Cellist and teacher Rhuna Martin has died at the age of 82
南非裔大提琴家、教育家及亞歷山大技巧教師
The South-African born artist was a highly influential pedagogue at such London institutions as the Royal College of Music and Guildhall School
Martin
won the Elizabeth Allen Scholarship for overseas study and a further
scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London at the age
of 20. In 1956 she began teaching at the College’s Junior Department,
where she came across a young Julian Lloyd Webber. He later credited her as being ‘the first to open my ears to the cello’.
‘Rhuna
Martin changed my views about the cello. First of all, she didn’t
really talk about technique - she talked about music, and that fired my
passion,’ Webber wrote in the Times Educational Supplement.
‘But the thing she did, which was very clever and way beyond her call
of duty, was take me to hear some fine cellists. In her own time she
would take me to the Royal Festival Hall.’
Martin
was a great proponent of Alexander Technique, and introduced the method
to Wells Cathedral School and the Purcell School after obtaining her
qualification from The Constructive Teaching Centre in London in 1984.
She continued to teach in West London until her death.
‘Her interest in the cello never wavered; she taught right up to the end of her life,’ wrote Steven Isserlis in The Guardian.
‘I saw her at many of my concerts and classes; her laser-like attention
was both flattering and challenging. It was always so lovely to meet
her after the event; her gentle warmth and enthusiasm were infectious,
and reassuring.’
原文出自：the Strad
Rhuna Martin obituary
Steven Isserlis
Rhuna
Martin, who has died aged 82, had a brief performing career in her own
right, but it was as a cello teacher that she was to make her
reputation, particularly working with children. She had a gift for
making her students fall in love with the cello, combining a natural
approach to music with a relaxed physical approach. The latter led to an
interest in the Alexander Technique, which she also taught after
qualifying in 1984.
Soon
after completing her own studies at the Royal College of Music, London,
in 1956, she began to teach at the college's junior department, where
one of her first pupils was Julian Lloyd Webber. He later recalled that
she "was the first to open my ears to the cello"; outside the lessons,
she would take him to concerts to hear great cellists (the first being
Pierre Fournier), in order to inspire him.
After
spending some time in orchestras – as co-principal cellist at Sadler's
Wells Opera (subsequently English National Opera), and as one of the
founder members of the Northern Sinfonia – she returned to cello
teaching in the 1970s, and was at different times on the staff of the
Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and the Royal Northern
College of Music in Manchester.
Rhuna
was born in rural South Africa to Charles Martin, a farmer and
translator, and his wife Dorothy (nee Antel), the third of four
daughters. She was educated at the Holy Rosary Convent, Dundee,
Zululand, taking her first cello lessons at the convent. When she was
16, she moved to Durban, where she took cello lessons from Roy Carter;
at the age of 20, she won a scholarship for overseas study in London.
She travelled there with Carter and his family, and settled in London
for the rest of her life.
Awarded
a scholarship to the RCM, she moved into the Imperial Hotel in west
London; the address impressed her mother back in South Africa, but the
"hotel" was in fact mostly a dive used by prostitutes. Postwar London
was not the cheeriest of places, but Rhuna managed to have fun despite
living on a shoestring; she celebrated her 21st birthday by riding on
tube escalators, drinking cheap champagne.
In
recent years, Rhuna was to be encountered at all sorts of musical
events in London. Her interest in the cello never wavered; she taught
right up to the end of her life. I saw her at many of my concerts and
classes; her laser-like attention was both flattering and challenging.
It was always so lovely to meet her after the event; her gentle warmth
and enthusiasm were infectious, and reassuring. I shall always remember
Rhuna's radiant smile – it would fill the room.
A marriage to the flautist William Bennett ended in divorce. She is survived by their two daughters, Vanora, a writer, and Sophie, a linguist and translator.
