Remembering Jeffrey Tate

In my first year at Cambridge there was a small group of friends, all fellow members of Christ's College, who met together most evenings and many afternoons for endless conversation. What we all had in common was a great appreciation of classical music, theatre and of wit. Jeffrey was a powerhouse of all these. His physical affliction ruled out most roles in drama, but his direction/production of Measure For Measure for the ADC (or Mummers? or Marlowe Society?) left an indelible impression on me.

In those days, despite never having had any piano lessons, I was trying to teach myself to play Bach.The second piece I learned was Var.13 of the Goldberg Variations. It took me two years. I used to practice it in a little back room at Christ's One day Jeffrey popped in to see what I was doing.

"Do you play?" I asked.
"A little," said he.
"Please show me how this should go"

Whereupon he sat down and played it so well that I asked him to start from the beginning, and marveled as he sightread the entire Goldberg Variations, his performance being as good as any I had heard. I knew he loved music and was in the college choir, but he was studying medicine, so it was quite a surprise. But in fact, after doing his medical internship, he got a position as a repetiteur for Georg Solti at Covent Garden, and went on to become principal conductor at Covent Garden, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic.and others.

I lost touch with him when I left England for India and, eventually, Japan, but he got in touch when he came to Tokyo for some concerts with the pianist Mitsuko Uchida, and my wife and daughter and I attended the concert and spent the rest of the day with the two of them; he was as fun to talk with as ever,and we were able to catch up a bit on what had become of all the members of our little clique.

Although people with his condition normally have a short life expectancy, this didn't seem to apply to Jeffrey. You may have noticed that conductors generally live to a very advanced age, often doing their best work in their final decades. I don't for a moment doubt that allowing music to flow continually through your mind and body is the closest thing to the Elixir Of Youth available And also, as Jeffrey said,

""There is in the last resort no limit to my physical energy if I know what I'm doing and want to do it."