Interview

By JACQUl TAFFEL
Spectrum p4-5, Sydney Morning Herald 27.11.2010

“I like being a bit scared, because it allows you to grow.” – Paul Dyer

Paul Dyer was 17 when his piano teacher, the eccentric but highly respected Nancy Salas, broke the news to him. “She said to me.’You haven’t got the killer instinct, you’re not going to make it,’” Dyer says. “It tore me apart.” This year, Dyer celebrated the 21^st birthday of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, which he founded with general manager Bruce Applebaum in 1989. Back then, Dyer was a gifted young harpsichordist embarking on an international career. His vision was to create Australia’s first professional baroque music orchestra playing instruments of the period.

Since its first concert at the Opera House, performed on a motley assortment of begged and borrowed instruments, the Brandenburg has built a subscription audience of more than 35,000. Its musicians, gathered from around Australia, have played with a shining array of soloists, from recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey to French counter tenor Philippe Jaroussky, and toured Europe with German opera star Andreas Scholl. This year the orchestra won its fifth “best classical recording” ARlA award for Tapas, a collection of short musical “tastes” from Spain, Italy and Austria. Dyer, now preparing for the 12th annual Noël! Noël! Concert series, performed by the orchestra and choir in churches in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle, has clearly ‘made it’. But he still agrees with the first half of his teacher’s pronouncement. Devastating as it was, it provoked a response that has underpinned his professional life. “I thought, ‘You know what, lady? I don’t need the killer instinct. It’s a kind of 19th Century thing. I don’t want that,’” Dyer says. He’s more an 18th Century type: his orchestra is named for J. S. Bach’s famous concertos, written between 1713 and 1721. Dyer’s personal style is passionate exuberance and while he may lack: murderous qualities, he’s never been afraid of daunting tasks, such as learning to ski in his 40s, or setting up an orchestra from scratch. “I like being a bit scared, because it allows you to grow:’ he says.

Several things distinguish the Brandenburg as an orchestra. There’s the repertoire, which goes back as far as the 8th century but seldom ventures past the 18th. The players’ instruments date from the baroque period (about 1600 to 1750) or are faithful reproductions, such as the beautiful fortepiano Dyer plays on stage, modelled on Mozart’s favourite instrument. But what stands out at concert after concert is the impression that this bunch of musicians is having a really good time. They look at each other and smile, they laugh when Dyer tells the audience a funny story, even though they’ve heard it before. There’s a warmth and sense of fun not often associated with classical performance; Dyer’s great achievement has been to marry this with serious musicianship and meticulous research. He digs up obscure works from around the world and, wherever possible, the orchestra plays from copies of the original manuscripts, with the composer’s scribbled notes. The determination to lead his orchestra with a light touch came from bitter experience. He recalls playing as a soloist with an Australian orchestra and Russian conductor, who didn’t “get” Dyer’s colourful interpretation of the music. “I thought, ‘I hate this,’” he says. It happened overseas too. “I was working under these conductors all the time … You weren’t allowed to look at your colleague or show you were having fun or crying or going through different emotions and I thought, ‘This is not fun.’”

After graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium with a double degree, Dyer spent five years studying and playing in Europe before the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s iconic conductor, Stuart Challender, invited him to direct a concert for the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Richard Tognetti, also called back from Europe for the gig, at Dyer’s suggestion, was concertmaster on first violin. On the plane back, Dyer hatched his plan for a baroque orchestra and started organising it almost as soon as he landed. Tognetti ended up in charge of the well-established ACO. The two young conductors had known each other since their teens when they both- studied at the Con. Dyer denies any rivalry between them. He continued to play for the ACO with Tognetti for 13 years; at the Brandenburg’s Inaugural concert. Tognetti was concertmaster.

Dyer held no auditions when he formed the Brandenburg – he knew who “his people” were. The pay was lousy, so he knew they really wanted to be there. As well as playing baroque music to the highest standard, he wanted to appeal to people who might not be familiar with classical music. He told his eager players: “If you feel naughty, show naughty. If you feel happy, show me happy and I’ll be happy with you and we’ll all create a different sound.” Violinist Madeleine Easton, now based in London, was taught by Dyer at the Sydney Conservatorium before joining the Brandenburg and rising to the rank of first violin. “He is incredibly communicative during a performance,” she says. “You look in his face and nothing needs to be said, it’s all there.”

Dyer strives for a connection to his audience, too, and chats to them at each concert. This year he has also discarded shoes and socks to dance vigorously on stage and convinced celebrated German tenor Markus Brutscher to sing a lullaby he composed for his daughter as an encore for the Brandenburg’s final Mozart, Love & Paris concert. “I was wetting my pants!” says Brutscher, who took two weeks off from performing The Magic Flute in Berlin to appear with the Brandenburg. “In Europe, you would get crucified doing a Mozart program then singing a Brutscher.” He says Dyer made him feel more confident than anyone else. “His knowledge is enormous. He knows exactly what he’s doing but he’s not dogmatic,” the singer says. “He is there to entertain people.”

Dyer says: “My parents gave really good parties, they knew the ingredients. Somehow I picked that up.” The middle child of three, Dyer grew up on Sydney’s north shore. His mother, Eileen, was a professional pianist and singer; his father, Bill, was a hobbyist drummer but good enough to help out when Eileen’s band needed a stand-in. The night they met, Eileen was engaged to he married in two weeks. Though she and Bill barely spoke, she called off the wedding. They didn’t meet again for two years, when Bill spotted Eileen on the pavement from his bus window. Yelling for the driver to stop, he got off and asked if she remembered him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

With family stories such as these, it’s little wonder young Paul grew up with a theatrical sensibility. He started playing piano at four, was expected to practise every day and his mother “bulldozed her way in” to find her children teachers at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Though at one stage Dyer aspired to pop stardom, he was obsessively focused on his classical education. Backstage before a Victor Chang fundraising dinner in 1996, where Princess Diana was the guest of honour, he found himself next to an English bloke, who said, “You’re the classical guy, right?” and introduced himself as Sting. “I said, ‘that’s a funny name:” Dyer says. “The girl who was doing my hair, I remember, just stopped. He must have thought I you some kind of weirdo – well, I was.” He didn’t find this a problem while growing up: “I existed within a world of people like me, so I never felt like an outsider. And I love people, so never felt lonely.

Leading an orchestra has taught Dyer lessons about managing relationships. “l had a little … not a meltdown, it was just a short period where I was approaching some of the musicians in the wrong way,” he says. “I was being emotive and people didn’t want me to be.” A psychologist helped him deal with the situation. “I started to understand that not everyone is the same as me. – Now, in what he calls “the middle phase of my life”, Dyer says he’s trying to be more relaxed, symbolised by the recent Tapas CD. Intended to be a traditional recording of baroque pieces, the direction changed when Dyer’s father died during the rehearsal period, Tapas ended up full of improvisation… I just started to think of Dad and drumming,” Dyer says. He’s now considering a CD of classical remixes and has been asked to go to China next year to look for links between old instruments from the East and West. The baroque boundaries are blurring. Though he has proved his piano teacher spectacularly wrong, Dyer says part of his life is still incomplete: “That’s my personal life because my long-term, 13 year relationship finished three years ago.”

It would take a lot of energy to keep up with Dyer, whose existence revolves around the orchestra. “I’m going out with a donor tonight – I’d love to be at home, eating Chinese food on the couch watching television, I never do that,” he says. “It was bliss this morning; I washed down the patio.”

The Noël! Noël! concerts start in Wollongong on December 11 before moving to Newcastle and Sydney.