Page 63 - The Strad (February 2020)
P. 63
RETIREMENT FROM PERFORMANCE
Is there a time when we should admit defeat, acknowledge our age and put our instruments
away for good? Or is it possible to keep enjoying, playing and sharing music forever?
Pauline Harding talks to musicians young and old about falling standards, failing physiques
and a joy of playing music that, if we want it to, should carry us to our graves
he audience bursts into applause in the Great Nils Mönkemeyer:
Hall of Dartington International Summer ‘You need lots of humility’
School in Devon, south-west England. In
unsteady baby steps, Ruggiero Ricci shues
on to the stage, his aged body shaped and bent
by decades of violin playing. After what seems
T like an eternity he takes a seat in the centre
and an assistant emerges with his beloved Guarneri ‘del Gesù’,
tucking it into what could be a custom-made slot between the
violinist’s chin and shoulder. e performance begins.
I was a teenager sitting in the audience on that evening
RICCI PHOTO TULLY POTTER COLLECTION. LITTLE PHOTO ANDREW RANKIN. QUARTET PHOTOS MONICA GEORGIADIS. MÖNKEMEYER PHOTO IRÈNE ZANDEL. GEORGIADIS PHOTO CHRIS TYLER
almost 20 years ago, when a Ricci beyond his prime played
Paganini’s 24 Caprices and much more besides. And yet that
concert, brimming with charisma, beauty and love of music,
will stay with me for a lifetime. Violist Nils Mönkemeyer has many of whom guiltily remain in the ranks of orchestras for
similar feelings about Yehudi Menuhin in his later years: years after their ‘sell-by’ date. Violinist Tasmin Little,
‘ere was something that conveyed his whole heart and meanwhile, has found people skirting around the word when
brought people together in a very peaceful way,’ he says. they discuss her impending retirement, which, although she is
‘He never lost the joy, and that’s already more than many only 54, she has decided to begin later this year: ‘I don’t know if
people do with perfect notes.’ they think it implies that I’m old and past my best, gone
And yet, life risks presenting us with more and more decrepit or whatever,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen an astonishing array of
diculties as we age. As stated in Dustin Homan’s lm reactions. People have been amazed, supportive, inspired, sad,
Quartet (2012), set in a retirement home for musicians, or even outraged that I would consider stopping playing when
‘Old age is not for sissies’: what we may gain in wisdom and clearly they feel I’ve still got so much more to give. It’s not easy
knowledge, some of us may lose in terms of physical versatility to discuss this subject: it touches a lot of people’s nerves in
and the senses. In some cases, even the most decrepit dierent ways.’
musicians have much to give their audiences; but in instances
where past-it maestros insist on soldiering through impossible
showpieces, with out-of-tune strings pinging, wobbling and
scratching beneath inrm hands, hackles may be raised. Some
readers will recall an instance of wishing a below-par player o
the stage. One concertmaster even told me that he performed
in a ‘most stressful concert’ in which the concerto solo violin
part was left open by his feet, in case he needed to ll in
should the elderly soloist stop playing partway through.
Violist Bruno Giuranna, now 86, meanwhile, recalls how
‘I have heard some friends who were excellent players and
then with time they somehow seem to have lost the quality
that they had. And I ask myself, do they hear what comes out
of their instrument? Do they not care? Do they need the ‘STICK ON A RECORDING OF
money? I don’t know.’ YOURSELF. IF IT’S PAINFUL
Of course, who decides when someone is ‘past it’, what that
really means and what right anyone has to declare it are TO BEHOLD, THEN FOR GOD’S
contentious questions. ‘Retirement’, therefore, can be a SAKE GET OFF THE STAGE!’
thorny subject. One top-tier orchestral violinist in the States
declined to be interviewed on the matter because it is seen to – JOHN GEORGIADIS (80)
be so sensitive and stressful an issue among musicians there,
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