Plato has Phaedo describe swans singing joyfully before death because they foresee a blessed afterlife.
Mister Gutman
Once a week I drove my sister's old grey Renault 12 station wagon (lent to me for the year) to Mr. Gutman's house, parked and rang the doorbell on time. We were always pleased to see each other, and I would announce that I was "here for a viola lesson."
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| Nathan Gutman |
Good! Do come in.
How are you and Mrs. Gutman?
We are both very well. Thank you. And how was your suffering this week?
He often put it that way. And my answer was usually some question that I had, which he always liked and encouraged. My time studying with him was of such high value. I always felt better after a lesson with Guty.
I was told by my next teacher (McInnes) that I was lucky to have studied with Mr. Gutman, and that the technique and facility he had instilled in me was a gift that not many of his students had been given.
The Players (Quartet)
I'd started a relationship with another of his students, a talented violinist who was a good influence on me, also being fiercely competitive in nature. We even used to race against each other in our old our cars to rehearsal. We were on a similar journey passing briefly through the freelancer lifestyle toward international studies and possibly a life outside of Australia.
She and I established a serious quartet and rehearsed on a regular basis for the second iteration of my "The Players" concert series. We recorded the repertoire for the next concert for a showcase interview on MBS FM which was highly requested for repeat broadcast. We were not cute nor were we nice. Conflict was out in the open for all the old people to hear. The influence of my time on the cabaret circuit gave me knowledge of the value of complete irreverence. They played our recordings of the Borodin Quartet and Shostakovich 8th, and those cassette tapes would also come in handy during my odyssey to find the next training ground.
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| The Players rehearsing at the Mansion |
We rehearsed at the mansion of a rich old lady who mum was elderly-nursing. There was a full sized grand piano there which we needed to rehearse the Bloch Piano Quintet for the Melbourne International Festival. That opportunity came about through Melbourne's most treasured pianist, Professor Stephen McIntyre who always found opportunities to help me and my cohorts where he could. He also invited me to run a string group at Ormond College. We have always remained friends.
I entered myself in the '92 Dandenong Festival of Music and Art for Youth Recital competition... won that and found out later that they had a medal to give me at some ceremony later in the week.
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I took a series of private music theory brush-up lessons at the VCA while putting together a recital program that fit the Australian Music Examinations Board's highest level: The Licenciate Diploma (L.MUS.A.) I was the first violist to do this level. The examiners were Professors from the music faculty of the University, so it felt quite serious. They gave me a Distinction and put me in the graduate showcase at Melba Hall. I vaguely remember playing a movement of Schubert, coming back on stage later in an academic gown to shake hands with somebody and accept the big diploma, which would come in handy a few years later in Germany, fulfilling the prerequisite for entry to the 'hochschule'.
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| Peter (wearing a beret) Nehama Patkin and sister Jennie |
Crowded House: Woodface
My good friend Nym Kim had been helping me by playing piano for some of the sonata repertoire I needed to record to send out. We had known each other since 'Nehama days' and Suzuki. She had been a child prodigy on piano, but she can do anything she sets her mind to.
She gave my name to the Finn Brothers (Neil and Tim: Split Enz, Crowded House) and I showed up at Tim's place with violin and viola and knocked, waiting for him to get out of bed and come to the door in his pyjamas.
"Oh that's right, that's today!"
He showed me to the couch. There was a pile of weed in the open Complete works of Shakespeare, and a submarine periscope protruded from the ceiling, non functioning. The band showed up and we ripped off the track pretty quickly. Some of my friends still think that that was the best thing I have ever done. For me, it's just a fun party trick if I see the cd in their collection. I tell a series of lies and just when someone is about to call bullshit, I make the claim that I played with Crowded House. Then they have to call bullshit, and my name is on the cd...
The Highly Strung Quartet:
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| Peter: Highly Strung Quartet |
Around that time, an interesting guy who ran Australia's favourite circus, his name was Bomber Perrier (great name) approached me to organize a newly conceived act for the opening month of Melbourne's new riverside area "Southgate" a flagship project for 'urban renewal'. I immediately called Hung.
We used rented instruments with wireless microphones, they dressed us up in Picasso-esque, long, hanging costumes, outrageous makeup, and they hoisted us high above the ground as we played an improv that led into Vivaldi's four seasons (Spring). People were blown away. We did three short shows a day for a couple of weeks. (TV footage has been lost...)
The hardest part during the rehearsal period was the first hoist. We still had not been hoisted up in our harnesses. The circus riggers were waiting for the go-ahead. Nobody seemed to want to pull the trigger until I finally said:
"What are we waiting for? Let's do it!"
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| Southgate, Melbourne |
New Zealand Win!
I saw a poster about the Auckland International Viola Congress and the competition that they would run. I bought a plane ticket and by departure day, I was well prepared. 1st movement of the Walton Concerto and some (or all) of the Arpeggione Sonata. 1st prize, Peter Bucknell. Hard work showed results. I felt good about it.
A viola congress is the absolute most nerve wracking place to perform, but I didn't know that at the time. Also, I'd been on stage constantly in one way or another for the past eight years, which prepares you for all those faces in the hall.
Weirdly, I had been wearing a beret with some kind of purple bandana tied around it for all of my stage appearances. It was still the 90's. Maybe it was a lucky beret.
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| Rome: photo by Antonella Misiani |
Donald McInnes (L.A. Professor) was head of the jury, and he had a solid chat with me after it was over. I asked him if my wearing a beret for the competition was a good idea. He said no and smiled.
I remember a cash prize, which would come in handy for my 'professor odyssey.'
The Melbourne masterclass, a week later, at the VCA with McInness was impressive. He'd invited me to come and play, and probably knew already what he was going to say to most help my playing on the spot. After the public class, the head of strings, Philip Green told me that I should go and study with McInnes, as we had a rapport and he'd already transformed my sound within an hour. Food for thought, but attending American Universities costs a lot of money.
Cellist, and now Head of Strings at the VCA, Philip Green, who Mum took me to hear once when I was younger, asked me to play on a fun Piazzola Bandoneon and string quartet project with dancers. My old violin teacher Don Scotts was playing 1st violin. Very enjoyable playing that fierce music with my professors, accompanying dancers.
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| Philip Green, Joanne Green, Don Scotts, Peter Bucknell |
The Teacher Odyssey:
Mr. Gutman had lately been encouraging me to go abroad to take advantage of the European music schools and the high octane viola professors who maintained studios full of world class talent, all on their way to play in the best orchestras of the world, quartets and solo careers. The way it worked was you made contact, played privately for them, maybe watched them teach a student, listened to a concert evening, and then came back a few months later for the formal audition period where they ranked you, mailing a yea or nay, or telling you on the spot.
I had a list of nine renowned professors, some of whom had received my letter and replied, others not. No internet yet, just typewriters and stamps. Amazing that we could get anything done, but my generation had attention spans and patience.
The Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, at that time led by Greek violin personality, Spiros Rantos, had been invited to tour Korea that same year, which was handy because I could earn some money, and then fly out of Hong Kong to London with a converted plane ticket.
As was the custom, Korea provided, as part of the contract, soloists who were not at all up to scratch. Invariably sons of some CEO. In later years I heard about the men in the Australian Chamber Orchestra putting on lipstick and messing with the music so much that the girl sharing a stand with the leader, Richard Tognetti, laughed so hard that she peed herself. Puddle on stage.
My (now) ex-girlfriend and I did a little busking on our last day and made a bundle of cash, the most ever, before getting moved on by the cops, and then we celebrated by eating homestyle Korean cooking in what we thought was a restaurant, but was actually just a shop where the attendant was having her lunch break. She fed us, laughing hysterically the whole time.
Arriving in London, now four years after the big Como Quartet year, I still felt like I owned the place. I paid £100 for a lesson with David Takeno, which was how he did it (smart) .. and then headed for Germany.
Kim Kashkashian allowed me to watch her teach all day in Freiburg, I went to hear Nobuko Imai play a sinfonia Concertante with Christoph Poppen and then, after the public left, she had me go up on stage and play solo Bach (prelude from suit VI). At this point I could perform 100% without warming up, no problem. After, she said:
"If you play like that in audition I take you."
Christoff Poppen, who at the time was teaching Isabelle Faust, had listened to my quartet tapes and invited me to play in his young group: the Detmold Chamber Orchestra who would be touring Germany in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I kept doing busking spots to keep the cash flowing in to pay for my youth hostels. Interestingly, four years later I would find myself chatting to Isabelle next to me on the tour bus with the Munich chamber orchestra, with whom she was playing the Haydn G major concerto.
I played for almost all of the teachers on my list including Thomas Riebl and Jürgen Kussmaul, who Anner Bylsma put on the phone for me to talk to when I rang. Kussmaul was famous for playing the other way around after cutting off two fingers of his left hand, and teaching himself to play again.
I played in Hamburg for Hirofumi Fukai, and then watched him reduce his student Naomi Seiler to tears after she played through some of her program for him in the small hall. She is now the principal viola of the Hamburg Phil. We hung out all afternoon with her big sister Midori Seiler who was at the precipice of a huge violin career.
In Köln, I played for Rainer Moog, and later enjoyed hearing a few of his students play a viola abend. I noticed that even the students with less talent played beautifully in tune, with a good sound and with great technique and no fuss. This is why I decided that I would study with Moog in '95 if and when I was done with McInnes in Los Angeles, which was my next stop after Europe.
The previous day I had played some solo Bach in the local pub, on the Rhine River, where the boss said I could take up a collection. I almost shit my pants with nervousness, as I wasn't entirely welcome. They were all having a session with a bit of lunch, and there's me getting his bratsche out of the case.
After playing, I went around with a hat, and by the end of the afternoon I could barely walk after all the (kölch) beers the locals had bought me. The afternoon became evening as the Germans tried to show me how much they could drink. Turns out I was a bad influence.
Detmold Chamber Orchestra tour: '92
Christoph Poppen lent me his tails for his chamber orchestra tour. I was very comfortable playing in a chamber orchestra setting, having done so much of it in Australia, but I barely remember anything of these two weeks.
I had committed to performing the 'Chaconne' for solo viola and symphony orchestra back in Melbourne in June '93 in the beautiful acoustic of the North Melbourne Town Hall, so I was obsessively focussed on practicing that challenging work before I got back home. I still had two teachers in two cities to visit in the States.
I flew to New York City, only to be unimpressed with Karen Tuttle's students at the fabled Juilliard School. After Moog's students they all seemed weak in comparison.
I stayed at the Banana Bungalow in Los Angeles, and somehow took two public buses to get to the University of Southern California and did my official audition for McInnes and string faculty.
Back in Melbourne, the Australian Opera booked me to do some onstage violin work in Mozart's Don Giovanni. I was up in a small balcony with a bass player playing the fun double time triplet part over the top of the main band.
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| Onstage violinist, Don Giovanni (Vic State Opera) |
But there was an incident one Sunday...
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| Renault 12 called "Bert" |
That reminds me of the time I ran out of petrol on the way to an Aussie Pops rehearsal, almost made it but no, so I left my sister's Renault on the side of the highway and hoofed it. The car was registered to my step-mother who left a stern message on the machine, but really just wanting an explanation. I got a cab the next day to the council workers' truck parking, with a can of petrol. I was not fined. No worries mate. It sounds like it was a terrible decision, but if everything turns out right and you're not late for rehearsal.... "Thank to my Guardian Angels for taking up the slack in my lines."
That same year Hung Le stood on stage at the Adelaide Fringe and did his first solo standup routine with only four violin jokes, a piece of plastic poo (Beethoven's last movement and a pair of chopsticks. It was the beginning of a career that would span 35+ years. Throughout the next two decades, Hung and I met up in New York, Edinburgh, Adelaide, Sydney, then finally in Vietnam and Melbourne and Barcelona for our biggest project ever. (more on that later)
During the summer of that year the city booked us to do some clowning at the Brunswick street fair (just making it up as we go along to make a few extra bucks).
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| Hung Le and 'Irving' improvising |
How will I afford to study abroad?
To chase funding for music studies abroad is almost futile, but I managed to get a generous grant from the Queen Elisabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust for Young Australians. The following year my little sister had to go to the ceremony to accept the check and the certificate because I would already be long gone. Honestly, I wish I'd been there for that one to meet the other young Australians, and thank my Mum in person for taking me to my violin lessons for ten years.
A letter arrived with news that the University of Southern California had awarded me a full scholarship. Semester would start in September '93, so with all my tuition fees now taken care of, most of the pressure was off. I would just have to pay for the summer academy which had not been discussed yet, my living expenses and speeding fines.
1993 began, bringing me into the five month range of my swan song. The orchestra had already signed on to rent the parts.
Michael Colgrass was a Pulitzer Prize winning composer who had a deep background in jazz. He'd written the Chaconne for Israeli violist, Rivka Golani who had done a marvelous job recording it. Marco Van Pagee (conductor) loved the recording and had checked with me (just with his eyebrows) that I was really going to be ok learning the piece. I replied with a nod.
I took the Colgrass to Mr Gutman for some pointers and he may have said a couple of things, but his message was: "You are already a first class viola player." He gave me advice for my future studies abroad, how I should never be afraid to question my teachers, and to trust myself.
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| Peter Bucknell: 1993 Nth Melb Town Hall |
The concerto (Chaconne) went very well. Packed hall. Colleagues. Mentors. Flowers. Good review. The percussion section (four people) had a lot to play and actually got lost for about ten seconds, but I pressed on and they recovered. Contemporary music... you can get away with it. ABC FM broadcast it. The recording is online.
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| Mrs Murray, Mum, Marco and Peter |
I still had a few projects on the books in the lead up to my departure starting with a long run of Wagner's 4.5 hour + dinner break, opera: Tristan & Isolde in the pit, playing violin. Too many notes.
I'd been lent a beautiful Carcassi violin and a Tubbs bow, which made it a bit more fun. There was also a Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck which my old teacher Carl Pini came back to help with from the concertmasters' chair.
The dumbest project of the year was a concert with that same orchestra in the Music Bowl where there was regular walking on and off of two concertmasters and two conductors between pieces because a couple of them had argued, tantrummed and finally refused to be on stage with each other. Being a violist at heart, I found the drama to be pathetic, and in the words that Rodney King had famously uttered amidst the Los Angeles' South Central riots in May of '92:
"I just want to say—you know—can we, can we all get along?"
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Interestingly, South Central would be my neighbourhood during my first year at USC. The only white man in the house, in the street and on the block. My new neighbours would ask me if I was lost. Little kids would run in the back door to hear me practice:
"Are you doin that violin'in again?"
One of my new housemates gave me the rundown on day one:
"First of all, Pete, beware of the drive-by. Just get down and stay down."
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Then I received word from the Academy:
Great news, the cost of my looming American summer of '93 (July-August) would been taken care of, full board and training at Santa Barbara's two month long Music Academy of the West, whose purpose was to kick off studies early with Don McInnes. It served to give him more time to work his magic on his students, and a few international guests.
I had been living in South Melbourne in a house that was 15 minutes jog to the beach, so I stayed fit. Our living room was outdoors where we often built an open fire. There was diagonal parking in the street and I'd learnt the exact speed and moment to pull the handbrake which made the car drift hard to the right, sliding with squealing tires, perfectly into the spot outside our house. Even better if my neighbour Simon was outside: he was an ex-boyfriend of my big sis and now he was a druggie with a pale blue classic sports car, often parked right next to my usual spot, so I could really scare the living crap out of him.
The tires were completely bald after doing that for a couple of months.
Leaving on a jetplane
I bought new tires for my sister's Renault and returned it to her. On route to her, I nearly screeched into the back of another car. With 'tread', the tires didn't grip the road as well as the slicks did, but at least the car would be safe for her to drive in the rain now.
I said my goodbyes and wrote a whole lot of thank you letters and headed to the airport with mum and my two sisters. I was heavily laden with a double case: violin, viola; all of my sheet music, tails, dinner suit...
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| Jennie, Helen and Peter (airport, June 1993) |
The scene at the airport was pretty light. None of us were thinking that this was it, I was going for good.