I suppose we all knew it was coming, and yet it is hard to believe it has happened. Sir Charles Mackerras had been ill for some months, certainly. There were rumours around Christmas and he cancelled some conducting dates. But then he seemed to be back and as busy as ever and, well, it just seemed as though he would go on forever.

It seemed to some of us, indeed, as though he had been here forever. I can’t remember a time in my life when Charles Mackerras was not one of the presiding musical giants. I grew up adoring the operas of Janáček, and for that I – we – have to thank his tireless championing of a composer once unjustly neglected. When I found some of the early period instrument proponents a touch severe in performance (and being a traditionalist I found it hard to entirely divorce my ears from the fatter sounds I was used to), there was Mackerras, fusing the two performing traditions with recordings and live performances that had the satisfying (to me, at any rate) scale and sumptuousness of modern instruments, with the clean agility of period traditions.    

But at times he seemed to be everywhere. I remember one period in my teenage years when he was at once blazing his way through a magnificent Welsh National Opera Tristan und Isolde, and on the record shop shelves with a big-name cast for, of all things The Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan always remained a great love of his, though when I once suggested he record my favourite, Ruddigore, he was, amusingly, less than enthusiastic – perhaps he subscribed to the old belief that it’s the black sheep of the G&S flock).

Interviewing Mackerras was always an inspiring experience. He would, once discussing music, come to life. His conversation was sprightly, learned and specific. He was amusing and direct and for him one sensed, music was very nearly everything.

He came to many Gramophone Awards ceremonies, often as a winner, and frequently appeared in the magazine (the last time with a fascinating take on conducting Mahler’s First Symphony, in the March 2010 issue).  My final musical encounter with him was at the Royal Opera a little earlier this year. He was conducting Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Looking tired and frail, he was in the pit when the audience arrived and didn’t have the strength to leave it during the interval. But the music rang out, full of the intricacies and the irresistible strength of nature. During the interval I observed for a moment Mackerras, happily chatting to the musicians, seemingly delighted just to be there. He must have known how ill he was and decided to keep conducting as long as it was physically possible for him to do so. A man like that does not merely live his life around music, he is at one with it.

A full tribute to Sir Charles Mackerras will appear in the September issue of Gramophone.