‘Her Kiwi Excellency’ Dorothy Davies

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIX, Issue 1, 1 May 1986, Page 76

‘Her Kiwi Excellency’ Dorothy Davies

JILL PALMER

In 1982 Dorothy Davies, pianist and wife of former New Zealand diplomat Dr Reuel A. Lochore, donated her papers to the Turnbull Library’s Archive of New Zealand Music. 1 A year previously, the Library commissioned pianist Colleen Rae-Gerrard, who since 1956 had studied with Dorothy, to interview her for the Archive’s oral history project. 2 The collection and interview reflect many aspects of the life of a remarkable woman, described by playwright Bruce Mason, also one of her students, as having been a ‘public possession almost all her life’. 3 Dorothy’s services to music in New Zealand and to the community were recognised in 1975 when she was awarded the M.B.E. and the congratulatory messages in her collection on this and other occasions show the esteem and affection of her many friends and colleagues.

The collection includes Dorothy’s diplomas and awards, correspondence with family, friends, colleagues, musical organisations and persons in diplomatic circles. There are notes for articles and broadcasts, concert programmes, some music invoices and receipts, newspaper cuttings (mostly summarising her career and that of her husband), a fine collection of photographs and also a plaster head of Dorothy, sculpted by Ziska Schwimmer in 1957. Dorothy’s taped reminiscences reveal her zest for life, keen sense of humour, warmth and love for music. She was born in Wanganui in 1899, the only daughter in a family of eight. At four years of age she showed musical talent and a year or two later began lessons with a Miss or Mrs Gerse who cycled to her pupils’ homes to teach. Within a few years, however, Dorothy announced to her father, who really could not afford to pay for piano lessons, that unless she could study with Sophia Redwood, who taught at Wanganui Girls’ College, she would ‘do no more housework!’ 4 Lessons with Mrs Redwood ensued, and presumably the housework continued. After her high school days, which were spent at Wanganui Girls’ College, Dorothy taught privately and in 1924 entered the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she studied piano with New Zealander Frank Hutchens and composition with Alfred Hill, became involved with chamber music, and in 1927 received her Diploma. She then returned to New Zealand and began her career, starting with the New Zealand Broadcasting Service in Christchurch,

where she accompanied and played chamber music. Dorothy recalls a live broadcast of a trio with Harold and Irene Beck during which an earthquake struck: ‘I remember the piano leaving my hands in one of the waves and. . . I had to dive after it.’ She also set up the music library—the nucleus of Radio New Zealand’s present library. 5

Dorothy saved her performance earnings and in 1931, armed with £IOO, she went to London to study at the Royal College of Music, where she remained for three years. Among her teachers were Arthur Alexander, another New Zealander, and the Bach specialist Frederick Jackson. As there were no student grants in those days, she supported herself with part-time work, playing for Ballet Rambert and for two very different clubs —a physical culture club, for which she played jazz, and accompanying for one of Malcolm Sargent’s concert clubs. 6 It was while in London that Dorothy met the Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel. She had become an admirer in New Zealand through hearing his recordings of the Beethoven sonatas, was ‘speechless’ when she met him but requested an audition. However, as Schnabel was leaving London the following day, he said she would have to go to his home in Italy to audition. Dorothy recalls:

I remember Freddie Page was so taken up with this exercise. . . [and] I said to him, “What if he refuses to take me?” He said, “What you do is go and fall down in a faint at his feet” (laughter). I’ll never forget that audition. I sat down and played the thing [Beethoven Sonata Opus 10 no. 1 ] right through, with the sweat running off my nose into my lap. . . . What did he say afterward? Not a word! He said, “Good morning.” And 1 got up and walked out, and I thought, “But he hasn’t said he’s going to take me. ... I remembered what Fred said, so I went back into the room and he said, “Yes (with big surprised eyes). You again?” And I said, “But you haven’t said if you will take me.” He said, “Yes, of course. . . . ” 7

Several photographs in the collection show happy occasions with the Schnabels and their students at Tremezzo, Lake Como. In several perceptive writings, Dorothy describes Schnabel’s master classes in which ‘one was musically reborn. . . whether listening or performing’. 8 His teaching was ‘a tremendous education in style. ... I gobbled it all up enthusiastically [and] even got on the floor underneath his hands to see how [he] was executing trills.’ 9 Schnabel introduced to her many new ideas including the concept of mental practice. His wife, Therese Bchr, 10 invited Dorothy to accompany for her singers and their classes, and much of the repertoire over the two years consisted of Lieder. In December 1938 the Schnabels fled Italy to escape Mussolini’s persecutions and they then toured Australia and New Zealand.

A small but important collection of letters to Dorothy from the Schnabel family includes those from Therese Schnabel, her son, pianist Karl Ulrich Schnabel and his wife, American pianist Helen Fogel. There are also letters from Schnabel’s secretary to Dorothy as a prospective student concerning the master classes, a list of performers and works performed during the summers of 1937 and 1938, and a few accounts for her lessons.

In February 1939 Dorothy returned to New Zealand where she met Dr Reuel Lochore, and they married in 1940. Dorothy taught and worked as a pianist for 2YA, playing all the major Bach works and the Schubert sonatas. She toured New Zealand with visiting artists and in the Dorothy Davies Trio consisting of herself, cellist Marie Vandewart and violinist Erika Schorss. In Christchurch their concerts were so popular that the audience would come up to the front to applaud. 11 This dauntless trio, performing during the war years, contributed greatly to the climate which led to the formation in 1945 of the Wellington Chamber Music Society. Dr J. C. Beaglehole and his wife Elsie encouraged them; he also designed the programmes. Of the multitude of concerts Dorothy gave, relatively few programmes are included in the collection, and there is only one review—that of her seventy-fifth birthday recital at the Auckland

Art Gallery in 1974. Douglas Lilburn, however, sums up her abilities: . . . how wonderful was the change to the major in the first song of the Winter Journey. You made us all hold our breath & see a great distance with you at that moment. And it’s not such a rare thing either when you play. 12

For many years Dorothy was involved with Sister Mary Winefride’s Lieder classes in Wellington, her experience with Therese Schnabel proving invaluable. She was invited to teach the piano classes at the 1955 Cambridge Summer School of Music, and this experience opened up new horizons when she discovered her gift for teaching. 3 Dorothy then began her own master classes at her Porirua Music School, which she had founded in 1940, and over the years many prominent students including Keith Field and Brian Sayer attended. Bruce Mason writes:

The Master Classes are extraordinary. Her devotees—the only word for it —are a mixed lot, from established professionals like Colleen Rae-Gerrard and Helen Gordon, to rapt but non-playing observers from all over the country, to a group of middle-aged ladies who once did their Letters and want to keep it up, to a troop of almost insolently gifted young pianists, mostly from the well-stocked stable of Judith Clark, to passionate old hacks like me, still hopefully cantering round the track. Sometimes we pick up a particular composer. . . sometimes you prepare what you like. . . . Over all this, Dorothy presides with her uniquely ripe authority. Music to her is a language as fully articulated and as sacred as Sanskrit to an Indian or Hebrew to an Israeli. 14

The collection includes papers and a few tapes of uneven sound quality relating to her master classes, students’ lessons and performances. Notes for lectures given to various groups cover topics such as piano pedagogy and advice on the use of musical editions. Letters from colleagues give occasional insights into her teaching methods, interpretation and other musical matters.

Although Dorothy’s life was full with music and raising two sons, she also served on the Makara County Council from 1950 to 1956 and since that time to the present has also been a Justice of the Peace. However, an important opportunity came in 1962 when she accompanied her husband on a series of diplomatic appointments, first as New Zealand Acting-High Commissioner to India (May 1962 to 1964), then as head of the New Zealand Legation in Jakarta, with the title of Minister (April 1964 to 1966), and finally as the first New Zealand High Commissioner to West Germany (April 1966 to February 1969). Bruce Mason, in referring to these terms of service, dubbed Dorothy ‘Her Kiwi Excellency’. 1 " 1 The oral history, apart from a brief overview, omits this period, dismissing it as ‘another story’. However, the gap is filled by a collection of photographs, mostly of Dorothy and her husband with various dignitaries and Heads of State, and letters Dorothy wrote to her sister-in-law, Moana Lochore, describing the excitement, difficulties, challenges and isolation of diplomatic life, as well as showing keen interest in those countries, their people, politics, customs and culture. While in New Delhi, she served with a committee of Indian women on the Board of Governors of the Y.W.C.A. She was amazed at the ‘prodigious strength’ of these women and their ‘phenomenal intelligence’ which, she discovered, was not confined to them alone but also characterised Indian women in general. 16 Dorothy travelled widely, was enraptured by Indian music, learned the tabla and described leaving India as a ‘tremendous wrench’. 17 Their posting in Indonesia was marred by tropical illnesses, the events leading to President Sukarno’s overthrow in late 1965 and difficulties in running the residence at Jakarta. Despite these, Dorothy’s letters reveal her great interest in many aspects of Indonesian life. Hamilton Teachers’ College became the beneficiary of a whole angklung band which she brought back from Indonesia, and she became fascinated with the sound and voice timbres of Indonesian theatre. 18 Of her own language-learning efforts, Dorothy wrote:

I have an American women’s kitchen book which is invaluable & I use the simplest, root part of words & ignore all grammar, rising nouns & verb roots & blow me they seem to understand me better than RAL’s grammatical approach. He speaks quite fluently. In India I had to learn the English of the servants. Here it’s reversed & they’ve had to learn my Bahasa Indonesia. 19

Dorothy’s understanding of German, ‘remarkably welldeveloped through having listened to singers in German for 30 years’, -0 was advantageous in their next posting, in Bonn, where they established the New Zealand residence. Again, she immersed herself in the people and their culture, found the city and diplomatic life ‘lively’, played at house concerts and carried out speaking engagements. The opera at Cologne became a regular attraction. Her New Zealand cultural ties were maintained during this period, and included a ‘Music Ho!’ talk given in Bonn for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, in which she discussed the Beethovensaal, opera on television, and Stockhausen. A tape of this talk is held as well as a collection of papers and photographs relating to her launching of the Blue Star Line’s ‘Southland Star’ at Bremen in 1967.

After their return to New Zealand in June 1969, the Lochores moved from Porirua to the warmer north of Whangaparaoa, and a music room was added to their home. In 1971 Dorothy was invited by the Australian Keyboard Society to give a memorial address in Sydney to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Artur Schnabel’s death. 21 She continued her master classes, travelling to Wellington often twice each year until 1977 when a stroke forced her to stop. The next year, however, she was able to go to Brisbane to conduct a week of classes for the Brisbane Music Teachers’ Association, and in 1980, aged 81, she taught classes in Melbourne and then returned to Brisbane for a week to teach at the University of Queensland and to perform for the Bach Society. A tape of a Bach master class held in Brisbane shows her unaffected enthusiasm and masterly knowledge of the music.

Dorothy’s widespread influence as a performer and teacher, her involvement in shaping New Zealand’s musical life and taste, as one who ‘presented the art and craft of music from moment to moment as no recondite or arcane pastime, but as a rich and eloquent way of life’, 22 certainly merits further study. The collection provides a basis for this as well as fascinating insights into diplomatic life during the 19605. Whether as a musician, champion of New Zealand talent, community worker or diplomat, Dorothy Davies has indeed represented and served New Zealand with excellence.

REFERENCES All references are to items held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. 1 Dorothy Davies, Papers (MS Acc. 82-69). Parts of the collection are restricted. 2 Dorothy Davies, Tapes (MS Acc. 81-256:1-2). Oral history interview with Colleen Rae-Gerrard, 18-19 August 1981.

3 Colleen Rae-Gerrard, Papers (MS Acc. 84-130:3). ‘Dorothy Davies Master Classes’ (YC Arts Review, 21 May 1972), by Bruce Mason. Typescript. 4 Oral history interview. Sophia Redwood (1868 P-1925) had studied at Leipzig. A photograph of her is held in the Dorothy Davies papers. 5 Ibid. 6 ‘Twenty-one years of it. Radio anniversary for Dorothy Davies’, New Zealand Listener, 20, no. 500 (21 January 1949), 28-29. 7 Oral history interview. 8 Dorothy Davies, ‘Working with the Schnabels’, New Zealand News, 17 January 1939, p. 12-13. 9 Oral history interview. 10 Therese Behr (1869-1959), a daughter of the sculptor Carl Behr, studied singing with Stockhausen and Etelka Gerster. She married Artur Schnabel in 1905. A pencil drawing of her by Eugen Spiro (1939) is held in the Dorothy Davies papers. 11 Oral history interview. Dorothy remarks that it was Erika Schorss who suggested to Marie Vanderwart that they form a trio. 12 Letter, 13 April 1953, Douglas Lilburn to Dorothy Davies (Acc. 82-69:14). 13 Oral history interview. 14 Dominion, 4 May 1974, p. 5-6. 15 Ibid. 16 Letter, 1 August 1963, Dorothy Davies to Moana Lochore (Acc. 82-69:11). 17 Letter, 22 September 1964, Dorothy Davies to Moana Lochore (Acc. 8269:12). 18 Oral history interview. 19 Letter, 15 August 1965, Dorothy Davies to Moana Lochore (Acc. 82-69:12). 20 Letter, 25 January 1969, Dorothy Davies to Moana Lochore (Acc. 82-69:11). 21 New Zealand Herald, 10 July 1971, p. 6. 22 Bruce Mason, ‘Dorothy Davies Master Classes’ (see reference 3 above).