Siena Then

It was during one Summer long ago that I first attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. I attended the conducting course run by Sergiu Celibidache and actually took the Italian course run by Siena University.

The conducting course was held in the town theatre.

Celibidache had been conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic before Karajan. Incidentally, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after Karajan was Claudio Abbado, who had attended Celibidache’s class in Siena.Other people who had been in Siena included Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim.

Celibidache was into Zen Buddhism and would rise early each morning to meditate before classes. He believed that hearing music live can induce a transcendental experience in those present – something I also believe. He therefore reckoned that recordings that did not induce this experience were worthless.

Later, I was present at one of the first rehearsals he did with the London Symphony Orchestra. At the time, the wind section of the LSO was the finest in the world, including Barry Tuckwell on the horn, Gervese de Peyer on clarinet, Anthony Camden on oboe. In one section where the wind section was playing on its own as a group, he stopped conducting. The orchestra played on then stopped looking very puzzled. Anthony Camden asked, “Why did you stop conducting?” The maestro replied, “You were playing so well – you didn’t need me to conduct you”. This reminded me that the best instrumental performers are usually the best listeners. He seemed to get on well with the LSO.

The Accademia Musicale Chigiana was set up by Count Chigi of Saracini. The story went that Count Chigi had no heirs and was devoting his fortune to music. There were scholarships and the fees were tiny. I also believe that the fees for the hostel room in which we stayed were also subsidised by the Count. The teachers were great performers like Segovia on guitar, Fernando Germani on organ, Nicanor Zabaleta on harp plus many others.

Arriving at the hostel was interesting as pianos were being hauled up the stairs for students to use during the course. I was amazed that one man would carry a piano all on his own up the stairs to the room.

Coming from uncultured Britain, we needed a little tutoring in Italian manners. The first lesson in manners was in the student mensa. We were each given a serviette (table napkin or tovagliolo) with a ring and assigned a pigeon hole in which to keep it. They were changed each day. “Only barbarians eat without cloth serviettes!”, said our server. Amongst other useful skills, I learned the correct way to approach a plate of pasta lunga!!! We found out that we could have a really nice shower in a petrol station at the bottom of the hill on which Siena is built. We also learned that the real Italian, as promoted originally by Dante, has only ever been spoken in Siena. (They sure don’t speak it in Firenze!!!)

If the days were stimulating with very individual views on music from Celibidache, the evenings were amazing treats. Count Chigi brought in some of the finest performers in the world who gave concerts in his palace. One interesting feature of the performances was that, at the end of each piece, they would bow to the Count before acknowledging our applause. We had no worries about that. We were so grateful to be able to hear these great players. The only slight annoyance was that the flunky on the door insisted that we were “dressed appropriately” which could be hot in the rather warm Siena Summer evenings.

The funniest feature of living in the hostel was the “eight o’clock chord”.  Students were allowed to practice their instruments in the rooms but only after eight o’clock in the morning. So, at exactly eight o’clock, every instrumentalist in the hostel would play an enormous chord or note and we would rush out to buy fresh rolls for breakfast.

We were in a room next to a student learning the Shostakovitch first cello concerto. So, every morning at eight o’clock, we heard those four notes which begin that piece. And we heard the rest again and again more often that we wanted! When we attended a concert recently with Pieter Wispelwey playing this Shostakovitch concerto, I realised that the solo part was still engraved in my memory!!

Life in Siena back then was a dream. There were hardly any hotels around the city at that time, in fact there were none that I knew of, so any buses which pulled into the campo at lunch would leave before the end of the day. The only time that the city became busy was during the ‘Palio’ times.

Here is a better view of the actual race.

There were many distinguished teachers around. I ‘hung around’ Alfred Cortot’s class one day. This must have been almost his last utterance and I didn’t understand a word but it was Alfred Cortot!!! We heard talk of Pablo Casals still arguing with Gaspar Cassadó despite Yehudi Menuhin persuading Casals to “forgive” Cassadó some years earlier. John Williams, a student in the Guitar class around that time, has recently been very critical of Segovia’s approach to teaching so all was not smooth in the interaction between students and tutors.

The composition course was run by Vito Frazzi whose “scala alternate” represented a considerable musical mountain to scale before students could compose much music. But the film music course was run by Angelo Lavagnino, a much more colourful composer, to say the least.

One day Lavagnino announced to students that the next meeting would be in Cinecittá Studios in Rome where he had a gig in two days time. I immediately changed from the Conducting Course and travelled down to Rome on the back of my friend’s motorbike to the studios where we saw music being added to what seemed to be a slightly risqué film. We also took the opportunity to go down to Casino. Caserta, Amalfi, Cumae, Sperlonga and other places on the way back to Siena.

Cumae was a great experience because of  the acropolis under which the famous Sibyl was said to have resided. Virgil describes the place where the Sibyl prophesied the future and it is possible to work out, from book 6 of the Aenied, where she sat.

Riding away from Cumae, the most strange thing happened. As we rounded a corner, there was a car facing us travelling quite fast. To avoid collision, we went to one side – the LEFT side!! Much to our amazement, the approaching car ALSO went to their left side. The people in the car were also British so had instinctively gone to the left. The sibyl was obviously looking after us all!

Palio week was very busy and it was said that the Count produced sufficiently large bribes to enable our contrada to win the horse race. This meant that there was loud ringing from a huge bell just outside our hostel window for a couple of days.

When the course finished, I sat and watched Celibidache rehearse a single symphony for almost a whole week. He knew exactly what he wanted and the orchestra loved him despite the frequent very direct comments. I do remember one piece of ‘tongue in the cheek’advice to students. “If you stop the orchestra and do not know what to say, just say the second oboe is flat – the second oboe is ALWAYS flat”