Creating future audiences for classical music

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 22

Creating future audiences for classical music

By

KAY FORRESTER

Rae de Lisle bas a first hand knowledge of the impact classical music can have on children hearing it for the first time.

Her husband became a convert to classical music at 15 after a school concert

She meets youngsters at the many school concerts she now plays who are having their first real taste of classical music. The response, she says, is good.

Perhaps that is because she works hard at a programme for the piano that will capture and hold teenage and younger attentions.

The concert pianist believes the schools programme is a means of making the audience of the future.

“The only way we will get those children back at a concert later is to expose them to classical music and make it exciting so they will be interested in hearing more,” she says.

She chooses carefully

the works for playing in schools concerts — “They’re used to pop songs of maybe three minutes. I try not to play anything longer than about five minutes so that I hold their concentration.”

Schools concerts are only a part of the concert pianist’s busy schedule. The variety of her career in New Zealand is part of what attracted her to return after studying and performing in England. After graduating from Victoria University she went to London to study at the Guildhall.

“That was good for me. I started lessons as a child. My mother played piano and my father, the flute. But it wasn’t until I .won the Auckland “Star” competition that I even thought about a career with the piano. Someone asked about overseas study after I won and I thought, perhaps I could make it work.”

She says she decided to come home after six years to base her playing

in New Zealand after a holiday, here.

“I came back to see if it would work. The sort of work I can do here is different to that I was doing in England. There it was solo performing. Here I play concerts, chamber music in ensembles - I love that — house concerts, seminars and school concerts. I have a variety here that would not be possible in England.” She says she has never regretted her return home after her debut at Wig-’ more Hall.

The Wellington-born musician is a regular touring artist with the Music Federation. Last week she was in Christchurch for two concerts at the Arts Centre.

In a few days she will leave with three other musicians who make up the Zelanian Ensemble for a tour of Canada and the United States. Her fellow ensemble members are Donald Maurice, viola and vidTin, Deborah Rawson, clarinet and saxophone, and Uwe Grodd, flute.