Breathing lessons at the keyboard

Sarah Watkins

The Auckland Philharmonia has tried new tactics for this weekend's concerts, the second in its Midwinter Masterpieces series. Four works by Bach, Haydn and Mozart were chosen by audience poll.

A Haydn symphony is always welcome (in this case, the Surprise) and many will be curious to catch Sarah Watkins of the New Zealand Trio as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto K 467. "Being on stage with an orchestra is a very different experience," says Watkins, and performing Shostakovich with the St Matthew's Chamber Orchestra last year was "a great way to get back into it. The biggest challenge for me is playing from memory, something I seldom have to do as a chamber musician and accompanist."

She could not be happier tackling Mozart. "It's such glorious music, I hear his operatic writing and all these different characters entering on the stage as I'm playing."

But there is a real danger of underestimating just what it takes to play this composer. "Audiences don't always fully appreciate the difficulties of music that sounds so simple and clear," Watkins says. "For me the main thing is the clarity and purity of the sound, and the beauty of the tone. It's more challenging than any sort of rich romantic work where you can just get stuck in and play. There's a lot more control required with Mozart. It's such vibrant music, so full of character and energy."

She admits she thinks of this weekend's concerto as "chamber music to the max. It's so beautifully written with ensemble work in mind."

It is this very aspect of the composer's concertos that she enjoyed when she heard Peter Frankl playing one at an Aspen Music Festival a few years ago. "He was having dialogues with the other players," Watkins explains. "You could see him actually engaging with the musicians around him."

Watkins did her graduate studies at New York's Juilliard School, where she specialised in chamber music and accompaniment, blanketed under the intriguing term of "collaborative piano".

"Everybody has this image of a very intense institution," Watkins says, "and Juilliard is a very high-pressured place where everyone wants to shine, but for me it was a fantastic experience. As an accompanist I had access to the finest young musicians in the country, and their teachers.

"I learned so much off people like Felix Galimir, who was in the group that premiered Ravel's String Quartet. It was those experiences that made it a great place to be.

"You get different ideas of sound when you are exposed to orchestral instruments. Your ears become more open to colour. And you become aware of the whole notion of breathing.

"Young pianists don't realise that - although woodwind and string players do. We have to breathe to let the phrases really sing."

There is certainly ample opportunity to let those melodies sing out in Mozart's C major Concerto, especially the beautiful Andante. It featured in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan, giving the melody a popularity that its composer could hardly have imagined.

* Auckland Philharmonia at the Bruce Mason Centre, Sat 4pm and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Sun 2pm