he was lifetime Associate Conductor and last appeared with them at Cadogan Hall, London earlier this year when, in a remarkably eloquent reading, Tasmin Little played the Delius Violin Concerto.

His career in later years was undermined by poor health. He had suffered from kidney stones and renal colic complaints which necessitated taking pethidine, and he developed a dependency for the drug. In February 2002, in Munich for his radio recording of Delius's opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, Handley was involved in a taxi accident that left him with a substantial wound in his left thigh which never properly healed. (One did not ask Tod how he was – for he would surely tell you!) His health was set on a downward spiral just at the moment of his greatest artistic triumphs – his 2003 boxed set of Bax Symphonies with the BBC Philharmonic and his recording of Bantock's monumental Omar Khayyam (2007), both for Chandos.

Handley had a reputation among promoters and record companies for unrealiability owing to his health, and he became more and more prone to cancel. Dealing with the consequences of Tod ringing on Sunday morning to say that he would not be at a session the following day has to be experienced to be believed.

Handley's life was not all centred on music. He was a remarkable carpenter and a gardener too, with an enthusiasm for old English roses, and he also had a great passion for birdwatching and the photography of birds.

At the rehearsal for his last appearance with the RPO, a remarkable thing happened. Handley came on to the stage, walking slowly on his two sticks. He got to the rostrum, picked up the baton – and suddenly he was the old Tod again, all traces of infirmity seeming to fall away as he conducted.

Lewis Foreman

Vernon George Handley, conductor: born Enfield, Middlesex 11 November 1930; Guest Conductor, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra 1961-94, Associate Conductor 1994-2008; Conductor, Proteus Choir 1962-81; Musical Director and Conductor, Guildford Corporation, and Conductor, Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir 1962-83; Professor, Royal College of Music 1966-72, Principal Conductor, Ulster Orchestra 1985-89; Principal Conductor, Malmö Symphony Orchestra 1985-88; Principal Guest Conductor, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra 1989-95; Chief Conductor, Western Australia Symphony Orchestra 1993-96; CBE 2004; married 1954 Barbara Black (one son, one daughter, and one son deceased), 1977 Victoria Parry-Jones (deceased; one son, one daughter), 1987 Catherine Newby (one son); died Skenfrith, Gwent 10 September 2008.

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