Music that changed me - Simon Callow Actor

Simon Callow Actor

- Amanda Holloway

Simon Callow CBE is one of Britain's most popular and recognisable actors - appearing in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and A Room with a View - and also a writer, broadcaster and theatre director. His lifelong love for classical music has seen him directing opera productions and appearing with various orchestras around the world as well as fronting documentaries and writing about composers and their work. He is one of the narrators in Sword in the Soul, a modern Passion by Francis Grier with words by Rowan Williams, out now on Orchid Classics.

My grandmother, who had a wonderful contralto voice, owned an enormous collection of rather battered 78s which I grew up listening to. I discovered Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording of SIBELIUS’s Swan of Tuonela, a work of such mystery and enchantment that it cast a spell on me and I listened to it over and over again. The music transported me to another realm of experience and imagination, and once I discovered classical music I became what you might call a nerd, or trainspotter!

My friend Billy lived next door to us in Streatham, and his father, Andrew Brown, played second violin in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. They played at Glyndebourne, and Andrew was fascinated by opera. He was a gruff man but he would tell Billy and me riveting stories of the operas. In their house I came across a score of