David Watkin 

At the helm and the heart of our Easter Festival since 2016, David Watkin inspired us with his extraordinary musicianship.

It was Fran Hickox, with her unerring instinct for who would be a ‘good fit’ for the Festival, who was responsible for bringing David to Cornwall all the way from Glasgow where he was Head of Strings at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, as was Festival founding father, Louis Carus, many decades previously.

David ‘got’ the Festival immediately – whether all Festival members ‘got’ David immediately is another matter, though I don’t think anyone could doubt for one second that here was a remarkable musician. His conducting style was idiosyncratic and his rehearsal technique, for those used to military-precision timing, could be frustrating!  But the thing is, it always worked. David had an abhorrence for “the whiff of the pencil”, that is, the marking up of parts during rehearsal so heavily that nothing is left to spontaneity. We soon got used to that, and that spontaneity, that gift for finding something new, even in performance, was what made music-making with David so thrilling.

David’s speciality was Baroque music, so to perform Bach with him was enlightening. Even a piece so often performed as Messiah was minted afresh under his leadership. He was perhaps out of his comfort zone when it came to The Dream of Gerontius – or was he?  It’s still music, it’s still the conveying of words and their meaning and that was what he excelled at.

He taught us from his inexhaustible fount of knowledge and enlightened and entertained us with his inimitable use of imagery; dolphins, bananas, gin & tonic taking on whole new levels of significance. He was the most generous and appreciative of colleagues. We loved him and were lucky to have him for an all-too-short but blessed time. We will miss him greatly.