David Lipsey
Journalist and politician
‘The life of an aspiring young musician is hard. Help by sponsoring them! I describe my experience with two coming megastars – an experience I have got at least as much out of as they have.’
Ifirst met Kerem Hasan, the superstar young conductor, at – believe it or not – a fundraiser for retired greyhounds. It was organised by Annette Crosbie, the star of BBC comedy One Foot in the Grave, featuring the pupils of Marion Blech, a local piano teacher.
The setting was a dingy pub in Wimbledon. I must admit to having low expectations of the event but, being heavily involved in greyhound welfare at the time, duty called.
Onto the platform walked Kerem – a little boy, perhaps eight years old. He sat at the piano, barely able to reach the pedals. Then he started to play. And in just a few notes I realised that Kerem was the real thing.
His father – who by surreal chance was also my barber – sat glowing in his son’s performance. We talked. It turned out that there was no music in Kerem’s family. He had sprung from nowhere.
One thing led to another: a couple of concerts I sponsored for him to play in London’s St John’s Smith Square, one in which he enthusiastically out-speeded the Sacconi Quartet in the Dvorák Piano Quintet; another in Hereford; a third in Brecon. I gave him a complete Liszt CD set as he loved the music; and modest amounts of money.
In his early 20s he shifted his focus from the piano to conducting. He worked with the great Bernard Haitink at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, achieving international fame at 26 when the maestro had a fall before conducting Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. ‘Let Kerem do it,’ he is reported to have said. ‘He’s up to it.’ He even featured in the recent excellent BBC Two documentary The Enigmatic Maestro on Haitink.
He had been a success in competitions before that, a finalist in the Donatella Flick
LSO Conducting Competition, and in 2017 the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. Still in his mid-20s, he has conducted at Glyndebourne and with the Welsh National Opera in Verdi’s La forza del destino (which he first heard on a disc I lent him); and in lockdown with the LSO. Since 2019 he has been chief conductor of the Tiroler Symphonieorchester, Innsbruck. He is wonderfully energetic on the podium, and orchestras fall in love with him at first sight.
I cannot guarantee of course that every one of your readers who sponsors a young musician will see them mature into a great musician. Still less can I guarantee they will hit the jackpot twice. I did, however – lucky me! As chair of Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, I and
my wife sponsored a scholarship through the Trinity Laban Scholarship Fund trust for a postgraduate pianist.
Iyad Sughayer, now 27, is a Jordanian Palestinian, though he has long been in Britain, starting as a student at Chethams in Manchester. He won Trinity Laban’s top prize, the Gold Medal, without any help from me. He has been supported by the City Music Foundation and is in demand for recitals – performing online even during lockdown. His playing reminds me of one of his illustrious teachers, Martino Tirimo, whose wonderful complete Beethoven set appeared recently, and his tone that of the great Imogen Cooper. His name will be familiar to close readers of this magazine, for his inaugural recording of the piano works of Khachaturian got five stars in the reviews section.
The purpose of this piece is not to promote these young maestros, though a bit of that will not go amiss. The message to the readers is: if you are a music lover, and if as you get older you can spare really quite modest amounts of cash, do think of sponsoring young musicians. If you can’t or don’t want to take on an individual, an organisation like YCAT, the Young Concert Artists Trust, is a good substitute.
Young musicians, especially now, need help. Young musicians deserve help. In my years at Trinity Laban I met many with the same qualities: determination, persistence, drive, sensitivity. Curiously, those who don’t become professional musicians are amongst the most sought-after by employers for other jobs, because they have developed two capacities that employers find invaluable: for hard work and for teamwork, playing with others.
I have to say, however, that my young musicians have done more for me than I have for them. They are quite unnecessarily grateful. They are dear and wonderful friends. Following their life and progress makes me turn from immediate problems to a more optimistic future. And then there is the music they make, all the more pleasurable to me because I know them.
Just before my 70th birthday, I was taken dangerously ill with kidney failure, a liver infection and pneumonia. But we were just able to go ahead with my birthday celebration where Iyad played for a handful of friends in my home in Wales. The pleasure he gave was profound, not least to me; and all because I was able to sponsor him earlier. If you can, think about doing the same. You will not only be helping deserving young musicians. You will be opening a new world of satisfaction for yourself.
Lord Lipsey is giving his fee for this article to YCAT
‘‘ If you are a music lover and can spare quite modest amounts of cash, do consider sponsoring a young musician ’’