Chapter Six

I finally gained admission to study the piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1969 after two years of intensive private lessons with Professor Sancan. The entrance examinations to the Conservatoire were quite challenging and extremely competitive for the piano and the violin classes since they drew the biggest number of candidates. 

The word for exams in French is concours and this was one scenario I faced several times all through my studies in Paris. There were always two rounds at any concours, the first being to select the better students and to weed out the weaker ones. The second round was even more daunting. There was the morceau imposé, or ‘imposed piece’, which was a new work that had to be learnt and memorised in exactly a month’s time! It was a piece which the candidates had never previously studied. This morceau imposé was selected by the panel of seven judges known as the jury and one had to obtain a vote of at least 4/7 to be successful at any concours. 

Besides the morceau imposé, there was also a Sightreading test which meant one had to sightread a piece of music which one had never seen nor studied previously, at the correct tempo or speed, determined by the Président du Jury, the chief judge. To prepare for this Sightreading test I was sent to meet Madame Genevieve Joy, who was a very pleasant, kind-looking lady of quiet and unflustered demeanour. Her sightreading prowess was astonishing.. she could read any music composition at first sight fluently, to the correct speed and without missing a note! Madame Joy taught both Sightreading and Chamber Music when I was a student at the Conservatoire. She liked me a lot and invited me to her apartment where I met her husband the famous French composer, Henri Dutilleux.

In 1969 when I attempted the entrance exams I think that there were about two hundred and eighty candidates for the first round of the piano concours, from which about eighty-eight candidates were selected for the second round, and thereafter only thirty-eight were accepted as students to the ten piano classes at the Conservatoire. All the exam results were pinned up on the notice board at the entrance foyer to the Conservatoire and my morceau imposé was the 3rd Ballade by Chopin.

I never liked the piano in the exam hall at the Conservatoire. It was a black Grotrian-Steinweg grand which had a very stiff action, its keys were difficult to press and its tone sounded dry and brittle. I never liked the atmosphere in the waiting room where all the candidates were assembled, many accompanied by either their parents or a relative or their friends. I never had anyone with me so I just sat and waited until I was called, and kept my coat and gloves on as it was always cold in that room. It was as though we were awaiting execution in the exam hall!

At the Conservatoire I studied under the formidable piano professor, Madame Jeanne-Marie Darré, who was quite different from the affable and talkative Professor Sancan. Madame Darré’s appearance alone struck both fear and respect. She was always very elegantly attired from head to toe, her silver-haired coiffure was impeccable and coloured each week with a light blue tint most of the time, or sometimes golden or a light purple. She was a very strict disciplinarian and a great stickler for Punctuality with a capital ‘P’! “Vous partez à l’heure pour être à l’heure!..” (Leave on time to be on time!) and, woe betide, should you arrive after Madame’s arrival, you were immediately dismissed from attending class!

She didn’t brook any excuses save if you were really ill and then again she had to be convinced that you were really ill! I remember attending class once with a raging fever of 102 degrees and feeling really sick. My vision blurred and the fever made me shiver. I stumbled all through my playing, which of course, exasperated Madame Darré. I didn’t dare tell her that I was feeling ill until she came right up to me and asked, Then why did you come to class? 

Because, Madame, I was afraid you wouldn’t excuse my absence! 

Thereafter I was allowed to call her repetitrice whenever I was indisposed, fortunately not often.

During the three years I studied at Darré’s piano class, I learnt a lot of piano technique and the rigors of disciplined practice. She had studied under the famous French doyenne of piano technique, Marguerite Long, whose book of piano technical exercises all her students had to practise. Madame Darré had a very tight schedule of concerts, mostly in the United States where she enjoyed considerable success especially with her interpretation of the Second Piano Concerto by Saint-Saëns. Hers was a remarkable performance and to date, is still one of the best recordings that I have heard. Of the four technically demanding piano concertos by Saint-Saëns, I prefer the Second Concerto. The introduction in the First Movement begins with a solo passage by the piano that sounds like a prayer. The last Movement is like a cat-and-mouse chase with exhilarating exchanges between the orchestra and the piano. Darré’s impeccable piano technique scincillates flawlessly. 

I had the unexpected privilege of attending one of Madame Darré’s practice runs of the same piano concerto. One afternoon after piano class, Darré detained me to ask if I could turn the pages for her during her practice of the concerto because her usual page turner couldn’t attend. The orchestral version is condensed to a piano score for a second pianist, so I was amazed when a little wizened elderly lady entered the room and sat down to rehearse the concerto with Darré. I turned the pages for this lady whose physical appearance belied her physical strength. What ensued left me even more astonished! 

Madame Darré loved to wear rings on her fingers and put as many as she could, save on her thumbs. However, as it’s never comfortable to wear a ring when playing the piano, after each rapid passage, Darré removed one ring and put it aside while continuing to play! All through the rehearsal of the concerto, Darré and her accompanist had a very lively conversation. They were obviously good friends so their chatter was filled with bits of gossip and jokes and much hilarity, all without skipping a beat of the music! If there was a section which Darré wanted to repeat, she merely hummed the orchestral bit and her friend knew precisely where to find its page, then the two continued where they’d left off in their animated conversation. Never had I witnessed a rehearsal like this, and never had I seen a more humane or jovial side of Madame Darré. 

At least she thought that I was a good page turner, so too her ancient accompanist who was full of praise for my diligent attention. Thereafter I was often asked to turn pages, for the other students at our piano classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2 to 6 in the afternoons. Mind you, each student only attended piano class once a week but I was often called more than once! I had to juggle my time between my other classes as every student had to fulfill twenty hours of class time a week at the Conservatoire. Somehow I managed my time well enough because I found that by turning pages, it was a learning experience for me. As I was seated right next to the player at the piano, I could read the scores of diverse compositions of varying musical styles. Darré never gave the same piece of music twice so each student played a different program. I could observe closely how these pieces were taught and how their technical difficulties were to be practised, down to the smallest details like the fingering. By turning pages, this improved my relationship as a student with Madame Darré because I showed her that I was eager to learn as much as I could and I was amongst the earliest to arrive at all my piano classes. 

Madame Darré’s repetitrice was Madame Latarjet, a much younger lady who was a soft-spoken brunette, also elegantly attired although less flamboyantly. She attended every piano class of Madame Darré, and took detailed notes of each student’s corrections which were thoroughly scrutinised during our individual lessons with her, at her apartment once a week. Never had I been drilled on piano technique quite so meticulously! 

How did I ever juggle my time I cannot recall, but I was certainly extremely busy and it often seemed as though there weren’t enough hours in a day! Piano practice was more demanding now and I needed every possible moment I could get to complete my piano assignments for each weekly piano class with Madame Darré. I must say that Madame Latarjet was a very good repetitrice and ensured that every student was well prepared to face Madame Darré who brooked no excuses.. the lady had a short fuse! To ensure that none of us erased any of her markings on our books, she wrote them in ink with a ballpoint pen! Everything was written in large letters and errors were circled sometimes in red. Madame Latarjet was no better! Back then I resented all these untidy markings in my music books but today they serve as nostalgic memories of my French professors.

To fulfill twenty hours of classes a week at the Conservatoire besides the piano, I had nine hours of Solfège and about six hours of Sightreading per week. During my first year, everyone had to attend weekly lectures on History of Music at the main auditorium. I took the evening session of about two-an-a-half hours on Mondays because that was the only time I could fit into my already packed schedule in the daytime. 

History of Music was quite a dry subject to study, or rather, the way it was taught at the Conservatoire was completely boring and tedious. The lecturer was the renowned Professor Nobert Dufourcq, who was the author of several books and who was much revered at the Conservatoire. Students sat at spaced-out seats which rose in tiers in the main auditorium. I had to find a way to balance some books on my knees to have a flat surface to jot down notes. I soon discovered that this was futile because I couldn’t hear a word of what was said despite the portable mike Professor Dufourcq used, simply because the man mumbled his words and most of the time moved his bent head in a curious fashion, jerking it forwards and backwards like a turkey, while he paced up and down on the stage or up and down the tiered aisles of the auditorium. His muffled speech came and went unintelligibly, and sometimes he buried his mouth in the depths of the rolled collar of his sweater! From time to time he went onstage to play a musical excerpt from a LP33 vinyl record on a turntable. I found myself nodding off and falling asleep only to be awakened when the music excerpts were played.

I was at a loss since I wasn’t able to understand anything at those lectures on History of Music. We were all told to buy Professor Dufourcq’s textbook on music history but that wasn’t much of a help. Finally I became quite tired of poring over that textbook in French, in fact I was getting tired of reading anything in French! I decided that I would scout for an English bookshop in Paris. To get this information I walked into a French bookshop one Saturday afternoon, and was lucky that the person there directed me to the English bookshop, W.H.Smith. It was lovely to finally get to a bookshop that had everything in English and better still, I found a small paperback book on History of Music in the History section! I quickly bought it and it proved very useful, and because it was well written, it was interesting. I have the same book until today and I’ve used it whenever I had to teach History of Music to my diploma students.

To my complete astonishment, I scored top marks at the History of Music exam! I was just hoping to pass the exam since my written French was gramatically weak. I remember adding a note at the top of my paper to kindly excuse my errors in written French as I was a foreign student. Anyway, my result at the History exam impressed Madame Darré, who praised me in front of the entire class, for doing so well. She remarked that it showed that I had brains! I never told anyone how disastrous those lectures had been in reality and that it was fortuitous that I had found that little paperback book written in English! 

Whenever we needed any music books there was a small corner shop called La Flute de Pan (Pan’s Flute), not far from the Conservatoire. The whole shop was like a scene from a Charles Dicken’s book. There was hardly any space to move inside the shop where shelves rose from the floor to the ceiling and spilled over with books in all shapes and sizes. There was a wizened old man who sat at the single counter while his younger assistants looked for the desired items, balancing themselves on ancient looking ladders leaning precariously beside the overloaded shelves. It was a remarkable bookshop as it had every music score, correct editions and all! Never was anything out of stock. In those days there were no computers so everything was handwritten, including the receipts. I was always impressed with that quaint little bookshop at the corner of Rue de Madrid.

I had nine hours a week of Solfège, and this subject was the most gruelling regime I experienced. One had to pass the Solfège concours to be allowed to take the instrumental exams. Written classes consisted of taking down music dictation complete with notes and rhythm. I struggled with the rhythmic dictation but the notes were easy for me to recognise since I had perfect pitch, but the rhythms were very complicated to discern.

At the aural classes we had to read note exercises out loud and conduct the rhythm with one hand at the same time. This was mind boggling and tongue twisting! Both the Solfège professor and his repetitrice checked every student’s monotone recitation of those complex rhythmic exercises. 

I was in a class of about twenty-five students and whenever we had this aural drill, it was as though we were all chanting mantras at different monotone pitches! Much as I detested this subject, I persevered and in time this training gave me a sharper perception of rhythmic precision.

My Sightreading classes were three hours at a stretch. To improve all the weaker students to read music at first sight, we had to sightread piano duets to a given tempo or speed, and a stronger player was paired with a weaker one at the piano. Initially I found this to be extremely difficult since I was a very weak sightreader. I hardly played any notes at all and I found myself using only one hand, either my right or my left, to play whatever I could! At each lesson we had to read a variety of piano duets. Most classrooms at the Conservatoire had two grand pianos so the professor had two pairs of duets at each lesson, each pair sightreading different duets. The result was a dreadful cacophony of noise rather than any musical playing! 

To improve my Sightreading, I had to accompany instrumentalists who needed to practise their examination programs with a pianist. I found myself accompanying students who knew their parts fluently on their instruments while I struggled with sightreading the piano part. It was very daunting and initally I was hopeless at reading anything correctly at the piano! I probably exasperated the person I was accompanying although none ever complained and was very polite! Over time, I think I must have improved.

Later on when it was my turn to teach Sightreading to my students, I did piano duets with every student I taught. It’s a very effective method of getting a weaker player to sightread because the stronger player will literally drag the weaker one through the duet, irregardless!

This was my regime at the Conservatoire for three years and with each year the work became more challenging. I needed more time to practise the piano and I couldn’t do this while staying at the finishing school. I needed a piano in my room. So I applied for accomodation at the hostel, aptly named Foyer Musical, the Musical Hostel, which catered for music students. There was a long waitlist since it’s never easy to find a place in Paris where a musician can practise without disturbing the neighbours, but I finally got a room and I moved out of the Residence at 12 Rue Monsieur.

To be continued

To see pictures of my professors and myself as a student at the Paris Conservatoire please refer to the page “Studies Abroad” on my website.

If you wish to hear Madame Jeanne-Marie Darré’s recording of the Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos, here is the link on YouTube. It opens with the Second Piano Concerto.

Saint-Saëns - Piano Concertos No.1,2,3,4,5 + Presentation (Century’s recording : Jeanne-Marie Darré)