Works in our collections
Maisie and Evelyn Radford spent their lives making music in Cornwall. Maisie Radford was made a Cornish bard in 1934, taking the name Maghteth Ylow, 'Servant of Music'.
They ran the St Mawes Choral society, were founding committee members for the Cornwall Music Festival, and gave concerts and lectures throughout the county at village halls and WIs. They were, however, probably best known in Cornwall and nationally for their ground-breaking productions with the Falmouth Opera Singers. Making their own translations whenever there was not one available, they produced 31 operas in Falmouth between 1923 and 1968, including the first UK performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito.
In their joint memoir written in 1965, Musical Adventures in Cornwall, they record their ‘late doings in Cornwall’. Stories of triumph and disaster are told with equal delight. Jennet Campbell, who played the flute in the orchestra for the Falmouth Opera Singers, recalled the sublime smile that would spread across Maisie’s face while conducting if anything went a little awry. They often explained that it was when they were asked to take over the production of the Falmouth pageant organised by the WI after the producer was bitten by a rat, that they decided to devote their energies to making music in Cornwall and to producing opera.
Initially they travelled without a car from St Mawes to remote village halls across Cornwall to give lecture recitals of chamber music or a programme of Songs and Dances from Many Lands with a small company of dancers. The Roseland Concert Party tour required an enormous theatrical hamper of clothes, suitcases, music cases, a music stand, a large drugget to dance on in case the floor at the venue was too uneven, a violin and drum. All had to be ‘transplanted by farm cart, by row boat, by steamer, by truck from the steamer’ before they picked up a bus or train from Falmouth for their final destination. They were rewarded by the enthusiasm of their audiences who remarked, ‘We must have they again’. When they did finally get a car, with an engine which ‘had a tendency to stall … and took time and violent pumping of the inside starting handle to get moving again’, they were often ‘pisky-led’ on the dark lanes coming home.
On more than one occasion they forgot that they had driven round to Falmouth and blithely took the steamer back to St Mawes to discover their rowing boat was still in St Anthony. It is hardly surprising that the friends who came as soloists were sometimes a little alarmed at their means of transport. Once they misjudged the tide and, returning after a concert to find their boat grounded in mud, they had no choice but to ‘take off our shoes and stockings, tuck up our evening dresses firmly round our waists and wade for it’. The visiting soprano was remembered ‘gallantly attempting to smile’ when she had to follow them.
Alongside the difficulties posed by the distances travelled there were often further complications once they arrived at the ‘concert halls’. These could be anything from a minstrels’ gallery in a Tudor manor house, lit only by candles, where they were nearly blinded by wood smoke from the open fireplace underneath, to old school buildings, old army huts, converted barns and lofts or ‘little meeting rooms where there was hardly room for a violinist to bow’. But most concerning of all would be the state of the piano. Evelyn kept detailed notes on the various pianos she had to play, for example: ‘Whitecross WI Moderate in 1937. Gone completely to the bad in 1938. (Press for new one—Such good audience and other circumstances.)’ On one occasion the intonation was ‘past restoring’ and Maisie, who struggled valiantly to tune her violin to it throughout the concert, remarked at the end, causing some alarm in the audience, that she hoped there would be one old friend she would not meet again when they next came to play.
In the Falmouth operas they worked almost entirely with amateurs, local singers and players. Maisie conducted, Evelyn was rehearsal accompanist and stage manager. Together they rehearsed the chorus, soloists and orchestra, directed the cast, designed costumes and scenery and managed the box office, helped by a team of loyal and devoted colleagues. The Radfords witnessed much change over their long involvement in the musical life of Cornwall. The Old Polytechnic Hall in Falmouth which, when they staged their first opera there in 1923, was ‘let to a triumvirate of cinema proprietors’ had been transformed into an Arts Centre by 1964, ‘the small theatre fully equipped with a good stage, lighting, dressing rooms and a Box Office!’ And yet, they write: ‘the little thrill as the overture begins, and at ‘curtain-up’, remain as does a sudden catch of the breath when some hoped-for effect does come off, the music takes on new life, or a singer realises some fresh and lovely point. These are the moments that release a special joy.’
Their legacy lives on in Cornwall through the work of the Trust they set up to help young musicians.
from Emma Chapman, 'Maisie (1887-1969) and Evelyn (1885-1973) Radford' in Coleman, H. and Browne, F. (eds.) Songweavers: An Anthology of Cornwall's Musical Women. Penzance: Hypatia Publications.
