BY JO ST LEON
Conversations with Robin Wilson came about as I sat in the viola section of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra one morning for an Australian Conducting Academy session.
The soloist was a very gifted young student from the Australian National Academy of Music — a student of Robin’s, playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. It was a beautiful performance: polished, committed, and heartfelt.
‘I don’t know how Robin does it,’ I thought. ‘He has so many truly outstanding students. Someone should write a book about him…oh! Maybe I should do that.’
Robin is one of Australia’s foremost string pedagogues, with a growing international reputation. A book about him would be of interest to many in the string teaching community. This series of conversations is the beginning of a project that I hope will be a sharing of wisdom.
Slightly bemused that I should think this was a worthy project, Robin agreed.
Some months later, I travelled to Melbourne for our first conversation, about Robin’s early inspirations. I arrived at ANAM early, and was privileged to hear the last half-hour of young Christian Li’s lesson. Christian had recently won the internationally acclaimed Menuhin Competition, and I was fascinated to witness the relationship between them. What was most striking was the feeling of equality. It was so respectful on both sides, and collaborative.
As I read back over our conversation, I think I see the origins of Robin’s distinctive style of pedagogy. This first conversation takes us from the very beginning of his musical life up until the time he decides that the violin is going to be his life.
Robin, how did your musical life begin?
I started requesting to play the bagpipes at about the age of 3. I think that was because I grew up in a Scottish-settled country town.
Whereabouts was that?
A little town called Portobello at the end of the Otago Peninsula, about half an hour from Dunedin. I often saw the bagpipes together with the drums in local pipe bands. It was very exciting for a 3-year-old!
I can see that it would be.
Thankfully, my parents didn’t relent. Apparently, I then saw the great Itzhak Perlman playing the violin on Sesame Street when I was about 5. So from then on, I was pestering to play the violin. Eventually, when I was 6, I was given a violin for Christmas.
My father was a great Classical music lover. He had a big record collection and the radio was always on in our house, playing concert programs. He loved bashing on the piano, although he was a complete amateur. Then he tried his hand at the cello for a little while, but only in the privacy of his study. The door would be firmly closed. My mum learnt the guitar and the piano when she was younger.
I finally started lessons, and had a very eccentric first teacher. He was actually a pupil of the famous teacher Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School. He was in the class of Perlman and Kyung-Wha Chung. So he was there at the Juilliard School at a very illustrious time, and had some connection to my first violinistic inspiration.
That’s an incredible pedigree for a first violin teacher!
Yes. It was quite extraordinary to have someone from that sort of lineage living in the south of New Zealand.
What was his name?
Sydney Mann.
And he was eccentric because…
I was made to study volumes of theory books that he had written and compiled himself, that were in big ring binders. That was my first lesson. I had to study these for quite a while.
Did you play your violin as well?
Almost not. It was tonic, supertonic, mediant, submediant — all of that sort of stuff. Just imagine — I had no prior musical training. It wasn’t like I’d played the piano for a year. I had no idea about anything to do with music.
You hadn’t even played the bagpipes.
Right! It was very abstract. All I wanted to do was play the violin, so I became very frustrated in those lessons. I was allowed to play an open string or two, but it was tediously slow. So my mother found a young folk fiddler — I think he was about 19 years old — his name was James Sneed and he happened to live on the same street as Sydney Mann. So I would finish my lesson with Mr Mann feeling extraordinarily frustrated, and she would drive me down the road for another lesson with James Sneed.
What a very wise mother.
Yes — and he would just teach me fiddle tunes.
And Mr Mann didn’t mind you doing this?
Mr Mann had no idea! I think he would have minded, but I just desperately wanted to play.
The sad thing is, such a lot of kids have no real understanding of the language because the foundation theory is missing. So what he was doing was a great idea.
It was, but it needed a bit of finessing. What he was throwing at me as a 6-year-old – I mean, they were ring-binders! Large, fat volumes of theory. And I had no concept, really, of what a scale was. Let alone tonic or supertonic. All I could think was: ‘Why would you call it that? And why is it relevant to me?’
I still wonder that sometimes.
Ha!
I’m in total agreement that theoretical understanding is lacking in young violinists, particularly harmonic knowledge. But I think it has to be introduced and taught alongside playing, at the right time, when you’re very young. You have to inspire kids first. Get them switched on to the instrument and music. And first and foremost, get them playing.
So apart from your extra lessons with Mr Sneed, how did you keep your enthusiasm alive through all that theory?
Well, those lessons with Mr Mann only lasted maybe six months. I did eventually work through a little bit of a beginner violin book with him — he had a particular method book that he used, the Doflein Method — but learning those fiddle tunes with James Sneed was very, very important for me being in any way enthusiastic about the instrument. I had no technique, but he would just play me the melody, and I’d figure it out. By the end of the hour I’d have a short little tune that I could play.
That’s pretty cool.
Yeah, it was wonderful. I just thought that’s what it was all about, and that really got me excited. That was how you learnt!
I guess it is when you’re 6.
That’s right, and at least it was good ear training. Sort of Suzuki style ear training, but with folk music. I can’t remember how long I kept going to James, but after six months I changed teachers, leaving Sydney Mann. I had a lot of teachers when I was young.
I went next to a man called Alan Starrett, who was very different from Sydney Mann. He got me playing a lot.
What a relief!
Yes, and lots of the lessons were duets. It was very much a musical approach that focused on expression, feeling the music, the character of the music. Really playing, and having a bit more fun. He taught the same method book and we continued with that, but he was a teacher who played a lot of styles of music. He wasn’t just a Classical musician, he did fiddling and played in bands; he was a more eclectic musician.
Did you go and listen?
I did. We also went to a folk festival. It was a huge folk festival held just out of Dunedin. At that time my mum belonged to a co-op that always attended, so we went with family and friends as a large social group. Two-thousand people would go and camp for 10 days, across a huge part of the countryside. There were barn dances every night, and tents with bands playing, folk bands. I remember seeing Sydney Mann playing there, even before I started learning from him, so he also played other styles. Alan Starrett was there too.
It was very exciting for me, seeing my teachers performing on stage, and I was exposed to a lot of different music. There was a lot of folk influence in my early musical life. Looking back, I can see how this really showed me the joy of music, and encouraged expression and animation in my playing.
After Alan, I moved on to a teacher by the name of Rupa Maitra. She was very young, a university student, although I didn’t realise that at the time. She was really wonderful: inspiring, kind, generous, methodical. Each lesson she wrote a practice list for me. She also wrote me theory lessons.
More theory!
Yes, but this time I was ready for it, and needed it. Every couple of weeks she’d give me this amazing couple of pages. She’d have written out a whole lesson on tones and semitones, a whole lesson on key signatures, whatever arose. It was great.
After a couple of years, when I was about 12, Rupa deemed I was ready to go to her teacher, Pamela Bryce. Pam was the violin lecturer at the University of Otago and, I suppose, the leading violinist in Dunedin. She was a very active performer as well as a teacher.
It was about that time that I decided I wanted to be a violinist.
Visit us again to read the next instalment of Jo St Leon’s Conversations with Robin Wilson.
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