Ted Heath, the Prime Minister-musician: a personal recollection

The previous post on this blog, pertaining to the increasingly controversial exPM of the UK, Sir Edward Heath, very likely appears out of place; however, his sole appearance in my life-experience was as a musician.(Indeed I was born while he was incumbent in 10 Downing Street-perhaps the only time the post has been held by someone with a serious interest in music: though Disraeli did write on the important role of Jews in our musical culture…if only Heath, our worst PM in 300 years, had had a fraction of Beaconsfield’s political talent…)

The occasion was a concert celebrating the retirement of the controversial Tory peer, Lord Aldington (the controversy being that he was accused of war crimes in Yugoslavia at the end of WW2 in Count Tolstoy’s book “The Minister and the Massacres” ,on which account he was later awarded record damages)….Heath conducted only one item: Wagner’s prelude to “Die Meistersinger”. It’s hard to think he was unaware of the political symbolism: this was the only opera permitted to be performed at Bayreuth throughout the war. The only other piece I remember on the programme was the Adagietto from Mahler 5, which I later learnt was used in Visconti’s film of “Death in Venice”, made when Heath was in office. Interestingly, Britten’s operatic treatment of the Mann novella also dates from the Heath years (1970-1974).