Return visit by conductor

Press, 3 September 1984, Page 8

Return visit by conductor

Members of the Christchurch Harmonic Society choir will be conducted by a familiar figure when they sing in the Town Hall this week-end.

The guest conductor will be Mr William Hawkey, who was the choir’s music director for 16 years until 1976, when he left to continue his career in Australia.

Mr Hawkey has returned to his home town for a 10day visit, during which he will give an organ recital in Christchurch Cathedral this evening, and a recital in the University of Canterbury’s School of Music on Thursday. Nir Hawkey returned to Christchurch to conduct the choir and is enthusiastic about the concert, which will be a performance of “The Creation,” by Haydn. “The uncut version, I may add,” he said last evening. The performance is hours long, and most people cut it because of its length, he said.

“It may be long, but it is one of the great evergreen works and gives more opportunity for the trio of soloists.”

Mr Hawkey’s association with the choir goes back before 1960, when h&was a student at the Univjgity of Canterbury’s Schoo? of

Music. He was the choir’s accompanist for five years, under the direction of Mr Victor Peters.

During Mr Hawkey’s directorship, he travelled with the choir to the United States and England in 1965, to Australia in 1967 and 1974 and all round New Zealand. “We had an enormous role to play in bringing about a high level of awareness of choral music in New Zealand,” he said. Mr Hawkey taught music at St Andrew’s College in Christchurch from 1956 to 1962, when he returned to Canterbury University as a music reader.and lecturer until. 1976.

Since then, in Australia, he has continued in the role of music educator as deputy director of the Canberra School of Music. When he first arrived in Australia, he was appointed head of a school for the performing arts, but then moved to Canberra in 1979, wanting to specialise in music again. The school is, in Mr Hawkey’s opinion, the national school of music in Australia. It was set up in 1976, and offered the best facilities for the teaching of music that he has seen.

Mr Hawkey is primarily concerned with the tertiary section of the school, which is funded by the Australian Government.

Although the Government funding goes to that section, the school teaches music to children from the age of three right through to postgraduate level. Mr Hawkey has been involved with the setting up of a pilot programme where children are taught music from the age of three. “Certainly not instrumental music, but they are taught aural, voice, pitch and rhythm. “By the time they get to primary school, they are so muoh more aware of music thajj I their peers are,” Mr Ha’Wkey said. --\

The school’s fees for pretertiary music training are high, Mr Hawkey admits, but he emphasised that there were many scholarships available for talented children in the lower socioeconomic groups.' The staff of 28 teachers and 40 part-time teachers offer skills in teaching and performing music. Mr Vernon Hill, whom Mr Hawkey described as “the best flautist in Australia,” heads the woodwind department. The head of the brass department is Mr Hector McDonald, who played with leading European orchestras.

The school encourages its staff to perform as well as teach.

“It's one thing to talk about it, but if the students can see and hear their teachers performing, they get more out of it. Ideas are developed and skills are not lost.”

As well as many recital areas, the school has a 1500seat auditorium, which is widely used by artists from outside the school.

“We don’t want to play only to the people who come to the school. We send our ensemble everywhere we can find to perform, all over Australia.” The concert deponent has been set up'in the

school purely to organise performances. So far this year teachers and pupils have played to a total audience of 150,000, and the final total is expected to be about 200,000 people. “The more people we can play to, the more people will become aware of music and the arts. We have to educate young people in the arts now so that the society of the future can be better than today,” said Mr Hawkey. The Hawke Government was “extremely sympathetic” towards the arts in Australia, said Mr Hawkey. The Government was prepared to back most of the school’s performance and ideas, which was helping society to become more arts oriented.

Imaginative performances, such as a chamber music group to provide background music to an exhibition of the Impressionists, would all contribute to

people’s education. How New Zealand’s arts would fare under the Labour Government would be interesting, but it was too early to make any predictions, said Mr Hawkey. The first thing to do for New Zealand art was to get community involvement, then the funding would progress naturally from there.