Clemency Burton-hill
As BBC Young Musician celebrates its 40th birthday, four former winners share their memories of the competition with Clemency Burton-hill
Broadcaster and writer
‘There was a carnival atmosphere at Broadcasting House recently when four winners of BBC Young Musician gathered to share hair-raising tales, compelling insights and belly-laughs aplenty.’
Trombonist Michael Hext was the first; cellist Sheku Kanneh-mason has been the most recent. In all, there have been 20 BBC Young Musician winners since Hext blew and slid his way to glory in front of the TV cameras back in 1978. Though its format and presentation has changed over the years, the bi-annual event has remained a major event in the musical calendar.
Right from the outset the standard of competition has been astoundingly high, and remains so to this day. The majority of those who have taken the title have gone on to enjoy glittering solo careers, as have many of those who didn’t win: pianists Stephen Hough, Barry Douglas and Benjamin Grosvenor, violinist Tasmin Little and cellist Paul Watkins are just a handful of those who spring to mind.
This month will see another group of exceptional performers impress live, radio and TV audiences, as BBC Young Musician returns for its 21st installment. To celebrate four decades since the first competition, we sent Clemency Burton-hill to meet winners whose moments of glory themselves span 34 years: oboist Nicholas Daniel (winner in 1980), clarinetist Emma Johnson (1984), cellist Laura van der Heijden (2012) and Martin James Bartlett
(2014). Burton-hill herself has, of course, a close connection with BBC Young Musician – her father, Humphrey Burton, was the competition’s original presenter on TV, and she has presented it from 2010. When she and our four former winners meet, they all get on famously…
Clemency Burton-hill: Let’s start at the beginning. What are your memories of your BBC Young Musician experience?
Nicholas Daniel: I remember watching the very first competition in 1978, though my own experience of taking part feels a bit of a blur. I think had a sort of intuition that it might go well. My psychic Great Auntie Maz may have had something to do with that – she’d probably been on the old blackberry wine, but she told me things were going to happen for me.
‘My psychic Great Auntie Maz told me things were going to happen for me’
Emma Johnson: The thing that comes into my mind is that I very nearly didn’t even make it to the audition. My train into London got derailed, so we were stuck for ages and then had to get out at some station. I had no idea where I was! I eventually got to the auditions way past the time I was supposed to be going in, but they were so nice. The jury had gone for their lunch but agreed to see me afterwards. I think I played Flight of the Bumblebee and some Debussy.
Laura van der Heijden: Young Musician of the Year was something I’d watched since I was very young. One particular final I remember was the 2004 one with Ben Grosvenor and
Nicky Benedetti. I don’t necessarily remember thinking that I wanted to be there, but I was absolutely glued to the TV. As a competitor, I felt much more comfortable in the audience rounds. My self-consciousness really started after the competition, so I was lucky to be of an age where I happily just played and tried to concentrate on that without worrying what anybody thought. I didn’t have any expectations at all!
Martin James Bartlett: My journey began in 2012, when I was knocked out in the category finals. I said ‘never again’. When the 2014 competition rolled around, my teacher happened to leave the application form in the practice room, and by the end of the lesson I said: ‘I think I want to do it again…’ She said: ‘Good. I’ve already started filling it out in your name.’ The further you progress in the competition, the more you realise there’s a chance you could win, that it’s perhaps within reach. That’s both exciting and nerve-wracking. But by the final, the backstage camaraderie and support is amazing.
What sort of impact do you feel your musical background had on your approach to competing in Young Musician?
Laura: I’d had quite a sheltered musical upbringing in that I didn’t go to a specialist musical school and wasn’t around many other musicians, and that meant I didn’t compare myself to other performers my age. I was just happily going along on my journey without worrying about anybody else.
Emma: In a funny kind of way, although Young Musician is a competition, it really favours people who aren’t very competitive – those who just like going out to perform in front of people. I’d also just been to a normal school.
Nicholas: I had the benefit of growing up with parents who knew nothing about music – if
I’d played Bach chorales on the piano and told my mum I was doing my oboe practice, she’d have believed me. And then, like Martin, I went to the Purcell School, which has always had a slightly different reputation to some of the other specialist schools. I certainly wasn’t coached about how to talk on TV and all that sort of stuff.
Do you think it’s different if you don’t go to a music school? Is there less jealousy in a regular school environment?
Laura: I suddenly had quite a few more ‘friends’ after winning; the whole TV thing is big in the UK and that does affect how people see you. But no, it didn’t have a huge effect on my relationships with people at school.
Emma: I think my friends were just amazed. Something like 12 million people watched my final and that does have a big impact. Even now, quite a lot of years later, people come up to me after concerts and say ‘I saw you win Young Musician Of The Year’. That’s incredible.
Martin: That’s so true: whatever you do next, even if it’s playing with conductor Bernard Haitink, the thing people focus on is ‘I saw you win BBC Young Musician’. It’s such a massive part of British culture.
So are there any downsides to the myriad professional opportunities that winning BBC Young Musician offers?
Martin: Well, suddenly there are lot of people saying things like ‘We’ll get you playing at Carnegie Hall next year!’ and making all sorts of unreal promises. Everyone in the music industry loves to give you advice, everyone feels like they know what’s best for you. Eventually, you learn who the trustworthy people are.
Nicholas: Once I realised the opportunities that were there, it was also about balancing those with what was realistically needed for my development. I remember my teacher Janet Craxton asking to see my diary a few months after the final. There
were concerts practically every night – different repertoire, different places up and down the country. She said ‘Well that’s quite enough for now: don’t take anymore unless I tell you.’ As I left that lesson, I felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders because I could just concentrate on being a student again.
So how hard did you find it to strike the balance between professional opportunity and personal development?
Martin: You have to pace yourself. The one thing I’d say to anyone who wins is: don’t grab every opportunity you’re given. When you’re at the age you win, you probably don’t have a huge repertoire, so you need to build that up, learn new pieces and get them to a very high standard. You can’t turn up to a concert and play something terribly because the first time you ever looked at it was two weeks ago.
Emma: I just found it all very celebratory. I did a lot of concerts afterwards – about 50 a year, which I suppose was quite a lot when you’re doing a degree at the same time. We were so deluged by phone calls and sacks full of letters afterwards that my mum had no choice but to become a sort of music agent, to try and make sense of it all! But I wouldn’t change anything about it. I did my first recording as soon as I’d left university, and a lot of TV appearances too, but I didn’t feel rushed into anything.
Laura: Inevitably there are certain expectations around what people want from you after you win, but also what you expect from yourself. I’ve taken a slightly slower route, waiting until just now to release my first album and also deciding to go to Cambridge, rather than not studying at all or going to a music conservatoire. Making those decisions is difficult because you only find out if it was the right one later on.
Nicholas: You have to be true to yourself. I felt most comfortable when I was at the Royal Academy of Music and not going off doing lots of concerts: it felt better to stay and practise for eight hours a day.
Martin: Eight hours? I’m barely awake for eight hours a day!
Let’s talk about the Young Musician performances, then. I’m always struck by the sheer maturity of the artistry on display…
Emma: I think music is one of those things, a bit like maths or chess, where you can be very good at the age of 16 or 17 and people actually want to hear from you because you are that age.
Laura: I agree. Why shouldn’t you be learning the Dvoˇrák Cello Concerto at 13? Of course you can’t expect a 60-year-old’s interpretation from a teenager – there’s no reason why you should – but what’s so wonderful about Young Musician as a competition is it gives people the opportunity to listen to young people’s interpretations of classical music.
Nicholas: I don’t think there is any lack of emotional maturity in the performances on Young Musician. In fact, just how they had the emotional range to do this or that is often what hits viewers in the face.
Derailed trains aside, did any of you have any Young Musician horror stories?
Emma: Yes! It hadn’t occurred to me it would be better to memorise everything. So I took the music on stage for my concerto final, only to discover that the back two pages were missing. Since then, I have always performed everything from memory!
Laura: I remember in my final I looked over to [conductor] Kirill Karabits for an A to tune to, and he started the whole piece. My heart was in my mouth! Also, a week before the category final, for some unknown reason I thought I’d play a game of tennis. I’m a very, very, very bad
‘‘I
took the music on stage for my concerto ĞQDO RQO\ WR discover that the back two pages were missing
’’
tennis player. By the time I got to the category final, I could hardly hold my bow anymore and had to go on stage full of painkillers. I don’t know what on earth possessed me!
And how about those judges? Were you acutely aware of the expert jury sitting there as you played?
Martin: At the time of the competition you don’t think of them as people – you just do your best to impress them. But they were so supportive afterwards. They don’t just tick you off as the winner but really want you to go farther. I found that really lovely .
Nicholas: I remember being on the jury myself when cellist Natalie Clein won it. As soon as she finished playing the camera came straight to me and I was bawling my eyes out. It was just this astonishing wave of emotion that came from her on the stage. I had to try and gather myself for television when what I really needed to do was go and be in a dark room with a cold flannel on my face. Emma and I have since sat on juries together. There is an enormous sense of responsibility and thoughtfulness about it.
Martin, Laura, would you fancy being a judge?
Martin: Yes – it would be a real thrill to have that power! OK, I’m joking, but yeah, it would be tremendous. I’d love to.
Laura: It would be quite fun!
What do you think it says for BBC Young Musician that it has survived 40 years and continues to flourish to this day?
Nicholas: It matches so many of the ideas that are behind the BBC. The BBC is huge on education, on serious art, and it’s the biggest commissioner of new music in the world; those kind of things don’t happen in many other countries. BBC Young Musician still captures the public imagination.
Emma: It also throws up both male and female talent at such a young age. It is harder for women in the industry later, partly because practically everyone you have to network with – all the conductors, most of the composers, the promoters – they’re all men. But if you look at people who have been finalists and winners, it’s broadly equal. I never, ever felt at a disadvantage during the competition for being female, unlike being out there in the real world!
And what do you all think is the most important lesson you yourselves learned from the competition?
Laura: Patience. It’s something I’m still trying to learn. Not just day-to-day patience but patience on a huge scale: to accept that things are the way they are, to try and remember what your priorities are, and to keep perspective about why it is you are a musician. My experience on BBC Young Musician made that happen a lot sooner than it might otherwise have done.
Nicholas: I suddenly felt I could believe in myself. Given the mess that my family was at the time – my parents had just divorced – BBC Young Musician was the way I learned that music had the possibility to save me. I’d always known I wanted to play the oboe and now I knew I actually could do it.
Emma: I agree, it was a real boost to my confidence at a time when I had this burning desire to be a musician, but was worried ‘will I ever be good enough? I don’t know if I can make it…’ Everyone had told me that clarinettists play in orchestras, but BBC Young Musician gave me that springboard that meant I could be an advocate for it as a solo instrument.
Nicholas: That’s absolutely true of the oboe too. I would go so far as to say that BBC Young Musician actually made it possible to be an oboe soloist in general.
Martin: I completely agree. BBC Young Musician made me really believe that what I was doing was good enough. Of course, I loved music immensely beforehand, but after the competition I somehow loved it even more.