Coriolan Overture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv69x0r5AsY
Symphony no. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_uVBm5xFo&t=4s
Symphony no. 7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-HD_7Go780
In rehearsal
Helsinki, 1 September 2013
2nd timpani Scott Bywater. Percussion Glyn Matthews, Ben Hoffnung, Richard Horne.
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
5th Movement
Dresdner timpani 24″, 26″, 29″, 31″
Baden Baden, 2004
Concert and recording, Wroclaw, 2011
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Barbican Hall, 2006
At ANAM, in Melbourne.
At the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The LSO were supposed to travel on the Titanic…..
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Tony Bedewi using two of my Hawkes original timpani as he plays the part of Charles Turner, the LSO’s timpanist and diarist in 1912.
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And here is the complete film;
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra have taken delivery of their Henry Potter refurbished timpani.
During the Berlin Philharmonic’s London Residency in February 2015 we were delighted to sit-in a rehearsal of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, and back at the Royal College of Music we were treated to masterclasses given by Wieland Welzel and Raphael Haeger.
Wieland Welzel and Jan Schlichte.
Wieland Welzel with RCM percussion students
Raphael Haeger
Pete Woods and I recently visited Edinburgh University Instrument Museum. They have an enormous collection, including some weird and wonderful timpani and percussion instruments, the like of which we had never seen before. We are very grateful to the Curator, Dr Jenny Nex, for showing us around. Both drums below were made by George Potter, we estimate at the end of the 1800s. We suspect that their tuning mechanisms, although beautifully engineered and manufactured, actually weren’t that succesful due to the difficulty of spreading the tension evenly all the way around the drum. Hence these types of designs fell out of fashion quite quickly.
Sir Neville Marriner’s 90th Birthday Concert, Royal Festival Hall, April 2014.
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Here are some photos from my talk on the history and development of timpani at the 2012 Festival. Timpani were generously loaned by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Ben Hoffnung, Bill Lockhart, Sarah Stuart and Julian Fairbank / Majestic Percussion. Photos by Chris Christodoulou.
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* 5th Symphony ** 4th Symphony
This film shows the Potter’s workshop in West Street, near Leicester Square in London. Pete Woods (once again of Henry Potter’s) began his apprenticeship here in 1968 and the men shown in this film were his major influences. The expertise that led Sam Potter to found the company using his son’s name in 1810 has been passed down in just six generations.
With many thanks to the photographers and film makers who have allowed me to use their work; Stephen Tasker, Chris Christodolou (RCM), Tommy Pearson, Monika Rittershaus (Berliner Philharmoniker), Will Schofield, Glyn Matthews, Angus Bremner (SCO) and Zen Grisdale.
