Monthly Archives: April 2006

Perth Modern School The History and the Heritage

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Perth Modern School

Perth Modern School

583pp SC with companion CD
The Sphinx Foundation

$49-95 plus postage

Reviewed by Neville Cohn

Having reviewed too many histories of this or that state school while working in a distant outpost of Empire, the prospect of wading through yet another dust-dry chronicle was less than inviting. Would this be yet another blameless but cosmically tedious recital by well-intentioned worthies? Was this yet another school history destined to be given away as prizes on Speech Night or to gather dust on the neglected upper shelves of school libraries – or to suffer the indignity of being remaindered at knockdown prices at this or that local fete? I quailed at the prospect, the more so on discovering that this was a book written by a committee.

In the event, I am happy to report that my concerns were groundless. This dissertation on Perth Modern is that rarity, a school history that makes for frankly fascinating reading. Although inevitably (because of its numerous contributors) there is little uniformity of style, the book is put together in so skilled a fashion that making a way through its almost 600 pages became a pleasure rather than a chore.

Its alumni are a rollcall of distinction: at random, Bob Hawke (among 14 Rhodes Scholars), John Stone (former Head of Treasury who remembers the excellence of teaching at PMS), Nugget Coombs, Max Newton (foundation editor of The Australian), Peter Douglas (who was instrumental in introducing credit cards to Australia), leaders in law, commerce, science. the arts, diplomacy. There are lists in abundance and for the most part those on them have done themselves, their community – and their country – proud.

From a musical perspective, PMS has produced any number of graduates who have gone on to notable careers in W.A. and the wider world. They include, in no particular order, Jenny Coleman (trumpet), Victor Sangiorgio (piano), Emma Lysons Matthews (soprano), Phillip Murray (flute and voice), Gregory Yurisich (baritone), Alison Eddington (percussion), Simone de Haan (trombone), Geoffrey Michaels (violin) and Ian Westrip (choral trainer). PMS is also now the home of the Graduate College of Dance.

What comes across vividly time and again is how relevant Perth Modern has remained, and with what practicality – and compassion – in time of war as well as peace, it has welcomed children, refugees perhaps, with little or no English and cultural backgrounds that might often be exotic and barely known locally. This, running like a golden thread through the book, is surely the supreme achievement of PMS. Certainly, the sensible and sensitive approach its various stewards over time have brought to bear on the life of its community within a community, makes it a national treasure that is yet, perhaps, to receive its full recognition.

No less impressive is how resilient and adaptable PMS has remained in the face of sometimes inconsistent, insensitive or frankly foolish guidelines laid down by the education bureaucracy of the day – and how dedicated and imaginative most of its teachers have been across the century of its existence.

There are abundant and fascinating pen pictures of the school’s more colourful teachers such as Mr Greenhill “for singing, natty oldish wisp of a man belting out sea shanties” and “muscular Miss Arthur of the dreaded gym class”.

Nostalgia, that yearning for days that will never return and which invariably seem better now than they were, in fact, radiates from its pages. If many of these recollections are touching to this reader whose school days were spent in another country, they must surely have made many a PMS alumnus misty-eyed. The book abounds in students’ recollections of chums.

This inspired use of memories (which is one of the most striking of the history’s features) elevates the book to a special category of excellence, bringing the past lucidly to life. Lavish laurels to those who would presumably have had an avalanche of yarns to sift through; it’s a labour that has borne fascinating fruit.

There are absorbing insights into what it meant to teach at PMS through the decades, not least Mary Straiton’s beautifully written memoir about communicating with refugee Vietnamese children in mathematics classes.

Bearing in mind how we are nowadays exhorted to be alert to terror plots, the recollections of Lieutenant-General L.G. O’Donnell (a PMS student from 1946 to 1950) about school army cadets travelling to and from PMS across the metropolitan area in buses, trains or on bicycles while carrying their rifles over their shoulders make intriguing reading. The imagination boggles at how today’s constabulary would react to such a sight now.

In 1988, then-minister for education Bob Pearce told a conference of education bureaucrats that by the end of the year, seventy per cent of them would be out of a job, prompting Warren Louden, then Director-General of Education to remark that, with this put into effect, 1,200 years of experience had been lost.

The book speaks with a sure, strong, confident voice. To have incorporated so many pertinent, revelatory, fond and often very moving reflections on the part of its old boys and girls gives an unusually vivid insight into a remarkable educational institution.

The overall quality of the writing is excellent. A myriad recollections and vignettes cause the book to flash into life. It should be required reading for anyone embarking on a similar enterprise.

This book can be purchased from Perth Modern School, Roberts Road, Subiaco
Telephone (08) 9380 0555

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn


Race Against Time – The Diaries of F.S.Kelly Edited by Therese Radic

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Reviewed by Neville Cohn

National Library of Australia SC

$29.95

2006

Does the name F.S.Kelly ring a bell? I confess it meant nothing to me; neither did it to 29 friends and colleagues I polled. None could place the name. Now, nothing so justifies the existence of the Australia’s National Library in Canberra as publishing a book of this nature. The edited diaries of Kelly are significant in the arts as well as the sports history of Australia – and Britain for that matter.

So far as I can establish, there exist no recordings of Kelly, a pianist as well as a composer and gold-medal winning Olympian. Rescuing him – and his diaries – from oblivion is timely, not least for drawing attention to his skill as a sportsman, winning gold for rowing for England on the Thames at Henley at the London Games of 1908.

Most of Kelly’s diaries cover his time in the U.K. at the height of Britain’s Imperial power, a time when Brittania really ruled the waves. There are vivid descriptions of upper class Edwardian society in which Kelly moved – a milieu that, with blurring of class distinctions and the collapse of Empire, has almost completely vanished. It was a societal stratum into which Kelly fitted neatly via immense inherited wealth, excellent connections (which reached up as far as 10 Downing Street), considerable physical charm and, I dare say, a very good tailor.

It was a life of ease: lunch at the Savoy, golfing or croquet weekends at the country seat of Lady this or Sir that, ownership of a chauffeured car (a most significant and unusual asset at the dawn of motoring history) and an existence utterly devoid of financial anxieties (his Sydney-based father died leaving in excess of 250,000 pounds sterling, a fortune in 1901(OK))

Kelly’s fastidious entries leave one with the impression of a man to whom a sense of order was paramount – details of concert programs heard are recorded in meticulous detail as are his practice times. The same could be said of fastidious attention to the recording of rowers, their names, weights and other sporting detail.

But whether so intended or otherwise, his diary entries leave one with an impression that hardens into a belief that Kelly was something of a cold fish, a man free – or perhaps more accurately, incapable – of deep emotional involvement. This might, of course, have been, if only in part, a striving to identify with Edwardian high society for whom the concept of stiff upper lip and never showing strong emotion in public was de rigueur. Again, even the briefest of piano recordings by Kelly would have thrown light on his emotional range.

In their absence, we have the elegant but cruel reviews of his concerts which appeared in The Times, London. They strongly suggest a musician of serious purpose, controlled and carefully prepared – but lacking passionate involvement. One is irresistibly drawn to the thought that had Kelly experienced some of the vicissitudes of life (of which he was singularly free until sucked into the murder mill that was World War I), his playing might have had more depth to it.

Kelly’s diaries give us insight into the astounding vitality and variety of London’s arts life in the Edwardian era. Kelly writes, for instance, about listening to Saint Saens performing 4 Mozart concertos in a single evening, attending performances by ballet demi-god Nijinsky, of hearing Paderewski. And on a night that Kelly gives a recital in London, he competes with Brahms’ Requiem at Westminster Abbey, Wagner’s Gotterdammerung at Covent Garden and a recital by Casals.

Stellar names flit through the diaries’ pages ­ the great violinist Jelly(OK) Aranyi, Donald Francis Tovey (best remembered nowadays for his editing of Beethoven’s piano sonatas), composer Roger Quilter, politician Arthur Balfour. Kelly hears Debussy playing his own Preludes and believes he could do a better job of it!

On returning to Sydney in 1911, he finds common cause with those who rail against the rape of the bush for crass commercial purposes. He comments that the ‘ubiquitous villa is springing up all over’ Belleview Hill. And he notes, as if it were something he’d not encountered before, that “Surf bathing has recently become a very popular amusement in Sydney”.

Despite Sydney’s remoteness from European and American music centres, Kelly records an often lively local music scene. Here, too, he moves in high society, visiting an ailing Prince Leopold of Battenberg and dining at Government House.

Back in England when war breaks out in 1914, the ever-well-connected Kelly, instead of calling at the nearest recruiting office, visits 10 Downing Street to take advice on which branch of the military to apply for.

In uniform, he meets poet Rupert Brooke. They are on the same ship steaming to war. Brooke visits Kelly’s cabin at night. Days later, as Brooke lies dying, not of war wounds, but of septicaemia following a mosquito bite, Kelly sits nearby writing the first draft of his Elegy in memory of his dying friend. If there’s an attraction or intimacy, the diaries reveal nothing. All he writes is:”The events of today made a deep impression on me”.

Kelly attends Brooke’s funeral on a small Greek island and afterwards painstakingly copies the contents of the poet’s notebook on case it fails to reach England intact.

Kelly survives Gallipoli only to die in the battle of the Somme leading a ‘gallant and successful attack on a machine-gun emplacement”.

Hopefully, publication of these diaries, meticulously edited by Therese Radic (whose introduction is a model of its kind) will spark interest and performance (perhaps on compact disc) of some of Kelly’s compositions.

Copyright Neville Cohn

Mozart PETER GAY

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Mozart PETER GAY

Reviewed by Stuart Hille

Weidenfeld & Nicolson ­ ‘Lives’ series

RRP: $29.95

 

For the Mozart dilettante, the seriously curious or even the knowledgeable academic, this book by Peter Gay has a considerable amount to offer. Its approach is one of historical analysis and not of musical resolution. One suspects that the author avoided the latter for several reasons.

Foremost of these, is that the nature of this series of books is one of narrative with well researched detail, in a style that is flowing and enjoyably readable. This particular book is around the length of a small novel and for those who have a reasonable amount of information, be it from study, concerts, discs, programme notes or wherever, it reads as if it was a novel.

Apart from the fact that every detail given in the book is entirely accurate and extrapolations or interpretations well considered and worthy of careful attention, the life of Mozart with all its colour, dramas, intrigues and tragedy could easily be read as an engrossing account of some fictitious eighteenth century genius.

While we can imbibe the details of this musical sorcerer – producing three of the greatest symphonic works within the space of six weeks, writing overtures to operas on the eve of the first performance, committing works to memory upon one hearing and so many other feats, let alone writing some of the finest music of the entire repertoire – we cannot fully rationalise such extraordinary ability. Even given the fact that there are many hyperboles and mild fabrications in the earliest biographies, nearly all the information we have is authentic, even when our cogent minds would deem it to be the stuff of fantasy

Peter Gay’s authoritative account certainly dispels any such whimsy. The careful bioliographical annotations show thorough research and this information is used with skill and clarity in providing a convincing, albeit particular, historical interpretation. But this is not to suggest it does not contain some minor flaws.

These certainly do not apply to the factual information, which is impeccable, but more to the writing style and the lack of accent on Mozart’s mother (her subconscious influence on her astonishing son was quite profound).

Generally, the book flows beautifully, but there are occasional weaknesses – the over-abundance of superlatives in the first chapter, for example, not only leaves one wondering how much more resourcefulness or invention the author can maintain but also creates a diffident feeling from the outset as to the objectivity of the study.

Fortunately, as the book progresses, the colourful acclamations recede as the narrative and analysis become foremost. After all, we all know of the intellectual power, structural finesse and beauty of Mozart’s writing, whereas intelligent and insightful readings of his life are far less common than the Everest of glowing adjectives used to describe his music.

It is the penetrating conclusions, not the eulogising, that one takes from this book.

One of the crysallisations (there are far too many to detail in a short critique) that was especially interesting was an observation of the composer’s growing depression towards the end of his life. His paranoia has been fairly well established: Constanze having an affair with Sussmayer, one of his two surviving children being illegitimate, his general distrust of those around him – but it never occurred to this reviewer that Mozart suffered from bouts of true clinical depression.

Yet, the creativity never left him. Maybe this was a defence or perhaps an integration of opposites but whatever the case, Mozart continued to compose at his normal pace – though perhaps somewhat more frenetically – right up to the last couple of weeks of his life.

Depression can of course exacerbate any disease. However, if the ultimate cause of Mozart’s death was as a result of earlier experiences and recurrent turns of rheumatic fever, as the author states, then the cardiac and renal damage would have been beyond repair. General poor health, a depressive and paranoic state of mind and ritualistic phlebotomies would only have made the descent more rapid.

A useful tip for readers of this study and any other fine Mozart biographies is to read them in conjunction with the letters. These can be obtained through almost any public library.




Fremantle Chamber Orchestra

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Rudolf Koelman, violin

Fremantle Town Hall

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

I cannot imagine a more striking event to bring music at Eastertide to a close than a frankly magnificent account of George Conus’ Violin Concerto.

Arriving in the city almost unheralded, Rudolf Koelman, who was for some years concertmaster of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and one of Heifetz’s last pupils, proved himself a prince of the violin. In what might possibly have been the Australian premiere of the Conus concerto, Koelman left no one in any doubt of his superb gifts.

Conus, incidentally, who was born in Moscow and died there as recently as 1933, is nowadays a largely forgotten man due, perhaps, to never having developed a strikingly original compositional style. His concerto, of which Heifetz was a ardent champion, sounds as if it might have been written under the strong influence of Tchaikowsky. One has only to listen to the opening measures of his Violin Concerto to realise how strikingly they call to mind the introduction to the older man’s Piano Concerto No 1.

Koelman, who plays a fine Pressenda fiddle dating from 1829 and is entirely worthy of it, brought infallible accuracy and agility on the fingerboard, a sublime bowing technique – and very real musicianship – to his performance. Beautifully controlled double stopping was another fine feature of a performance of enviable finesse, presented in the grandest of grand manners. Bravo!

As curtain raiser, we heard Mozart’s early Symphony in G minor K183 with Jessica Gethin presiding over events. A clear-cut and unfussy beat coaxed a consistently disciplined response to the first movement. Here was a stylish performance that bristled with vitality.

If there were some minor intonational lapses in the slow movement, this might well have been due to the distraction provided by latecomers impatiently and rudely knocking on the hall doors. I very much liked the quality of the woodwind choir in the trio section of the Minuet. Small lapses notwithstanding, this was a most pleasingly meaningful account of one of Mozart’s finest early symphonies.

KoelmanHearing this orchestra which consists, inter alia, of well-above-average teenage musicians and a sprinkling of older instrumentalists was revelatory. If this performance is indicative of the standards that the FCO routinely brings to its concerts, then it is a major addition to the city’s music scene. It deserves support and, if the size and enthusiasm of the audience for this concert are anything to go by, the FCO is certainly receiving it.

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn


Requiem (Mozart)

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Collegium Musicum

St Jospeh’s Church, Subiaco

reviewed by Neville Cohn

It says much for the persuasiveness of the singing of Collegium Musicum and accompanying orchestra that, for the duration of Mozart’s setting of the Requiem Mass for the Dead, one forgot how comfortlessly hard and unyielding the pews of St Joseph’s Church, Subiaco are.

Under the unflappable guidance of Margaret Pride, the Requiem unfolded in the most powerfully communicative of ways. In the opening Requiem aeternam, Dr Pride set an unusually slow pace which allowed this achingly poignant music to register most powerfully on the consciousness. Certainly, maintaining a sense of momentum at very slow speed was a remarkable feat of musicianship on the part of all concerned. And the skill with which the fugal writing of the Kyrie was essayed approached the magnificent.

Here, and throughout, the accompanying instrumental ensemble had the very real advantage of leadership from Paul Wright. Its account of the Dies Irae was electrifying in its intensity, to which the choir responded as if galvanised.

There were some fleeting problems with vocal intonation in parts of Tuba mirum.

The opening of the Sanctus was the sonic equivalent of a blaze of light but Hosanna in the Benedictus needed more emphatic treatment.

Uniformity of tonal sheen from the strings made the concluding pages of the work, in particular, all the more satisfying to hear. Throughout, Catherine Cahill and Ashley Smith brought a touch of distinction to the basset horn parts.

As ever, St Joseph’s first-rate acoustics allowed both the Requiem and Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden BWV4 to be heard to best advantage.

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn