David Watkin obituary

The Guardian

19-06-2025

In 2013 David Watkin, who has died aged 60 from complications caused by the autoimmune disease schleroderma, recorded the six Suites for solo cello by JS Bach. The following year his illness compelled him to step back from a distinguished performing career to become head of strings, and later professor of chamber music, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
When the CD set of the Suites was released in 2015, it proved to be an instant success, winning awards from Gramophone – which this year rated it as one of the 50 greatest Bach recordings – and BBC Music Magazine. His rhythmically alive, tonally beautiful and scholarly playing was realised by using a baroque bow by John Waterhouse and two historic cellos, one by Francesco Rugeri from around 1670 for the first five Suites, and a five-stringed instrument by the Amati brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, for the Sixth Suite.
As well as teaching, he continued to conduct such ensembles as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, Swedish Baroque Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, David came from a musical family. His parents, Christine (nee Horney) and Ken Watkin, were violin teachers, and his elder brother, Simon, gravitated to the viola. When the family were living in Beckenham, Kent, he began taking cello lessons with a local teacher, eventually enabling the family to play quartets by Haydn and Mozart.
When David was nine, the Watkin family moved again, to Pembrokeshire, where his mentors were Bridget Jenkins and the recitalist Sharon McKinley. He became the star cellist of the West Glamorgan Youth Orchestra, and went on to be a member of the National Youth Orchestra, and its principal cellist for two years.
At 15 he won a scholarship to Wells Cathedral school, where he studied the cello with Margaret Moncrieff and Amaryllis Fleming. There he encountered historically informed recordings directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen, and a friend's father made him a baroque cello.
Vocal lessons from the tenor Kenneth Bowen led to his seriously considering a career as a singer. His gap year was spent as a lay clerk, singing in the choir at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he went on to take a music degree (1984-87). He continued cello studies with William Pleeth and played in the Cambridge Baroque Camerata.
As a full-time performer he led the cello sections of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Other ensembles he conducted included the Malta Philharmonic and Manchester Consort, and he had a stint as assistant conductor at Glyndebourne.
While working with John Eliot Gardiner in the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, he and three colleagues – Peter Hanson, Lucy Howard and Gustav Clarkson – felt they should adapt the orchestra's authentic styles for Romantic music to quartet playing. Thus in 1993 the Eroica Quartet was born.
Watkin adopted a transitional approach with this ensemble, playing with an endpin: until the mid-19th century cellists had held the instrument unsupported between their legs. The quartet's recordings of Beethoven, Mendelssohn (the quartets and the original version of the Octet), Schumann, Debussy and Ravel brought fresh perspectives to listeners. Characteristic of their approach for the Mendelssohn quartets was studying the bowings and fingerings adopted by Ferdinand David, the first performer of the composer's Violin Concerto, for his own ensemble, and the selective application of vibrato for expressive effect. Tours took them to France and the US, and they gave Beethoven cycles in the UK and abroad.
With various colleagues, Watkin recorded concertos and sonatas by Vivaldi and sonatas by Boccherini. He and the fortepianist Howard Moody recorded three sonatas by Beethoven (1996), and to the book Performing Beethoven (2011) he contributed an essay on those works. In an article in the journal Early Music (1996) Watkin pointed to how Corelli allowed for the possibility of violin sonatas being accompanied by a string bass without a keyboard, by filling out the chords indicated by the numbers of the figured bass, and extended the principle to recitative passages in opera.
As a teacher he aimed to lead students to think for themselves. An extract from a masterclass on Bach given at Kings Place, London, in 2017 can be seen on YouTube. In choosing Watkins' Bach recordings for its 50 best, Gramophone commented on the 'warm, expansive, generous and friendly' character of the playing, and many found the same qualities in him as a colleague.
In 2002 Watkin married Sara Burton, and they had two sons, Noah and Sandy. They separated, and he is survived by his partner, Lisi Stockton, his sons, his parents and Simon.
David Watkin, cellist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, born 8 May 1965; died 13 May 2025