TIRED OF LONDON BUT NOT OF LIFE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 444, 26 December 1947, Page 7

TIRED OF LONDON BUT NOT OF LIFE

HEN a viola player leaves a secure post in the BBC and settles down beside one in an outer suburb of Auckland, she cannot hope to avoid questions, particularly when her attempts to reach New Zealand have been prolonged and unorthodox. Winifred Stiles, who has been principal viola in the BBC Theatre Orchestra, was known by chamber music enthusiasts in New Zealand to be preparing for the journey early in 1946. She hoped to come in the yacht Nebula (37 tons). Then there was brief word that she was ill. The Nebula sailed without her and was wrecked in a gale on the coast of England. Miss Stiles arrived by air a few days ago. The story seemed to need filling out. First I asked Miss Stiles, "Why New Zealand?" "Well, I had to leave England-yes, T’'ll explain that later. I didn’t want to go to the Continent. I don’t think I like the American way of life. I knew 1 would not like the distinctions of race and class in South Africa. I’ve never been drawn to Australia. So that left only New Zealand. It had to be a place where there was sunshine."

"Didn’t anyone warn you _ about Auckland?" "Yes. I know what you mean. Friday and Saturday were dreadful, weren't they? But when the sun came out after that it was sunshine, wasn’t it?" She knew no New Zealanders until she had set her heart on this country for other reasons. After that she made it her business to meet some, and her decision was strengthened. "Of course’ I should have known they would have to be people like that." She wrote to names here that they gave her, and although one or two replies were discouraging, others hinted that she might find what she wanted, which was something quite different from what she was used to. Everyone was helpful, but the shipping companies could do nothing. Somebody told her about the Nebula, and she paid £5006 for the hope of reaching New Zealand in it. The journey might take six months, 12 months, 12 years. The owner would do his best to get there. Nothing was guaranteed. She became ill before the ship sailed and was told she might try to sell her passage to someone else.

"About a hundred people rang me up about it, but it was getting on into winter then, very cold and foggy. and nobody seemed as keen as all that to leave England in a yacht just then. I said good-bye to the £500. And then it all ended tragically. The yacht grounded on Christmas Day, and the people in it had to swim about half a mile. They lost everything, including’ their passage money. When I thought of that swim I stopped regretting the £500." One of the shipwrecked passengers came to see Miss Stiles. They had met only two or three times before, but they determined to make another attempt on Auckland, working in together. The sudden partnership was rash enough, they both knew, but not more so than the plot that had just failed. Miss Stiles’s friend in May of this year, came to Auckland, where she bought a section and built the house they are now living in. I didn’t need to gasp. Miss Stiles takes none of the good things for granted. "Of course, I know that we’ve been terribly lucky and my friend must have worked very hard. People were unbelievably helpful to her, though." Ten Years with BBC Miss Stiles began her career under Barbirolli. Just as she was leaving col-

lege he chose her as principal viola for the Covent Garden Opera Company he was forming then in 1922, and she was with him for some years. She has just had a few months with the New London Opera Company in the Cambridge Theatre, and for 10 years she has been with the BBC’s permanent Theatre Orchestra. "Did you hear the BBC recording last night of Chu Chin Chow? ‘That was one of many I helped to make. We did a good deal of light stuff, but I didn’t mind that because it was so perfectly ‘done. I don’t mind so much what the job is, as long as it is done in the best way possible. I cannot bear doing a good thing badly, apathetically. And that Theatre Orchestra is the brightest spot in the BBC because of the personality of Stanford Robinson, the director." London Became Intolerable I asked Miss Stiles what had made London intolerable for a born Londoner and a professional musician. "I simply knew that if I went on working in the same place in the same way any longer I would be finished with music. It was going dead. Without music London has nothing I: want. Therefore, it was best to get out, come to life, and save the music. It’s not easy. The BBC pays you so well that even if you stop enjoying the work, you’ve enough money for bought plea-sures-that’s if you like the pleasures money can buy.. I don’t. I know I shan’t want to go back. Already I’ve found at least one corner’ in Auckland — where music flourishes in the way I like -in a free, adventurous way, plenty of fun and hard work, and no greed. That's the thing that can spoil musical life quicker than anything . else-greed. There’s a great feeling of freedom about this place. . know already I was right to come." "But why did you stop enjoying the work?"

"It was pretty tough living in London, you know. Every day I’d have to queue for the bus for half-an-hour at leastevery single day-and the women all round me would be talking, Points, Points, Points. When I’d get to rehearsal everyone was the same way-long faces, grey faces, moans and miseries. We were all tired-and cold. When you can’t feel the end of your viola unless you hold it in the gas oven, it isn’t funny." I hoped Miss Stiles’s viola wouldn’t have to rely on the services of our gas ovens; but I wanted to hear more about the way musicians were moving round, and orchestras changing. She told me that many of her «colleagues would come if they knew they could find a living here. Changing Orchestras "There’s movement going on all the time. Any orchestra can become set in its ways, start to die, and then you find that new life’s going into another one and making it better worth listening to. At the moment the Halle is becoming the livest. And during the war it was the London Philharmonic-and _ the Liverpool one. You wouldn’t.. expect that, would you?" | I said I didn’t know what I would expect, but we’d heard the Boyd Neel, which was quite beyond our expectations. Miss Stiles wished I had heard them earlier, in England. Some of their regular players had not come on ‘this tour. I wished shé had heard them in New Zealand-if they were as much stimulated by the place as she was, they had probably surpassed themselves here. It sounded like it at times, We agreed that we couldn’t settle this matter. We spoke of the number that had left the Boyd Neel Orchestra at the end of the New Zealand tour, almost as if it were beginning to disintegrate. "But it- never does. The Boyd Neel Orchestra has been through many phases and it always renews itself. It always will-with that conductor." Miss Stiles has settled down at once to regular practice on her instrument and she hopes she is not too late to be fitted in somewhere at the Summer School of Music at Cambridge in January. After that she will know more about our musical life and what she wants to do. In the meantime there is a garden to be made from the bare

field

D.F.

T.