As a young Samoan girl, growing up in Tauranga and then West Auckland, Teuila Blakely found music, especially classical music, to be a real equalizer.
"I have a white father, and I have a brown mother. And whenever we were with my brown mother, she was treated, and we were treated completely differently to when we were with our white father," said Blakely, "And that's how you really learn that there is a difference. And that's why playing classical music and going to piano lessons was such a relief for me, because I never felt that kind of judgment in those spaces. I was just accepted.”
Larry Reese and Teuila Blakely Photo: Stephen A'Court / Noelle McCarthy
Blakely found solace through her identification with a German composer who lived and worked two centuries previously.
“We had quite a hard, quite a violent household," she said, "I remember reading about Beethoven and reading about his upbringing and I really felt for this composer.
"I felt I really related to the way he composed, you could feel just so much heartache and that dark brooding passion in his music. Beethoven, for me, is struggle. Thats what I hear, that’s what I relate to.”
Nor is Blakely the only one to feel a personal identification with Ludwig Van Beethoven. It’s the same for Larry Reese, who plays timpani with the NZSO.
“I've had a very unique relationship with Beethoven. I have this sort of transcendental relationship where I physically feel he sits on my shoulder," said Reese, "The timpani writing from Beethoven is very demanding, even though it's reasonably simple compared to what we play today. [During performances] I have this sense of his looking over my shoulder, making sure I'm doing exactly what he asks of us all the time.”
For Reese, the demands of playing the symphony are equaled by the satisfaction it brings him as a musician.
“Playing [it] is a privilege. But it comes with a great deal of pressure that I put on myself, happily, because it's so joyous to play. It's a great timpani part and it's fun. And you know, when we all started out as 12 year olds and youth orchestra playing Beethoven’s Fifth, it was great fun. I want to hold on to that joy as long as I can,” said Reese.
For Blakely, the main feeling she associates with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is gratitude.
“I am so grateful for those classical music teachers, for my teacher, Mrs. Brown. For all the people in those spaces who just treated someone like me like a normal person. I remember how much I used to love going to music and love going to piano lessons. And then as soon as I left those spaces and went back into normal school, it was just back to prejudice, back to being treated as less than. I never felt that in classical music spaces.”
NZSO timpanist Larry Reese Photo: Latitude Creative
It's also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts or any good podcast app.
Crescendo is voiced by RNZ Concert’s Clarissa Dunn with sound mix by Marc Chesterman. It was written and produced by Noelle McCarthy from an original concept by Bird of Paradise.
Photo: Bird Of Paradise Productions
