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1966-68 Post-Academy days (1)
Now some interesting adventures began for me, even though my player was so confused, with his mind and body so contorted. In an attempt to get Harvey’s mind and heart off his failures and disappointments, his father, Leslie, suggested he might like to go on a trip to Salzburg, Austria.It was a German Language &…
1965-66 Second year with Harvey at the RAM
Crucifixion Our second academic year at the Royal Academy of Music started well enough. Harvey was very pleased with his performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ at Queens Road Methodist Church, Watford, on Saturday 25 September 1965. At his mother Gladys’s suggestion, he brought together singers and orchestra players (including friends from the London Philharmonic Choir, local…
1964-5 My first year at the RAM with Harvey (3)
There is just one more page about my first year at the RAM with Harvey. It’s all about the crucial aspect of ‘performance’, and the enormous range of music-making which opened up for us during this year. (The Duke’s Hall, RAM, where orchestra and choir rehearsal were held) Harvey was required to take me to…
1964-5 My first year at the RAM with Harvey (2) -meeting Eric Fenby OBE
By far the most significant impact made upon Harvey during his 2 years at the RAM, and beyond – in both body and soul – was his relationship to his teacher of Theory & Harmony, Eric Fenby OBE. If my last diary entry was about practical matters and performance techniques, today’s thoughts are more about…
1964-5 My first year at the RAM with Harvey (1)
On 10 September 1964, Clarence Myerscough, a young professor at the Royal Academy of Music (that institution I know so well) came to W E Hill’s door with one of his newly-acquired pupils, Harvey Richardson! Now my diary recollections become more detailed and intensive. (Bear with me if I get a bit technical!) (Clarence Myerscough)…
1964 – An Overture to introduce my new owner
I think it was Hans Keller (one of my previous owners), and before him, Oskar Adler, who said that it is important for composers to be aware of the ‘background’ to their work as much as the ‘foreground’. So, I now want to play a Prelude – an Overture – in order to fill in…
1957 – 64, Years after my return to England
When Lilian Clarke came home to Hatch End on ‘furlough’ in 1957, she brought me with her, this time I was able to sail through the Suez Canal and back to England through the Straits of Gibraltar, but unlike a previous occasion, my owner didn’t meet any musicians on board ship! Lilian told her mother…
1946 – Back to Africa, yet again!
The loneliness in my basement didn’t last long. Would you believe it, in the autumn of 1946, another member of my Richardson family arrived at William E Hill’s London store! Maud Clarke (nee Richardson, one of John Richardson’s daughters) was looking for a violin to give for her daughter Lilian, a missionary teacher currently home…
1943 onwards – War Years of Emptiness & Loneliness, ‘Degenerate Music’ and Resonant Resilience
To my astonishment, Hans now seemed to lose interest in violin playing, and one dark and rainy day in 1943, he took me to the London store of the well-known Violin Makers, William E Hill & Sons, in New Bond Street, and asked them if they might be interested in purchasing me and my Tubbs…
A Psychological Interlude from Hans Keller, violinist
On English-German music: ‘Music, the most romantic, metaphysical, ‘sentimental’ of all the arts reaches its highest watermark in Germany…..German listening to music always bears a creative, active character, whereas English listening to music is entirely passive.’ ‘Everywhere we look in English intellectual life we find clear, intelligent, original minds and observant eyes……Here, in England, you…