End of an era at Opera North as David Greed retires

Greed is now retiring as the longest-serving leader of any European orchestra. “I was born in Newark in Nottinghamshire and into a musical family with both my father and uncle as professional pianists,” he says. At the age of seven, his parents presented him with his first violin.

“Having shown musical aptitude, my education took me through local schools, with the first major musical training taking me to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. From there I graduated to London’s Royal College of Music with the famous violinist, John Ludlow, as my mentor.

“I freelanced as a violinist for a few years, my first theatre experience coming with a touring ballet company, but I had never seen an opera on stage until I came to the Grand Theatre in Leeds for the opening night of Opera North’s first production.”

That was to be Saint-Saens’s sensual opera, Samson and Delilah, on November 15, 1978, and it was to be the first of ten operas presented in that inaugural year, with the company also taking them out on a UK tour of northern England.

Joining Opera North was the first time Greed had ever been to Leeds, but, recently married, it required the young couple to move there, though their arrival came with a degree of uncertainty. The continuation of the whole Opera North project depended upon the support of audience numbers in that first year. If they were not sufficient, the whole venture could be brought to an abrupt end. Fortunately that possibility has passed into history, the capacity audiences providing the financial success, while the media were unstinting in congratulating the productions and vocal performances, with particular praise given to the playing of the orchestra.

In the years that followed, and with its home in the Leeds Grand Theatre, Opera North took on a place among Europe’s leading opera companies, attracting some of the world’s most outstanding singers, and, so far as Greed was concerned, he was working with some of the leading conductors.

“I didn’t know, when I first accepted the role of leader of the opera company, that there was also to be a symphony orchestra attached to it,” he says. “That orchestra took the name of the English Northern Philharmonia who were seen, slightly augmented in size, on stage at the town halls in Leeds and Huddersfield”.

The orchestra was soon making recordings, primarily of British music, for the top-selling international label Naxos. That series of discs contained a highly regarded Walton series, which was described by the Gramophone magazine as “competing with the finest ever and outshining most of them”. It is now numbered among those CDs expecting to be reissued as part of a boxed set.

Greed’s solo recordings have included The Lark Ascending for Naxos, conducted by David Lloyd-Jones, and the Elgar Concerto with the Hertfordshire Youth Orchestra, while in the concert halls he has in recent years performed as a soloist in many of the best-known violin concertos. He has been extremely fortunate in having a very fine violin owned by the Yorkshire Guadagnini 1757 Syndicate that has provided him with a very beautiful sound.

Listening to the chitchat among the hierarchy in the recording industry, they have long made it known how highly regarded the major London orchestras have held David Greed. He has appeared as guest leader with some of them, including the Philharmonia, while he has also been seen with the City of Birmingham Symphony, the BBC symphony orchestras in Wales and Scotland and while nearer home with the BBC Philharmonic. In 1999 he led the Orchestra of the Royal Opera on its prestigious concert tour of the USA, and in November 2007 was invited to be the guest leader of the Orchestra of Norwegian Opera in Oslo.

Music in Dewsbury had become, by then, one of his most pleasurable successes. It was in the 1980s that he presented his first venture as music there, “with a chat and a laugh”, which made for a pleasing lunchtime together with light refreshments in a room at the Town Hall.

It was not long before he met his first problem there when many more than the 50 expected came along to support his venture. Even a move to the main hall was hardly sufficient to hold the numbers that made the concerts almost a national institution. Greed and his Cafe Band provided a mix of many types of music from solos to chamber music, sometimes serious, sometimes light, and often bringing in colleagues from the opera orchestra to share in the programmes. “That is something I will really miss in my retirement,” he says. As a strong advocate of orchestras at all levels of attainment, and particularly among young people, he is co-music director of the Sinfonia of Leeds, a group of amateur musicians and advanced students with whom he has made recordings of Bartók, Lutosławski, Chopin and Beethoven. He has also conducted the City of Leeds Youth Orchestra, the Helix Ensemble, the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School orchestras. That desire to help young people has also led him to coach the members of the National Youth and European Union Youth Orchestras.

With suitcases packed, he will now be a key component of his last tour with Opera North this month, with eight performances of Wagner’s epic opera Parsifal. It comes with the largest orchestra Opera North has ever presented in semi-staged performances. For Greed, each will be four-and-a half hours of deep concentration as the conductor, Richard Farnes, takes Parsifal in his search for the Holy Grail. It opened at Leeds Grand Theatre on June 1, with further stagings tonight, Tuesday and Friday. It then moves to Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, the Sage in Gateshead, ending In London’s Royal Festival Hall.

The beginning of July will see Greed begin his retirement years but he will be as busy as ever with the Sinfonia of Leeds and plans to continue to coach the string sections at the Royal Northern College of Music and London’s Royal Academy of Music. He also recently become part of the Victoria String Quartet based in Manchester.

Still available as a guest leader, wherever and whenever that may happen, more importantly Greed is looking forward to spending more time with his three young grandchildren.

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