Dame Fanny Waterman: A Lifetime in Music

Every three years, during the month of September, the eyes of the piano world

turn to Yorkshire for the Leeds International Piano Competition.

Long established as one of music's most coveted prizes

since its inception in 1963, the competition was the dream

and ambition of a local piano teacher, Fanny Waterman.

Today, at the tender age of 92, Dame Fanny Waterman still runs

the event with her trademark zest and energy and is in demand

all over the world as a teacher and all-round piano guru.

As the Leeds approaches its 50th birthday in 2013,

I went to meet this remarkable nonagenarian

and began by asking her about her childhood.

I was born in Leeds and my first recollections

is when I remember feet going across a pavement

because the house where I was born

was a house with a cellar kitchen.

What was Leeds like in the 1920s when you were growing up?

I can just remember going with my mother to the grocery shop and she

was crying because she didn't have enough money to pay the grocery bill.

But I was always happy.

I used to dance around the table to Henry Hall

and his BBC Dance Orchestra.

Tell me about your father.

My father was Russian and came over at the turn of the century.

He was a wonderful jeweller.

I watched him making beautiful brooches

of his own design of pearls and diamonds

and rubies and these had strength

and beauty and I think it influenced me at a very early age.

When did you first play the piano?

My mother said it was when I was four

and I used to climb on the stool and I would play the ditties

of the day with very good accompaniment like Tiptoe Through The Tulips

and all of those little things that I learnt just listening from the radio.

And people used to say, "Oh, she could be a dancer."

My father said, "Go on the stage? Never!"

Really, he did like the idea of me being a concert pianist and I went in

for festivals and they did everything they could

to nurture this talent.

So, there was a piano in the house, like most houses in those days, I suppose?

Absolutely. The piano was in what we called the front room.

The parlour?

Never called the parlour. It was the front room!

Which was only used occasionally or when I had to practise

and it was bitterly cold, there was no central heating.

I might be practising with a coat on!

But my early lessons were really farcical.

Because I learnt from somebody who had a piano in the kitchen

and instead of concentrating, as I do, at the end of the piano

looking at the fingering and listening, she was doing the cooking!

I always say I hope her cooking was better than her piano lessons.

But, that was really hopeless.

And Leeds was a musical city then.

Well, what I do remember is being taken to hear Rachmaninov, Kreisler,

Heifetz, Claudio Arrau, Schnabel

in the Leeds town hall.

-How old were you when Rachmaninov played?

-It was about eight.

I just remember the atmosphere as much as the playing.

Rachmaninov was very, very tall and all the lights in the hall were lowered.

And it was magic. But the sounds,

that's the importance of sound.

The sounds that comes after it.

It's just wonderful.

Did you enjoy, as a child,

playing the piano or did you have to be forced to practise?

Never forced to practise but I never quite knew why I was practising.

I was only learning notes.

And tiddling around on the keyboard

but my father must have had an idea that I had talent.

I was not a prodigy. Prodigies are Beethoven, prodigies are Mozart.

People confuse prodigies with highly gifted children.

And I think they decided they had to develop this talent

and so that's why we continued living where we were,

no car and no luxury.

-So, he was proud of you?

-Oh, he was proud of me.

But I think, looking back, and being a mother, I think praise is

so important with my pupils, my sons and my family -

always say, "Well done!" But I never got that from him.

In 1940, determined to repay her parents' faith in her musical ability,

the 18-year-old Fanny won a scholarship to the Royal College

of Music to study with the great British pianist, Cyril Smith.

What was it like arriving at the Royal College of Music

for the first time, that grand frontage of one of the most

famous musical institutions in the world?

Well, it was a great honour.

A great honour to be a scholar.

When I was at college, I won several prizes

and at the end of my time there, I got the Challen gold medal and

I was invited to play at the Proms, which I did with Sir Henry Wood.

What were you playing?

It was the Bach triple piano concerto

and it was a lovely work and I enjoyed playing it.

Here's the Royal Albert Hall, 1942.

"London notes...the Leeds pianist Miss Fanny Waterman played

"in the triple piano Concerto at the Bach promenade concert this evening."

-And here's the programme.

-Max Rostal and Lionel Tertis!

Oh, I say.

On the same bill.

And smoking permitted!

-What is that line at the bottom?

-"In the event of an Air Raid Warning,

"the audience will be informed immediately so that those who wish to

"take shelter, either in the building or in public shelters outside, may do so.

"The concert will then continue."

And there he is.

Henry Wood, the conductor best known to London music lovers.

It must have been a huge event - 6,000 people in the Royal Albert Hall

working with Henry Wood, the most famous conductor of the day.

I've lived on it ever since.

I've never forgotten it. I'm very proud of it!

It sounds like your time at the Royal College was really

a coming-of-age.

It was a great influence on me but then,

Sir George Dyson called a few of us up to say you are going to

be called up into the Women's Land Army.

Now, I'm no gardener! I thought, "What will I do in the Women's Land Army?"

But he said, if you get into a reserved profession,

we might get you off from that

so I decided that I would try and teach

because that was a reserved profession.

I returned to Leeds and I taught in my old school

and I sent 40 pupils in for exams and they all got distinctions.

I thought, I'm not bad at this! And I enjoyed it so why not teach?

And I think teaching is the greatest profession in the world.

70 years later, Fanny Waterman is still as passionate as ever about teaching.

Her pupils range from established professionals to primary school children,

all keen to learn from her vast experience.

There are a few things I consider very important

when you learn to play the piano.

The piano is a percussive instrument

so you have to learn how to make the piano sing.

I go all round the world

and I'm sorry to say that very often

they've no idea how to make

the piano sing or make the piano sound like an orchestra.

Now, you can't learn this all of a sudden -

you've to learn at an early age how to voice a chord -

a chord is two notes.

How to make the piano sound like an orchestra.

It's the only instrument that really can sound like an orchestra.

Two... D now.

La, la, la, la, la. Now long phrase...

Now the cello. D.

Not slower.

Yes, I think you could begin the phrases better.

'Beethoven piano sonatas are really symphonies for the piano.'

You can hear the viola register so that's the first most important thing.

Then, the next thing when you're teaching is musical integrity.

What is in the score?

I've been on juries of competitions

and the competitor doesn't know the title of the piece,

they don't know if it's Dolly's Funeral or A Walk In The Summer Garden.

They don't know what the composer has written.

You have to be a musical detective from an early age.

There's just one place, I think it's an F that's struck about four times.

Do you know what I mean? Can you pick it up? To me, that is a clock chiming.

There's no people in this, it's just the moon and it's going different speeds,

in front of the clouds but all of a sudden

if you can start from there, it's in the left hand. Can you go back?

Two o'clock.

Now it changes.

Yes, that's a marvellous moment when it changes through E flat.

You just play it as if it's ordinary. To me, that's magic.

Do it once again.

The next thing is rhythm.

Rhythm is the part of our life.

You think of our lives - there's the seasons, the months,

the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes.

We're governed by rhythm.

Does the player, da, da, da, da?

That isn't playing rhythmically.

That's just playing in beats.

What is the difference?

The second one has started soft and gone loud.

So you feel the music is going forward.

Or you can start loud...

..and go soft.

There's movement. Music always moves forward.

Yes, just a minute.

Now, when it repeats with the exact same note,

I think it should be softer the second time.

Can you remember that? Good. Off you go.

No teacher can give anybody charisma,

musical imagination.

That is within the young person

and how they develop and how

they go to concerts, know what Beethoven wrote apart from the piano.

What he wrote - symphonies, string quartets.

So I give my pupils from a very early stage,

an idea what I feel they can imbibe from me.

It's amazing.

PIANO PLAYS

Shhh!

Very dainty, like you are.

SHE MOUTHS

And...

What greater pleasure is there in life than giving

a young and beautiful talent a little lift

in the direction of his stars,

though he may never reach them.

Up!

That's it!

Very good.

Leeds, September 1966.

For ten days, the scene of one of the most remarkable gatherings

of young musicians this country has ever known.

The second Leeds International Piano Competition.

Having made her name in Leeds as a teacher during the 1950s,

Fanny Waterman's life was transformed

as she embarked on a remarkable musical journey

with fellow pianist Marion Harewood.

The origins go back a number of years.

Fanny Waterman and I

started six years ago saying how exciting it would be

to have a competition.

It was her idea. She bullied me into agreeing with her!

It started when I couldn't get to sleep one night.

I started planning what I was going to do next.

I woke my husband and said, "I think we'll have a piano competition

"in Leeds."

He said, "It'll never work here. This must be held in London."

The moment he says anything like this to me,

it inspires me to prove him wrong!

Maybe I thought, "Well, I'll show you.

"I'm not going to remain as a local piano teacher."

That's where the courage...came out and maybe

my ambition came out.

How did you go about setting up the first competition?

-Lots of people to win over, presumably?

-Yeah.

Marion was then the Countess of Harewood.

Married to the cousin of the Queen.

Daughter-in-law of Princess Mary.

And a great friend of yours.

And a great friend of mine and still is a great friend of mine.

I love her to bits.

By saying who she was,

people would support her quicker than me

who was the local piano teacher!

I don't think I'll ever get away from that.

-I mean...

-The aristocratic name she had helped?

I think she'll admit that.

Were people sceptical about the idea in Leeds?

No, it caught fire straight away.

The people... The people we mentioned it to said,

"That's a good idea."

The fact that it was going to be international, they foresaw

it would put Leeds on the international map.

How did you choose the competitors the first time around?

Sir Arthur Bliss was chairman of the jury.

He had just come back from the Tchaikovsky

and I think they'd had about 103 entries.

He said to us, "I hope you're not having everybody

"who's entered?"

"Oh no!"

But when it came to it and we had 100,

I said, "If in doubt, don't leave out."

How can we go from the papers? How could there...

You've only got their CV. I don't know if we had

a recording apparatus then.

So we took in everybody.

He said when the British competitors came out on the platform,

he wanted the earth to open and swallow him up!

We were both ashamed that we took in everybody...

Cos the British players weren't good enough?

We just took in anybody.

Jack Jones from down the street!

Anybody who filled in the form we took in.

Nonetheless, there were enough good players

that first year to allow the competition

to make its mark?

The embarrassing thing was Michael Roll.

He was 17, at a school and was a pupil of mine.

-He was marvellous.

-And he won.

And he won. I stayed at home and kept out of the way from the jury.

Perhaps now I wouldn't allow it but I gave

Michael a lesson until 11 o'clock, the Appassionata Sonata.

And he came out and played it.

Clifford Curzon, who was on the jury, came up to me and kissed me.

He said, "It's one of the greatest performances I have ever heard."

It was like taking a souffle out of the oven

with Michael.

He was just having his lesson, just ready

and being run in a car down to the university.

He was marvellous.

But that could have been a tricky situation,

that you, the founder of the competition,

and it's your pupil who wins?

Surely people were going to say, "This is a fix."

Marion that night, from home, she says,

"Michael played so beautifully. He might win this."

I said, "Marion, don't let him win it.

"What do you think I will be feeling like in Leeds?"

Even my own father said, "He shouldn't have won it.

"The others haven't got a teacher on the spot."

I thought, "Ooh, dear, what have I done?"

When the result came out,

it was very difficult.

The problem is, with jury decisions, often

it's the person in the middle who isn't offensive

and doesn't upset people who wins.

The people who might polarise opinion - half the jury

think they're great, the other half think they're not,

they get knocked out.

With a good jury, when I mean good,

somebody who understands music,

will welcome

an original talent.

They'll say, "I wouldn't have done it like that

"but do you know, that convinces me.

"This is something out of the ordinary."

There are lots of people who say that competitions are a bad thing

for young musicians. Where do you stand on that?

Well, I want to ask you,

what is the alternative?

In olden times, if you were a fine musician,

you had a patron or the Church,

or royalty.

Nowadays, agents want people who already have fame

-and a reputation.

-Exactly.

There is a danger that people are pushed too quickly because

they win a competition - pushed forward before they are ready.

Is that the nature of the beast?

Is that what a modern musical career is about?

It is but it's not the competition's fault.

Nobody says you should be trying the Leeds or the Tchaikovsky.

You have made a decision

that you feel this is the moment

when you're ready to take a risk.

Have you got the courage? Are you prepared not to succeed

where you had hoped?

Are you going to be put off completely

by the result or should your attitude be, "I'll show them"?

You would endorse that last attitude?

I would endorse that.

The jury are not listening for mistakes.

They are listening, waiting, and hoping for some magic,

something that you're saying that is different

from the competitor they've heard before.

After the controversial first competition,

the Leeds went from strength to strength.

Spanish pianist Rafael Orozco won in 1966.

The world had noticed when Romanian Radu Lupu captured the first prize

three years later.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

The stakes were already high for the 1972 competition

when American pianist Murray Perahia took to the stage.

When Murray Perahia came on, he looked as if he needed a good meal

and he started playing.

Within the first page, he made such an impact on me

not because it was big and loud - it was the way he wrought a phrase.

I remember at the interval the jury getting up,

taking a handkerchief out and wiping their eyes.

He left us all stunned in silence.

GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

How has the competition line-up changed

in its near-half-century, in terms of the competitors who come here?

There were great schools of Russian musicians

coming from the Soviet Union and then it moved on to America.

Well, now, there's an explosion in the Far East.

One of their secrets is that they start teaching

at a very early age,

at the age of three or four

and they have very good teachers.

People say they're just like musical typewriters.

Some are but most aren't.

Sunwook Kim, who won our competition, not this time but the time before,

is a great artist.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

An idea that they are not musical -

out of the millions who are learning,

there are some marvellous ones.

Take Lang Lang as an example.

I think any pianist in the world

would be happy to have his pair of hands.

They are magnificent.

He can do, with ease,

what most pianists would struggle for a lifetime to do, technically.

MUSIC INTENSIFIES

He's a showman.

He throws his arms about.

That doesn't worry me. That is part of him.

MUSIC REACHES A CLIMAX

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

If you said, "I don't want you building big chords like that."

If you mention that to somebody who creeps along the piano...

Everybody's got a different way of getting their intentions achieved.

There are other famous piano competitions -

the Von Kleiben, the Tchaikovsky, in Moscow, the Chopin.

Do you see them as rivals?

Not really. Our competition is for young professionals

who have got sufficient repertoire

to take on a career.

Our engagements are the finest in the world -

to play with the four London orchestras,

the Liverpool Phil, a tour with the Halle.

That is what has put Leeds at the top.

And we've got to stay there.

For the past 50 years, the Leeds International Piano Competition

has dominated Dame Fanny's life.

By her side until his death in 2001

was Geoffrey de Keyser,

a Leeds GP, who she married in 1944.

He had stature.

He had a wonderful voice.

His knowledge was terrific.

He never offended anybody.

Maybe I do offend people.

I speak my mind. He had a way that he'd get his point over.

He was a diplomat?

He was a diplomat and he never had controversies with anybody

but he got his own way.

I said to him, "What do you love about me?"

I expected a lovely compliment

that I'm charming, I'm fun, I'm talented.

He said, "You're so unpredictable."

I thought, "How true that is."

Some people are predictable and they're boring!

I presume he didn't think I was ever boring.

-Will you retire?

-Never.

Why should I?

There can't be many nonagenarians who are dealing,

on a daily basis, with 10 year olds, 12 year olds, 14 year olds.

How do you find the energy to...

I work nine hours a day but I pace myself.

-Do you think teaching's kept you young?

-Without a doubt.

I'm always planning what they're doing.

Not only the next week but in the next few years,

I'm always looking forward.

I am thankful I've got the work.

Working at something you like is one of the greatest blessings

in your life.

Another great passion is to love

and to be loved.

I've had that blessing, over and over again,

with my parents, with my husband,

with my family

and my colleagues.

I've got no regrets.

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