June Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair

Conductor; Born December 29, 1913; Died June 22, 2009. June Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, who has died aged 95, was the founder and conductor of the Haddo House Choral and Operatic Society and the long-presiding doyenne of choral music in the north of Scotland. Musically active in Aberdeenshire from 1945, she famously recruited her singers from the villages and farms by which her husband's family seat (20 miles north of Aberdeen) was surrounded, moulding them into an entity with the first of her many carol concerts in the Haddo House Chapel.

Conductor; Born December 29, 1913; Died June 22, 2009.

June Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, who has died aged 95, was the founder and conductor of the Haddo House Choral and Operatic Society and the long-presiding doyenne of choral music in the north of Scotland. Musically active in Aberdeenshire from 1945, she famously recruited her singers from the villages and farms by which her husband's family seat (20 miles north of Aberdeen) was surrounded, moulding them into an entity with the first of her many carol concerts in the Haddo House Chapel.

Though music in Scotland was still at a low post-war ebb, she immediately established her credentials, with her husband, David Gordon, as a member of the choir. The Edinburgh Festival did not yet exist - it was founded in 1947, by which time June Gordon, the name by which she preferred to be known professionally, had conducted her first Messiah with Elsie Suddaby (one of the original 16 soloists in Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music) singing I Know that My Redeemer Liveth. Thereafter, year by year, a repertoire of great European classics was gradually assembled, alongside the milestones of the English choral tradition in which Gordon maintained a special interest.

Born on the Isle of Wight, she was the daughter of A P Boissier, headmaster of Harrow School, where her husband had been a pupil. She herself, educated at Southlands, Harrow-on-the-Hill, went to study at the Royal College of Music in London (of which she was subsequently a Fellow) gathering around her the many friends and musical colleagues who would later give their support as advisers and orchestral players at Haddo House. Among them was Leon Goossens, the distinguished oboist, a valued contributor to her Bach performances, along with an abundance of instrumentalists from the SNO and BBC SSO, and at one point a boy cellist - none other than Prince Charles - from nearby Gordonstoun.

Soloists, instrumentalists and even critics were accommodated for the concert weekend in Haddo's splendid bedrooms, or in neighbouring cottages and other buildings. On one occasion, the young prince left his toothbrush behind, though whether it was sent back to him in the same manner as I received a pair of forgotten socks - in an anonymous brown envelope with no accompanying letter - I cannot say. It was on that occasion, too, that the log fire in my room exploded into flame at three o'clock in the morning, as if Siegmund and Sieglinde in Act One of Die Walkure were there beside me.

These were souvenirs of my first visit to Haddo, when Alexander Gibson and the SNO had been invited in the 1960s to participate in a performance of Britten's War Requiem - then still a new-minted masterpiece - in Aberdeen Cathedral. But Gordon's preference was always for her own hall, a timbered building designed for indoor sports, with sledges hanging from its walls but with good acoustics that could grow rather dry when the auditorium was packed - which happened often, even if the work was as challenging as Tippett's A Child of Our Time. It was there that she could take pride in performances of Bach's B minor Mass, with Janet Baker among the soloists, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the Mozart and Verdi requiems, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony and Herbert Howells's Hymnus Paradisi. Nothing seemed too challenging for her. Elgar's huge choral diptych, The Apostles and The Kingdom, were presented in a single weekend, with Andrew Davis, today a world-famous Elgar con ductor, among the choristers.

Lying on the grass outside the hall, while rehearsals resounded inside, you could imagine that you, too, were contributing to the great choral tradition Gordon was celebrating. Later, after the performance, there would be discussions in the drawing- room about how things had gone, to which critics, fortified by tumblers of malt whisky, were expected to contribute. Quietly transmitting your review from an all-too-public telephone at the foot of the stairs could sometimes be difficult if things had not gone quite well enough, but breakfast in the morning-room was generally convivial.

When Haddo became a National Trust property, hospitality - though not the vast buffet lunches - diminished to some extent, and the presence of the Queen Mother at one concert entailed officious security at odds with the traditional spirit of the house. In 1974, the death of the laird, as he was familiarly known, was deeply felt. His appearances in the plays (Shakespeare alternating with modern works) that formed another part of the Haddo scene had become an established source of enjoyment. But so was the development of the operatic society, starting with Bizet's Carmen but characteristically growing more ambitious with productions of Verdi's Macbeth (complete with horse), Puccini's Turandot (complete with the music critic John Amis, who had been training to be a heldentenor, in the role of the emperor), Britten's Gloriana and Peter Grimes, and Rossini's towering William Tell, all conducted by Gordon herself.

Even when, as an octogenarian, she was forced by physical disablement to cease conducting, she remained an alert and forthright presence. In 2003, the chorus sang The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by James Loughran in tribute to her 90th birthday. Today her achievements live on. It is with music from that same work that the latest generation of choristers will bid farewell to her at her memorial service tomorrow in St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen.

By CONRAD WILSON

An appreciation
No-one had quite the same impact on music in north-east Scotland as the Marchioness of Aberdeen. She made Haddo such a mecca for opera and chorus that big names who once shrank from travelling to the knuckle-end of Scotland eagerly took up invitations. When a critic patronisingly congratulated Lady Aberdeen on making Haddo "the Glyndebourne of the north", she queried icily: "So Glyndebourne is the Haddo of the south?"

I first met the Countess of Haddo (as she then was) in 1967. That was just before she conducted her own arrangement of Verdi's Nabucco. I last saw her in her 80th year conducting orchestra and chorus in the famous wooden concert hall. Conducting at that age was as remarkable a feat of strength and fitness as musical ability.

Tall and angular with lightning mind, Lady Aberdeen could be in turn funny and waspish. Always hospitable, she had a remarkable memory for faces, rarely forgetting the names attached to them.

June Gordon will be remembered for bringing the biggest names to the house, among them Yehudi Menuhin, Joan Dickson, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alexander Gibson, Michael Tippet, Charles Groves.

But her real memorial was how she used this corner of Scotland to allow the great and the good and the ordinary but equally good to meet and mix at the generous buffet that usually concluded a concert. Local folk and estate workers appeared in the chorus shoulder-to-shoulder with June's husband, David, 4th Marquis of Aberdeen.

She and David filled Haddo with the love and laughter of four adopted children.

Her commitment to Aberdeenshire life was total. Not for her the convenience of an estate in Scotland for "the season": Haddo was her home, and it was no surprise when in 1971 she was appointed a deputy lieutenant of the county. Her involvement in the Order of St John ran to the extent of having the order once holding its annual festival at Haddo, while in 1995 she was elevated to the highest rank - Bailiff Grand Cross. For this rare honour, she was allowed to show a chief of religion on her coat-of-arms, an item which also appeared on her banner above Haddo.

A Christian of deeply held beliefs, she opposed the aims of Moral Re-Armament, the organisation which in the early 1960s gained influence from Patrick Wolrige-Gordon, Tory MP for East Aberdeenshire. The resulting row split not only the local Conservative constituency association, but hit Scottish headlines and made waves in Westminster.

June Gordon became Countess of Haddo when her husband succeeded to the title in 1965, and was elevated further in becoming Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair in 1972. The marquisate was created in January 1916 to reward the work of John Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen as Lord Lieutenant for Ireland. Temair, in County Meath, is the Gaelic name of the ancient seat of the high kings of Ireland.

The honours that deservedly came her way recognised how she inculcated music of the highest quality into her corner of the world. The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, elected her a Fellow. Appointed MBE in 1971, she was advanced to CBE 28 years later.