The Chamber of Musical Curiosities Podcast: Celia Craig

Paul: Hello, I'm Paul Kildea, artistic director of Musica Viva Australia and I'm here today with oboist and cor anglais player, but that hardly gets to the crux of it, does it, Celia Craig. It's a delight to be here with you, Celia.

Celia: Thank you very much, Paul.

Paul: Someone with your lovely accent didn't grow up in Goulburn, that much is clear. I've had the great privilege recently of having some correspondence with your father, who of course was at Cambridge as a student of F. R. Leavis in the 1960s and as a student encounters a young peer, John Eliot Gardiner, who mutters about founding a new choir known as the Monteverdi Choir. And I say all this just as a way of introducing you because it at least gives some context to the rather special and unusual musical background that you come from. Which then takes you from this kind of really engaged childhood um in the highest possible areas of arts, to the Purcell School for your own secondary schooling and then of course to the Royal Academy of Music. So I am interested, I'm always interested in origin stories. So perhaps you could talk just a little about, a little bit about that and how your father was this kind of encouraging force in your life.

Celia: Oh yes, well thank you. I mean I didn't have much choice about being musical, the name means musical. Saint Cecilia – saint, patron saint of music. So when I was little, I remember being literally carried around to all these top rehearsals such as the Monteverdi Choir starting and that was quite regular. I also remember being incredibly involved as a eight year old in my dad putting on Britten's Noah's Flood, which is an opera that you’ll know extremely well. That was when we were living in Germany and he was taking a job in Germany in an English school and he made all the kids in the school become animals and I wasn't an animal even though the primary school were involved in that opera was actually a violinist for those who prefer to play on the open strings. So I was originally, I was a violinist and I started I was very lucky to be put into Kent Jr Music School which was run by the marvellous ex pupil of both Hindemith and Kodly whose name was Bela de Csillery. And I went into that school age nine when it was supposed to be for high school. This is a Saturday morning sort of music school in a medieval Bishop's Palace in Maidstone and I walked past that building now because my sister lives near it in the days when we can travel to England. And her son sings in the choir or used to sing in the choir next door. So there's a nice generational thing because my father had also been a member of Kent Jr Music School and his best friend there was a singer called Philip Langridge, although at that time he was actually a violinist called Philip Langridge.

Paul: Yes, he was a violinist and then of course, everyone who's listening to this will realise that Philip became one of the most astonishing tenors and musical artists and I say musical artist because he was so musical as a great singer in the latter part of the 20th century, early part of this one. I'm going to pick you up on something because people won't necessarily note or pick up on the wry way that you said that you played the violin in Noah's Flood. For those who are happiest on the open string, perhaps you better explain that particular designation in the score.

Celia: Isn't that lovely? That's the third violin part that Britten wrote because it was intended as a community opera. I just remember my dad saying, oh, this is absolutely perfect because there are parts for people who can only play on open strings. Look at that, you can do one of those, you'll be able to join the orchestra. So I had to join this teenage German orchestra with massive flares and they were just such huge kids. And it was the same at Kent Jr Music School actually. I remember throughout my musical life, I was always, I'm still, I'm quite tall, so it's not because it was a short person, but I was always looking up to people I was working with because it was just the way that my group of wonderful teachers had always put me into things with people older than me and it is something I really feel very strongly about because that extends you. And especially when you're an oboist is that's quite common because we are slightly more unusual. So you often end up getting promoted into a string group with, I mean in my case I had to play the Bach oboe and violin concerto with Kenneth Sillitoe who was the leader of the English chamber when I was about 16. But before that I remember playing Messiah with, with professional players and I was 12 something playing in it, because the oboist do tend to get promoted. I have a small memory of a student of mine in New Zealand who, I didn't live in New Zealand but I used to go and see her mom and teacher quite a lot, and she played Gabriel’s oboe in front of 10,000 people when she was 10 years old. But it's because she was the only oboist in town, she did it and she was really good.

Paul: And also if you're a certain age when that film came out, of course people will remember it's the film, The Mission. You got asked to play that, didn't you?

Celia: Ah yes, well look, that's an incredible film and if you think about it, Jeremy Irons has probably done more for oboe take up worldwide than any other non oboist.

Paul: By playing that and doing it so beautifully. It's the last reference I'll make to Noah's Flood. But it's a good way of pivoting into a question that I would have thought you'd get a bit, which is that of course Noah's Flood is full of all these recorder parts as well. And that's often a path or it's sometimes a path between a young person encountering music for the first time and then graduating to oboe. Was that the case with you?

Celia: Exactly, well spotted. So it was some violinist that played some recorder because my dad used to say “look in the baroque world, everybody just plays violin- the treble instruments, the violin, the recorder and a flute. They're all interchangeable. Just play them all because everybody did.” So I was always sort of thrown in the deep end like that but I loved playing the recorder. I absolutely loved it. I played it for years and I miss it. In fact, only a few months ago I doubled recorder in a Baroque instrument version of Acis and Galatea and everybody was laughing at me for getting a recorder out. But I mean I still feel as if when I was 15 I was quite good at it. So there is the pathway and we have lost it a lot in schools because people don't do as much recorder, which is sad, because it feeds into oboe playing so well.

Paul: Yeah it does. Look it feeds into so many things. It's just nice that on this instance, that there is something natural about going from this instrument in C to another beautiful instrument in C. Hey, you said something a moment ago which I would have asked anyway if I’d plucked up the courage, which is that oboists are a certain type of personality. And I don't know whether it's because it's a really difficult instrument to play because of all the pressure in performing it, because of being kind of the leader of the woodwinds in an orchestra, if you go that route. I mean what is it, do you think, that marks out the personality of an oboist in a certain way?

Celia: Yes. And we have cliches in orchestras and it starts from youth orchestras and you’ll be like ‘they're the brass players’ or ‘they’re the string players’ and the oboists always have been the individuals. And I think you could say, to master it, you have to be kind of slightly maverick, maybe. You have to be determined and slightly individual, but I think it's all the reed making, really. It's basically the reed making that drives you slightly nuts, or more than slightly in some cases, I mean including myself at times. So persistence is necessary. And then I'm always wondering if it's a bit chicken and egg as well with this, the idea of the cliches of different instruments is also slightly something that you get into the orchestra and you think, well maybe we, maybe we play up to that a little bit. But it's also the fact that the oboist has their own part and the string players don't and so when I transitioned from violin to oboe, unwillingly I have to say, I didn't really want to give up the violin, but in the strings, I was always a member of a big group. So then you're not as, that's a horrible thing to say. I'm not saying you're not as responsible, but you kind of can't be because you're a group player. So you can't be the only one that's ahead of the beat or the only one that's on the beat when nobody else is behind and the oboist has to be. So you do have to become a more determined sort of self-reliant character when you play the oboe anyway. So that's definitely true.

Paul: Well that's certainly a sense of personality and leadership that comes of course at exactly the time in your teens when you're defining the type of person that you really are going to be as an adult. So it's interesting that these two things come together. Hey, you better talk about it very briefly, but there's so much else we're going to touch on, but just the reed making. So non musicians are not going to realize, they're going to think of, well the trumpeter just comes and picks up his 7C mouthpiece, throws it in and away he goes. Tell us a little bit about what's involved for your instruments.

Celia: I'm sure that trumpeters will disagree with me when I say, oh you just stick your mouthpiece in and play and I'm sure there's a lot more that goes into it. The flautists will say that it's all about, ‘well the thing is you can change your reed, but we're stuck with the lips and that kind of thing. But yes, the reed making, I mean you have to be able to find a setup because I'm very into this right now because I'm just trying to do the same thing for Baroque oboe, trying to set myself up with Baroque oboe and you need to find a reed set up that is consistent. There are so many variables - the width of the reed, the length of the reed, the type of staple that you put it onto, the quality of it, the type of cane, whether it's come from a very sunny country. It's like wine, the cane, it's incredible because people are always talking about the earth that it grew from and the climate and the micro-climates are different parts of France and the best cane comes from Europe. We always like the Mediterranean, usually French cane, I'm into Spanish cane right now and then you spend ages and ages binding it all on together and you spend ages and ages and ages learning how to sharpen your knives and tie on straight reeds. And then you scrape it and then probably 4 out of 10 are reasonable. And then 1 out of 10 is the one you're going to play on. So yes, when I was principal oboe at the Adelaide Symphony for nearly a decade that in particular, there are different types of reeds you need for different piece. Same when I was principal cor anglais in the orchestra, I discovered that there are certain composers that ask for a really difficult reed. Elgar. I don't know why it's Elgar. He just wants the best cor anglais reed, you can possibly make. He wants you to play loudly with the cellos all the time and then some perfect tiny solo, like four notes up high. So you just have to have the perfect reed for certain composers in particular.

Paul: And I remember friends who would mourn the passing of a beautiful reed that had stood by them for a very long time. That's a very good segue actually talking about your tenure and your love of the cor anglais. I'd love you to talk about how you characterise them. I always think of the cor anglais as Mahler and the oboe as Strauss. But I'm sure you have a far more sophisticated way of viewing it.

Celia: That's rather nice. Yes. Having gone straight into an orchestral career on cor anglais, which I wasn't really kind of prepared for. I mean, I don't, maybe none of us are, we’re just picked out and suddenly we’re the soul of the whole orchestra. I mean, you know, five minutes ago, you're in youth orchestra and you don't even know what those woodwind instruments on the other side of the hall are even called because you're busy playing away in the strings and then the next minute you're a professional cor anglais player and Tchaikovsky is coming up or whatever. You are absolutely the soul of the orchestra. Actually, in terms of a sort of voicing, it always made me feel like the viola player that my violin teachers always wanted me to be. I mean, they were always saying, look, you should try the viola, you know, you really should try the viola and I just couldn't be bothered to read the clef. It was just too difficult to learn new clef, fingering. But that tenor feeling that you get on the, on the cor anglais is really special. And I actually, I loved it. I did probably 20 years on cor anglais in England and guesting in London Symphony and other orchestras. And there's these terrifying moments, for example, in Shostakovich symphonies where you're just left alone and you've got this big plaintive mournful solo or Sibelius or something, in Swan of Tounela and I had to learn to do some acting actually, in those things. It's the same with the oboe slightly, of course, you’re principal oboe, you have a bit of a prima donna there and you have to act that. But with the cor anglais, if you think of Shostakovich 8 for example, or 11 as well, but 8 where it's like a nuclear bomb has gone off and the whole orchestra's just obliterated everything and there's one solo lonely cor anglais left. And people used to come to me for lessons in London and say, how do you do this without shaking because the tv cameras are on and you're in the Albert Hall and I'd say, well actually you are supposed to shake, you're supposed to be scared. So act scared. Don't be scared but act it. And if you channel the scaredness through acting, then you can actually channel all sorts of roles, which is what the whole orchestra, all of your colleagues will literally, the whole viola section will turn around and expect you to play something just to express what they want that moment to be. So, it's incredible responsibility and the oboes kind of the same but higher and more squeaky. Really, that's kind of it. More pressure.

Paul: So I'd like to talk a little bit about those years in London in those big orchestras and we're going to play a game and I'm just going to throw some one word conductor names at you and respond however you'd like

Paul: Rattle.

Celia: Um, curly, scary.

Paul: Well let's try Boulez then. Something softer.

Celia: Total gentleman, he was gorgeous, loved him.

Paul: Oh, okay. Haitink. Old school.

Celia: Even more of a total gentleman. And the funny thing about Boulez, sorry, its one word, sorry, I won't do-,

Paul: No, I can say one word, you can run with it.

Celia: Okay, so the difference between Boulez and Haitink was that they both came in I think in the same year when I was in BBC Symph and they were both on birthdays, we definitely did Boulez's 80th birthday and everybody was waiting for him to be cross and they were going to be scared of him because when he had been principal conductor of the BBC Symph,  he was actually in very acerbic, precise. Well we were doing Daphnis as well, so they were saying, ‘well, last time he was here he was making a piccolo and the bass clarinet player, play the demi-semis together in octaves and saying it wasn't right, oh dear, what will this be like?’ And he was actually an absolute angel. But because I was chairman for both of those, I had to see them quite a lot. And when Haitink came in, both of them surprised us with their sense of humour. They were very relaxed and lovely sense of humour and I would say that the Boulez Daphnis, it was a changing point. It was the highlight of my career and I actually left for Australia because of that. Because when Richard, my husband who's Australian from Sydney, when he said he wanted to go back, I thought well look I did Daphnis and Chloe with Boulez at the Proms, or in the Barbican actually and it was the best thing. So anyway, sorry. Carry on with the conductors. This is great.

Paul: That’s beautiful. One more for me which is Gergiev

Celia: Oh yes, cocktail stick. That's how he conducted. He's got his cocktail stick as this long, it's ridiculous. And he shakes as well, it's really weird. But he's a complete magnetic musician and it is a total honour and privilege to work for him. But it's always chaos because he always arrives late. And then I remember my BBC symphony producer saying to me, ‘oh so you're going to do that, LSO gig with Gergiev. Great, well I'll see you there because I've got to come and interview him at break’. So I was waiting for her to turn up because I've done an attachment as a BBC producer as well with Ann so I knew her quite well and she turned up at the Barbican and stood in a queue to talk to Gergiev in a break who was talking on four phones at once and he had a queue of about three people who were supposed to see him at lunchtime and she was just looking at me going ‘well uh I'm not sure.’ And he also arrived two hours late for the rehearsal and that was the same when we went on tour as well.

Paul: When you mentioned Philip Langridge and of course your relationship with Judith Weir. There are amazing people that you were just part of this generation, or perhaps it's always the case in Britain that there is a generation coming through, and of just astonishingly well trained and then just amazing figures on the cultural landscape. I wouldn't mind hearing about some of those composers with whom you've had close creative relationship, perhaps starting with Judith.

Celia: Oh, well, yes, thank you, Judith’s concerto that she wrote, the ASO commissioned for me, is her first oboe concerto, and she was an oboist. And I knew that because also about 20 years before, as Director of the Spitalfields Festival, she'd asked me if I'd played Poulenc’s Sonata on the radio and I was really nervous because it was early in my career and this was an actual sonata and it was the most famous one. And she said, ‘well, yes, also because I know it really well’ and I thought that's made it even worse now, because you know it really well, because she used to be an oboist. But the way we knew each other, this was before she became Master of the Queen's Music, both of those events, actually, the original commissioning of the concerto, she hadn't been appointed the Queen's own composer at that stage. But I knew her because she was at Spitalfields Festival and I was very involved with Jane Manning and Tony Payne. We were like their children, they came to York University and selected a group of us and started a contemporary music group. And if you Wikipedia Janes’ minstrels it literally talks about a new generation of people and I wasn't, I mean Wikipedia wasn't around then, there was no internet, so I wasn't really aware of how privileged we were to be in Jane and Tony's house all the time. And the fact that both of them have passed away now within a month was really sad and their best friend was Judith Weir. So we spent a lot of time playing Tony's music, playing Judith’s music, playing other really interesting composers like Nicola LeFanu or Elizabeth McConkey. Also that early school of Peter Warlock, post formal, this kind of English music as well. And that was a great period. But then moving to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, my first day of work, Berio was conducting as well, so that was quite interesting. Because you know I was aware of the authentic movement of course, because at York when I was at the university there, we all played on Baroque instruments and that generation have now become the new front Baroque people. And my dad of course being involved in Monteverdi Choir and Christopher Hogwood as well and all those people. I knew about the authentic movement, but when I went to BBC Symphony they started making me realise that we were doing authentic contemporary music because we were authentically playing Boulez Pli selon pli with Boulez actually not Judith Weir as conductor. She's like ‘I hand over to a professional conductor and I sit quietly in the background and make comments.’ So she's beautiful like that. But some of the composers who are good at conducting and who knew, do it well, for example, Berio on my first day at the BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Adams as our Artist in Residence. We worked with him very closely including the last night of the Proms, the first one after 9/11 and he'd written his piece, the Transmogrification of Souls piece and that was like its premiere or something.

Paul: Oh, of course, of course.

Celia: And we were, I mean the security, we were terrified about that. That wasn't a very fun gig. But John was right onto it, it was great. And my very first day of professional work, George Benjamin conducting the Hallé Orchestra in a program of his music and Ligeti and I've done some of that at York. So I knew I knew a bit more about George Ligeti's music, beautiful stuff. But I wasn't, I've never played in the Hallé before and all the orchestras have their own personalities and there I, just give my ‘A’, just start and give the ‘A’ and I'm straight out of college as well and it's really embarrassing. And we have a rehearsal in the Zion Institute in a dodgy bit of Manchester where if you park in the car park, you have to pay somebody to stop the vigilantes getting your car. It was very, very terrifying. Kids throwing things at our cars and stuff. And all these musicians walking in and then just going into play this contemporary music and then George Benjamin called me up and he said, ‘excuse me, oboe, do the orchestra always play this behind the beat. And I think, I don't know, it's my first day, I have no idea. Because you know, contemporaries got to be just right. But anyway, I love the idea that you can feel exactly how the composer wanted their piece to go. So you're getting their vision, their full vision, including when Morricone came to Adelaide and we did with Gabriel’s Oboe with him, that was very authentic, wasn't it?

Paul: Yeah, it's interesting because not every composer is a very good conductor, but that list that you've just given us is each person, a great executive of the podium as well as of how they write their music. And it's good to hear as a conductor, someone like Judith Weir saying, ‘well, actually this is a really specialised skill that I'm going to hand it over to the specialist,’ which is such a kind of bond, isn't it? A gesture of trust. And then you always hope in those circumstances that that trust is rewarded. I'm not saying Celia that you've hung up that particular symphonic or orchestral hat, but you've got a pretty interesting series of projects at the moment. And I know we've relied on you a lot and I know a lot of your background anyways in chamber music, but we've joyously programmed you a lot in South Australia this year. But you've also been doing something for us most recently, a project in Mount Gambier with a great colleague of yours. And it's a very particular project because it touches on a part of your personality, part of the way that you view the world. So I wonder if you could bring all those threads together.

Celia: Yes, thank you. Well, the opportunity to do ‘Colours of Home’, a schools project through Musica Viva in Schools has been a little bit like doing a PhD in some ways. Because the idea of drilling down right into the question and saying, what is this project about what we're trying to do? And I remember facilitated so brilliantly by Musica Viva and I'm somebody who experiences music through colour and I don't quite know how to exactly explain all of this, but I'm a synesthete. And the actual term for music and colour in this case is chromesthesia. And that was the original working title of our group and then we ended up calling it Colours of Home because when you have chromesthesia, when it's really strong, especially, which is when the music's in flow, each harmonic key has a different, quite distinct colour. And of course, the music always comes home in its harmony as well, to beginning and end of the music and so, your beginning and your end for me is the colour. Like if it's in G, it's a red piece and then it finishes in red as well. So we've used that as a way of drawing out. with the children, we describe our feelings about colour and then we draw from them, their feelings about colour and landscapes as well. So I should explain more about synaesthesia – is, it's incredibly intense feelings and also you get these kind of vistas and pictures in front of you, this is in my case anyway, I often get event horizons or night-time stars, that's the second movement of Mozart's Oboe Quartet or a massive, great long event horizon, like a perspective that seems like a glimpse of perfection. You actually want to go and touch it. And that's also associated with really strong feelings of euphoria and stuff. So there's two things that come out of that. Orchestrally, that's quite hard to experience all the time because there are so many personalities involved in playing the music that for it to go in the way that for me seems like perfection you know, happened during Boulez’s Daphnis and Chloe and I felt that was some sort of peak. And certain pieces where I expect certain colours, if another conductor does it in a different way and they don't come, you get the opposite effect, not the euphoria, but the depth of despair. Like someone has literally poured, yeah, concrete on your head. Actually. I never set out to play in an orchestra. Of course, I love the sound, the repertoire as well. You know, those big Mahler’s, you mentioned Mahler and Strauss. Yeah, great. That's exhilaration in itself, of course. But when I was at the academy, I remember saying to the staff on the academy board, the Royal Academy, I remember, she said, Celia Nicola, another Celia, was the principal oboe teacher at the time. And she was saying, what would you like to do? And I said, well, I'd like to play chamber music and contemporary music and she said, well you can't. Sorry? Why don't you want to get a job in an orchestra? And I said, well, because I'm not good enough, I'm not reliable enough on the oboe. I used to be violinist, you know, I've only been playing it for two years really. I don't think I'm gonna be able to get the sound out on the time when everybody is watching you and you've got to play this big solo. And she said, well, it's my job to teach you that though, isn't it? She said that's why you're at the Academy. By the time you've left, you'll be able to do it. So of course, I went for the orchestral auditions and I managed to get a job the second I got out of the academy and I was a cor anglais player in Bournemouth Symphony straight away. And there goes the chamber music though, because you can't really do it because you're committed to the orchestra all the time. It's a full time job. That's what you're supposed to do. Or else, you've got in my case now, you've got such loud orchestral stuff that you don't, you can't really, the tinnitus is getting on your nerves and so you want some quiet, not play some chamber music afterwards. So I've actually made the choice now to stop being full time in orchestras so that I can finally do the chamber music and contemporary, definitely baroque and contemporary as well, really, that's what I wanted to do in the first place and the Musica Viva in Schools really fits in so beautifully with that because playing in a duo is great fun. I'm getting the synaesthesia back that used to be so strong when I was a teenager. I think it's aged related as well. Tallis Fantasia, could not see the conductor, I was playing the lead violin part. It’s just seas of red and all sorts of colours everywhere. So I was afraid it was going to vary with age, but I think it's more to do with, it varies with the type of music you're playing and the kind of flow in performance,

Paul: Even being able to say that. And I know that in Mount Gambier, for instance, there was a young child, who kind of had this sparkling moment of self-recognition. Talk a little bit about that. We sent you off there, funded by federal RISE funding. You know, you just kind of think if ever there's some immediate response to a crisis and then what came from that immediate response is rather gorgeous in this instance.

Celia: Yes, it was lovely. So Caspar Hawksley and I, who is a jazz guitarist from the Elder Conservatorium, and composer, he is much younger than me. He's also my son's best friend. That's how I know him and his mother is a friend of mine. So it's also been very interesting working with somebody who's 20 years younger than me, at least 20. He's making me play a lot of improvisation and that's marvellous because that's something you don't do in orchestras. Obviously, you play exactly what's written on the page. So we're improvising away and we've also had this wonderful commission from indigenous composer, Musica Viva commission from Will Kepper. And it was his piece, Will Kepper’s piece actually, we were playing in a school in Mount Gambier and Caspar asked the audience, did anybody see any colours? Could you describe some landscape that, Will's from Torres Strait, so we talked to them about how he's writing about being in a boat and there's sparkling waters and stuff. So sparkling had already been suggested. But this little girl put her hand up and she said, oh yes, there was blue and there was green and they were competing. They were pushing to get against each other. And then there were some stars up here in the right hand side. And then later on the piece, some stars were lilac and appeared down the bottom. And I absolutely lost it. I burst into tears because to have somebody describe exactly what's in your head for synaesthesia is so unlikely. I mean, it's incredible. I've met one other person who has exactly the same colours as me and she's more extreme actually. She has tastes and textures like amethyst and stuff. We get a bit of texture as well. But Jennifer has tastes. But this other lady is 75 and lives in Switzerland. So I have only met her via Facebook. So to actually be standing there in the room with nine year old Mackenzie who had described exactly what I see and all the staff were looking at each other going, she's never said that before. So that was also really nice and then when we got home that evening, I couldn't do the interview with her. I really couldn't. Emily Kelly, your South Australian lovely representative, she did an interview to camera with her and I couldn't take part because it was it was too moving.

Paul: It was too overwhelming.

Celia: It was just incredible. But then I got this friend request. It was actually a LinkedIn friend request and I looked at it and it said Lady from Mount Gambier and it was her mother and she said she's never told me this before. And this explains a lot. And then I've got these incredible letters from her saying, ‘oh I feel all these amazing feels now in my body when I'm listening to music and you've unlocked this and I have a gift and they tell me’. So I'm really pleased because synaesthesia is not always received as a gift by everybody else. It can be a sort of, mark you out, what are you doing, get back in your box sort of thing. So that's why you don't normally mention it. And also you think it's normal. I mean you assume everybody else has it.

Paul: Celia, I feel as though that you haven't even started your career yet. You've already done the most amazing things and I know our conversation will continue beyond this half hour and I just can't wait to continue it and to keep making interesting projects with you.

Celia: Thank you Paul, that sounds wonderful. Thank you. The Musica Viva ‘Colours of Home’ project is like a life changing thing for me. I'm loving it.

Paul: Well, those stories and more have just warmed my heart today. So thank you Celia Craig.

Celia: Thank you very much.