Hugh Bean’s solo career was deliberately understated, his view from the orchestral leader’s seat dissuading him from pursuing stardom. Having begun violin lessons with his father, at nine he went to Albert Sammons and studied with him for almost twenty years. He greatly admired Sammons’s directness and simplicity, emulating these qualities in his own career. He also attended the Royal College of Music, London, where he won the principal violin prize aged seventeen and encountered Vaughan Williams, whose Lark Ascending brought Bean many accolades during his performing career. In his final year of studentship he went to André Gertler in Brussels, winning first prizes for violin and chamber playing.

Recordings of English works evidence a natural sympathy that balances quiet pathos with understated depth and passion. Bean does not come across as a particularly charismatic virtuoso, but then this was never his intention. At its worst, this can manifest itself in a slightly monochrome and even studied approach, as in the finale of the Elgar Concerto (1972) which sounds a little dry and lacking in fire; as a whole, this performance lacks the charisma and communicative directness of Sammons’s famous recording. At its best, Bean’s playing is beautifully balanced and sensitive—his warm-hearted and yet restrained 1971 Elgar Sonata is a performance of great beauty, and Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending (1967) has just the right sound to transmit its mood of stillness and nostalgia. Bean works hard to convey the more vigorous Vaughan Williams Sonata in a 1973 recording, with a clean and tight tone, and an intense and well-controlled vibrato giving great clarity to the finale, although the staccato in the middle movement is a little scratchy and thin (a drawback that mars the opening few bars of his Elgar Concerto recording, in fact).

Much of Bean’s work was centred in London as a teacher, soloist and orchestral leader. Teaching at the Royal College he set many pupils on their way to orchestral positions. His disciplined, yet good-humoured nature—appreciated by many who worked with him—comes across as a strong asset in his recordings.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)