In my last Woodwind Wisdom I wrote about the trials, tribulations and jubilations of being a schools visiting instrumental music teacher and, in contrast, I promised you that my next article would be about the classes I would be giving at the Royal College of Music in London.
On May 21st musical barriers were dismantled between wind students at Auckland University in New Zealand and the Royal College of Music in London. This was an international event with students from New Zealand, England, America and Turkey taking part. The class was taken by three teachers, Professor Janet Hilton, Head of Woodwind at the RCM, James Fry the Clarinet Lecturer at the University of Auckland and myself. James was in New Zealand and both Janet and I were in London in the Parry Room at the RCM. The 2 hour class was conducted live via video conferencing so the relaxed 10am start in London meant a late 9pm start in New Zealand.
The first clarinet player, Rowan Mead in Auckland, had brought along his chamber music colleagues to perform the lyrical Trio in A minor by Brahms. Prof Hilton listened with great concentration and offered many wonderful insights into the performance and spoke about the need to mould the sound so that there were more subtle graduations rather than just relying on the fairly sparse dynamics on the page. Janet had never taught via video conferencing before and took to the medium like a duck to water.
The second student to play was Nicola performing the Mozart Concerto, 1st movement, on a modern A clarinet but with a high level of historic performance practice. Nicola was in her final year of study at the RCM and she listened with real interest to James’ thoughts on the multitude of operatic characters that appear in Mozart’s last concerto.
Anna then performed the Schumann Fantasy pieces after 11pm at night from Auckland and again Janet had much to say about the challenges of playing Schumann and the more Anna played the more her playing blossomed.
To finish off this very stimulating class I had the privilege of working with 27 year old Arnt from Turkey who played the clarinet as though he was born playing the instrument. Arnt held nothing back and played with a passion and fire that at times made the accompanying concert Steinway sound underpowered. Arnt won all of our hearts when I asked him what it felt like when for the first time he walked past the Royal Albert Hall and up the steps to the Royal College of Music – his answer was “I shouted for joy – I just could not believe that I had finally made it to the Royal College of Music.”
At the end of the class the group of students in each country asked each other questions and the NZ students quizzed Janet about studying in London.
Janet who had never taught before using video conferencing said it was just like having the students in the room with her and she was very charming about the quality of the NZ students. Janet is now very keen to set up more of these International Classes and needless to say the students at New Zealand were thrilled beyond belief to think they could access one of the world’s top institutions without having to leave their home city.
This exciting Tertiary initiative is part of a research programme I am running from Auckland University facilitated by Prof Robert Constable who is now the Professor of Music at Auckland University.
Mark Walton