PHIL MAXWELL

In the early 1990s I photographed the conductor Richard Hickox at Christchurch in Spitalfields as he rehearsed for a performance of Bach’s Mass In B minor. He died at the age of 60 in 2008.

According to the Guardian newspaper his death “deprived the musical world of one of its most energetic and indefatigable practitioners. Authoritative interpreter of vast swathes of 20th-century British and choral repertoire, one of the most recorded of all living conductors, a man capable of sustaining parallel careers on opposite sides of the world, Hickox was a ubiquitous presence.” He was very accommodating to me as I photographed him, the orchestra, choir and soloists. In the piece below I’ve attempted to capture the powerful communication and rapport between him and the musicians he was working with. After a few minutes on the assignment I recognised that the musicians and the conductor had a mutual repect for each other. He had an illustrious recording career and I often wonder what he would have recorded if he hadn’t died at such an early age.

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