Picking Up The Scores for our Philharmonia recordings
Posted:17/01/2026
Picking up scores and parts from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Library, Curzon Street, Birmingham, December 22nd, 2023
All of the scores and parts, originally lovingly created by my Mum, had been stored in the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) Library following their last performances (The Marshes of Glynn – 1987, Song of the Prairies - 1991, A St Luke Passion – 1997, New Dawn – 2001). RBC has since moved from Paradise Circus, where my Dad had worked up to his retirement in 2005, and is now on Jennens Road in Birmingham. The RBC library has been absorbed into the Curzon Library of Birmingham City University on Curzon Street.
My Mum emailed the library and asked if we could borrow the scores and parts for our upcoming recordings. To our relief, they still had them all and said yes!
On December 22nd, 2023, on a grey, windy, rainy day, my older daughter, Penny, started her first Christmas Chorister Stayover at Ely Cathedral. I left my younger daughter Millie with David, and drove to my Mum’s house in Worcestershire to pick her up to stay with us for the festive season. On the way back to my house in Ely, we stopped off at the Curzon Library in Birmingham to pick up the scores. We parked in the loading bay and my Mum went inside to ask for the scores. A very kind lady brought them out to the car for us on a trolley and we loaded them into the boot.
We drove to Ely and unloaded the boxes. We checked that all the scores and parts were there. David was pleased to see he could have the original pencil markings in the scores and parts to work with.
Everything was there apart from 2 trumpet parts for The Marshes of Glynn. My Mum made a note of that so that she could produce those copies again when she returned home. Thankfully we had plenty of time. We decided we needed some more vocal scores and full scores for each of the works, so I ordered those to be produced at a shop in nearby Histon, which I picked up a few weeks later.
We went to a local shop in Ely called “Thing-me-bobs” and bought some perfectly-sized plastic boxes to put the carboard boxes of scores in. We then stacked these boxes in the cupboard under my stairs, which I had cleared out previously. My house is not big so this was a brilliant solution – I didn’t find the cupboard very useful because I couldn’t get in it very easily, so it was better to clear it out entirely and use it for this instead. As the months went by though, our ongoing house renovation meant that we had to find alternative homes for them. A lot went on the top of my daughters’ wardrobes, but eventually, as our renovation progressed, we ended up wrapping the cardboard boxes up in two binliners each inside the plastic boxes and putting them into the garage. Thankfully they survived and the number of boxes reduced as the recording sessions took place and we returned the scores for each session to the library immediately afterwards.
Scores ready to take to the New Dawn recording, April 2024 (mid house renovation!)
Read on: First Philharmonia recording sessions
If you have performed in any of Andrew Downes' works or come to listen, please share your experiences in the Premieres Blog! Also see what others have said. Thank you so much for your contribution.
