How the Philharmonia recordings came about

Blog by Paula Downes

Posted on:17/01/2026

My Dad died on January 2nd 2023. We all loved him very much and miss his warm, stable presence in our family. Read more here: My lovely Dad, Andrew Downes

He had spent the last decade of his life in a wheelchair, following a fall at home, and medical negligence that led to him being paraplegic. He won a compensation case, and had enough money for equipment, house renovations, and up to two carers for the rest of his life. When he died, he still had some money left, and we decided we would use it to promote his music. It was serendipitous that around this time, I had a conversation with an agent I had met by chance at a careers presentation at the Faculty of Music in Cambridge. I was actually there in my capacity as an Apprentice in Audit at KPMG (a brief change of direction on my career path). In the break, I jumped at the chance to ask the agent what I should do to promote my Dad’s music. I explained to her that now that he was dead, I felt a huge burden to make sure his music stayed alive. She told me the best thing I could do was to make a recording.

I really wanted to get his large-scale choral and orchestral works recorded, since they hadn’t been performed in a long time, and I knew they were outstanding pieces that needed to be heard. With this in mind, I decided to be daring, and having found the email address on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s website, with the help of my husband, David Trippett, who is a brilliant writer, composed an email to the Interim Head of Concerts & Residencies of the Philharmonia Orchestra on March 8th, 2023, asking if we could hire the orchestra to record some large-scale cantatas and oratorios by my Dad. I included the following paragraph:

For reasons professional and personal, the Philharmonia Orchestra is my first-choice ensemble for this project, since Andrew's uncle, Herbert Downes was principal viola from 1945 to 1974, and also a member of the Philharmonia Quartet. Furthermore, I sang in the Philharmonia Voices in the first concerts under Andras Schiff in 2004.

Below, Bert is leading the violas:

I hadn’t heard anything by May 26th, so sent a follow-up email. I received an auto-reply saying she was on annual leave until May 30th. On May 30th I received a reply, asking me to send the orchestration that I would like them to quote for and any relevant repertoire so they could prepare an accurate quote. They also asked if I had an idea of when I might like to do the recordings. They told me I would have to contact Aidan Oliver about using Philharmonia Voices.

I was so excited to have received a positive response! I immediately set about preparing the information that had been requested for each piece and I wrote back that evening. I said we would like to do the recordings within the next two years if possible. I attached details of the four works we wanted to record.

Many months passed and I didn’t receive a response. I am not normally very patient, and I would have written back in about a month, but we had realised that we needed to apply for probate to obtain my Dad’s money, and it took a really long time! We were also in the middle of moving house. On the morning of September 7th, I wrote another email. I immediately received an auto-response which stated that my contact had now left the Philharmonia Orchestra. The email also provided other email addresses to use instead, so I sent my original email to the new addresses.

Very shortly afterwards, I received a positive reply, and a few days later I received a lovely message from the Director of Concerts and Projects, who said, "Your father’s legacy is very special and it would be an honour for the Philharmonia to collaborate with you on this project". She also suggested recording venues and asked about the timeframe and the conductor and soloists we would use.

What a lovely email to receive! We were all so pleased and over the moon.

After talking to my Mum and getting her go ahead, I asked David if he would conduct. This was the biggest thing I had ever done, and I really needed support from people I knew and trusted. I only had one shot at this. I needed David’s help and support every step of the way. It made childcare more challenging, but it would be worth it. I knew David would do an amazing job, and he did. He always gives everything his absolute all and more, and it needed someone to take the reigns with their whole being, which he did. We couldn’t have asked for anyone better. He is supremely talented. He has conducted my Dad’s music before, the opera Far from the Madding Crowd, and was amazing in that. He has played many of my Dad’s piano works and has accompanied me in numerous songs. He understands the music and has now raised it to a level it has never seen before.

I wanted Myles Eastwood to be the recording engineer because we have worked with him before. David had initially supervised his PhD on recording and had been very impressed. David went on to use him for various projects and I asked him to record us performing my Dad’s Dreamland (for soprano, piano and soprano saxophone). He is brilliant at what he does, and were able to able to have long discussions with him beforehand, regarding venues, soloists, numbers in the orchestra and choir, and labels. It was an adventure for all of us and it was exciting.

Once we had settled on recording dates, I emailed Aidan Oliver to see if he could provide the Philharmonia Voices and was again over the moon when he agreed to take this on!

Aidan put together the most wonderful choirs. My Dad would have been in seventh heaven. These were the best singers in London and the world, and their capabilities made the music shine out at its best.

We spent a long time choosing soloists for these works and were so pleased with the ones we got. Aidan helped us to find the ATB New Dawn and Song of the Prairies soloists, and David did a lot of research to find Morgan Pearse for A St Luke Passion. David and I are both very particular in our tastes and both loved Morgan’s singing. For The Marshes of Glynn we were delighted to get Brenden Gunnell, whom we had heard singing Beethoven’s 9th with the Aurora Orchestra at the Proms. He sounded perfect for the role and thankfully he was available!

Read on: Picking up the scores from the library

Blog by Paula Downes