THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.

March 3rd 1957.

Dear Alan,¹

I don’t know anything about Mr. Hofnung’s² capabilities as a Tuba player — I hope he is not going to make a comic turn of it.³
Yrs

RVW

1. Music Editor in succession to Norman Peterkin (1947); Head of Music from 1954 until his retirement in 1975.
2. sic. 
3. Frank had written saying that he had noticed that Gerard Hoffnung was to play the Tuba Concerto (Catalogue of Works 1954/2) at the Canford Summer School of Music (of which VW was President) and wondering if his technique would be sufficient. Hoffnung, the musical humourist and cartoonist, was an amateur tuba player, self-taught with the assistance of Howard Ferguson. Hoffnung played the Tuba Concerto at the Canford Summer School on Friday 23 August. Apart from producing the music from the mouth of his tuba, he played it straight and the local paper (Daily Echo) said he made the instrument sound agile, sentimental, even beautiful. He played it in the Royal Festival Hall in June 1958 and the consensus between the London newspapers was that he was not up to the work’s demands.