| Biography | Hubert Arthur Dawkes was born at Andover, Hampshire, on October 8 1916, the youngest of three children of a railwayman. The family were staunch Methodists and the young Hubert was surrounded by hymn singing; at an early age he mastered the piano, organ, violin and viola.
He was educated at Andover Grammar School and took organ lessons with George Dyson at Winchester, winning Hampshire county councils first music scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London in 1935. There he encountered many of the great musicians of the interwar years, and won the Tagore Gold Medal. After war service with the RAF, Dawkes was back in London, teaching at the College from 1946 (his pupils included the guitarist Julian Bream). He was elected a Fellow of the College in 1968, and retired in 1987.
His first appearance with the Bach Choir had been under Jacques in 1939. When Willcocks took over in 1960, Dawkes continued to accompany them. Whenever Diana, Princess of Wales, attended their concerts she always made a beeline for Dawkes , recalling her school days with him. His last concert with the Bach Choir in 1998 was shared with Willcockss valedictory performance of the St Matthew Passion, while his five Proms appearances included the Proms premieres of Bachs Mass in B minor in 1966 under Charles Mackerras and the St Matthew Passion in 1968 conducted by Karl Richter.
He was also organist and choirmaster at the American Church in London when it was based in North Audley Street, Mayfair, where he would check that choristers were paying attention by surreptitiously transposing the key between the verses of hymns.
Dawkes was an essential ingredient of the Bach Choir, a steadfast accompanist for almost sixty years able to anticipate the directions of conductors such as Willcocks and his predecessor, Reginald Jacques. Although known for delivering the continuo lines in the great choral masterpieces of Bach, Dawkes was sufficiently adventurous to explore works such as Lamberts Rio Grande, in which, according to one critic, he threw off the exoticisms of the cadenzas with confident nonchalance. |