Mulling over a lesson in teaching musicians

Wednesday 4 July 2012

The sun was setting low over Duart Castle, the CalMac fleet criss-crossed the Sound of Mull and, through a midge-infested twilight, strains of Bruckner and Mozart filtered up from the grand banqueting hall below.

Violinist: Levon Chilingirian is the man in charge of the Mendelssohn on Mull festival, during which mentors polish the performances of up-and-coming young musicians

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Kate Molleson on a bid to develop new talent in a low-risk and fun environment

This was the annual Mendelssohn on Mull festival, so-called after Felix Mendelssohn's famous trip to the Hebrides in 1829, and special because it does more than simply parachute nice concerts into posh places.

There is that too, but the emphasis here is on developing young professional musicians in an environment that's low-risk and fun. The festival is part-summer school, part-concert series for a hand-picked bunch of burgeoning players who have just finished or are nearing the end of their formal training. They come here to soften the harsh jolt between music student and freelance musician.

The format is simple. The participants spend a week working intensively alongside mentors. During that week they give concerts around Mull and Iona: in village churches, stately homes, the odd decaying castle and – the highlight for many – Iona Abbey. Tickets are free, and are snapped up by locals and tourists, and the pubs of Tobermory host gaggles of musicians late into the night.The atmosphere is warm, constructive and – I can testify – participatory. Last year I went along to review concerts but was more or less ordered to bring along my clarinet and play in one of the concerts. Unorthodox press coercion? Well, as a tactic for imparting the spirit of the festival, it worked a treat.The man who's been in charge of the festival for the past 10 years is Levon Chilingirian, first violinist of the Chilingirian Quartet and a committed chamber musician and pedagogue. Born in Cyprus to Armenian parents, he emigrated with his family to the UK in the early 1960s and came of age in a London full of music-making."I started playing in small groups at college," he told me, "but mostly I learned about chamber music from amateurs. There was a circle of Jewish émigrés in London who gathered once a week. They lived for this. More than the professionals, these amateurs had an incredible love and knowledge of the repertoire." Chilingirian now teaches at the institution where he studied, London's Royal College of Music. But he's more interested in what can be learned outside the college gates. "Take young musicians into beautiful and remote places, and they can focus and experiment. That's why Pablo Casals took groups to Prades in rural France; it's why Sándor Végh set up Prussia Cove on the cliffs of Cornwall, and why Marlboro [a summer school in small-town Vermont] still attracts Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode as directors."At Mull it's partly environment, partly ethos that does it. Chilingirian hand-picks his participants: "a combination of those who have been before and new players; some very new to chamber music, some dead scared when they arrive and then we see them flower." He also hand-picks his mentors. Whether they're members of his own quartet, soloists, teachers or orchestral players, they all share a core set of musical values.Over a group dinner halfway through last year's festival, Chilingirian told the assembled musicians: "I'm glad to hear so many of you playing in the right way. Remember: don't be tempted by the dark side." By 'dark side' he meant a certain style of playing. "There is a strong sense at music colleges these days that the ideal is to be a soloist," he later explained. "It encourages the wrong mentality."The greatest soloists listen to what the orchestra is doing. They spend their summers playing chamber music. And they teach. That, above all, is the important thing." Many of Chilingirian's colleagues spent time at Prussia Cove, and the set of values he encourages – "good articulation, good phrasing, good sound, sympathetic ears; musicians who will be totally part of the group, not individuals" – is a typically Véghian mantra.Chilingirian broadens the heritage: "I'm not sure I'd call myself a disciple of Sándor Végh in the way that others are," he says, "but certainly we're all trying to uphold the marvellous central-European school of the Amadeus Quartet and [Austrian musicologist] Hans Keller. The ideal is that we teach without saying too much." So he and the other mentors impart their experience by playing alongside their students. Keller coined the phrase "wordless functional analysis", in which music is analysed through sound alone. Chilingirian's approach, then, could be called "wordless functional teaching".Judging by the shrieks of laughter cutting through the dreamy sunset at Duart Castle, his positive pedagogy has worked on the morale front, at least. These students are running on a low-sleep, high-encouragement euphoria. When I sat to rehearse Brahms's Clarinet Quintet with the Chilingirian Quartet, I got a taste of it too. I hadn't practised for years. I was dreading the humiliation of playing with a serious string quartet. But as the violins sang their opening thirds, as cellist Stephen Orton added his restless counterpoint and smiled at me for my entry, I forgot my self-pity and got on with playing. Two days later my performance was as rough as I deserved – but I enjoyed every minute of it. Mendelssohn on Mull is at venues around Mull and Iona until July 7. www.mullfest.org.uk

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Mulling over a lesson in teaching musicians

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