"My early life came from a place of deep curiosity fed by material deprivation."
Robert Ainsley

I thought it might be fun over the Summer to interview a number of members of Portland Opera who are responsible for giving us operas of an increasingly high standard, but who you rarely hear from in person. And who better to begin with than Maestro Robert Ainsley, our Associate Music Director and Chorus Master. Rob and I have things in common - both English, went to Cambridge University and have a fondness for cosmos. Talking to him about his youth and early musical life made me realise that, compared to him, I am basically illiterate and have a tin ear. There was so much to talk about with him I have decided to write about him in three installments. Here's the first one. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed my time chatting with Rob. I should mention that it is compiled from notes I took at the time but which made only little sense when I went back and looked at them.

Operaman: Welcome to the Commodore Gentleman’s Club and Grill Room, Rob. Thank you for joining me. Take a swig of that bloody mary and let’s get right to it. Tell me about your early years and what brought you to music.

Ainsley: Well, Operaman, as you know, I was born in Durham, a former mining town in the north of England. It is a beautiful city with a spectacular cathedral (pictured above) and Norman castle. My parents were definitely working-class and not particularly musical – though my mother was a virtuoso spoon player. They were avid music listeners, however, and among my early memories are lying in bed at four o’clock in the morning and hearing the persistent thump-thump-thump of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Cure or Queen rattling my floorboards from below. I would hammer on the floor and yell “Can you keep it down a bit? I’m trying to sleep!” Music had not really become important to me at that age. I was studious and geeky and drawn to computers. However, both my Mum and Dad worked in a local pub – The Culpitts – and Tuesday night there was ‘Diddle Dee Dee Night’, when local guitarists and fiddle players would gather for a kind of ceilidh night of playing and singing and I would always go to these if I could. A regular participant was Mark Knopfler, who became frontman for Dire Straits. By the time I was nine years old my mother had started me on guitar lessons, convinced that I would front the next great pop band.

Operaman: But, given that Robert Plant had already cornered the market on the hair thing, you went for classical music instead?

Ainsley: My first exposure to classical music came when I was about 8 years old, when I found a couple of badly-worn cassette tapes among my mother’s things. One was of Abbey Smith playing the Chopin Piano Concertos and the other a recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. I played them both over and over and over. Had it not been for that serendipitous discovery I have no idea when – or even if – I would have found my way to being a classical musician.

When I was 10 years old, the music teacher at my school thrust a viola in my hand. I quickly became quite adept with it and soon joined the local town youth orchestra. While I wasn’t terribly good at this point, I was fearless and attacked the pieces with alacrity and aplomb! One of the advantages of playing that instrument was that from an early age I was able to read music written in different clefs – viola music being written on its own clef, of course. The principal cellist in this youth orchestra was a lad of about my own age named Dylan Pugh. He would go off to school at St Mary’s College in Scotland (a fine music school) but would later re-enter my life and become an important part of it. Around this time someone took the viola away from me, stuck a violin in my hand and said “Try that!” and while it, naturally, felt different from the larger viola, I soon adapted to it and enjoyed playing it.

When the time came for me to go to high school, there was a strong divergence of opinion between my Mum and my Dad as to where I should go. My father was a socialist who had no truck with “fancy schoolin'” while my mother was set and determined that I would go to Durham School, a fine local private school (‘public school’ in the British argot) that was largely populated by the sons (it was boys only at that time, only becoming co-ed much later) of wealthy local land-owners and the like. My parents could not afford the fees but when the time came that my mother saw that there was an open competition for a place my name was duly entered. I went and took the various tests and shortly thereafter found that I had won a scholarship to attend. This scholarship paid for 50% of the school fees. I soon managed to secure a couple of other scholarships that ultimately paid 130% of the fees. They never actually gave me the balance in cash but I was able to buy things from the school shop and never saw a bill for them!

Operaman: Have another bloody mary, Rob, and tell me about Durham.

Ainsley: I cannot over-estimate the importance in my life of my time at Durham School. It was there that I received not just the tuition, but the encouragement and opportunities to develop as a musician. On admission to Durham School, all new boys were subjected to a test of their musical abilities – being able to sing the note the choir master, Nick Gleed, played on the piano, singing the middle note of a chord – that sort of thing. I obviously did rather better than average at that and he took me aside and told me he would offer me a deal: he would see I had free piano and violin lessons provided I sang in the school choir. My piano lessons with him turned out to be somewhat spasmodic but I practiced pretty much endlessly and when I did have a lesson with him he would discover that I had learned the entire book of exercises. My violin playing also proceeded well. I could also sing in tune and in no time I was the school choir lead treble.

When I was 15, I began to play the organ and quickly secured an organ scholarship. This required that I play at morning service every day and at evensong. I also began to conduct. One of the things for which I will always be grateful to the music staff at Durham is that they were very good about delegating tasks – not because they were lazy, but to give one a chance to grow. So, I soon found myself conducting the choir and the school orchestra and being the resident accompanist for other students in such things as the annual music competitions held at the school. Those competitions were a busy time for me as I would find myself accompanying a host of clarinetists before performing my own competition piece. This gave me great repertoire experience.

Operaman: And you won those competitions handily, of course…

Ainsley: The last couple of years I did, yes. I accompanied, I think, every other competitor and then won with my rendition of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz.

Operaman: You were being given what seems to me a huge amount of responsibility for a student. Am I reading this correctly?

Ainsley: Yes, you are. Once the school’s director of music saw that I was capable of handling tasks, he was very good about delegating responsibility to me while keeping an eye on me to make sure I was not overwhelmed.

Operaman: And all the while, I presume you were having to do the usual academic subjects and sports and so forth…

Ainsley: Academics, yes. Those did not pose me great difficulty. As I mentioned, I had always been interested in computers and that led me to enjoying mathematics and other academic, non-musical subjects. I did well in my non-music curriculum. As to sports, I basically got to avoid them. Pupils were supposed to engage in sporting activities on a regular basis, but everyone knew that I was off playing piano or violin or studying a score to conduct, or listening to Mahler, and they were good enough to let me get on with it.

Operaman: I know your great love of chamber music, Rob. When did that begin?

Ainsley: It began in earnest when I was about 16. Dylan Pugh, the cellist I told you about earlier came to Durham School and I dragooned him and an able clarinet player, and formed a chamber music trio. At the end of our first year together we won the British National Chamber Music Competition with our performance of the Brahms Clarinet Trio.

Operaman: You won that prestigious competition more than once, didn’t you?

Ainsley: Yes, we actually won it three years in a row. On the last occasion we were to play the Mendelssohn D Minor Piano Trio. The group was myself on violin, Dylan on cello and a Taiwanese kid named Leon Wang who had come to the school and was an excellent pianist. It remains a source of pride to me that while all other competing groups were limited to playing one movement of a piece, we were invited to play the entire work – which we did and we won the competition. The competition was held in London. After the event the three of us went into Soho, got drunk and missed our train back to Durham. But that’s a story for another time…

Operaman: So you played violin in this group?

Ainsley: Yes, by then I was the leader of the school orchestra, but I was still playing piano of course – and the organ. And then when I was 17 things underwent a big change. I began taking piano lessons from Venera Bojkova. She not only extended my limits technically – making me learn some of the BIG repertoire, the Grieg Piano Concert and other major works, but she taught me higher musical and artistic values which remain with me to this day.

Operaman: Finally, of course, your time at Durham School came to an end and you went on to University..

Ainsley: Yes, as I told you I had always done well academically and in my last year at school I took A levels and passed in six subjects all with Grade A. (sidebar: Operaman should tell you that in England, passes in three subjects with Grade A is very, very good). I applied to Cambridge University and was awarded an organ scholarship. Normally, this would involve me reading for a degree in music of course, but I ‘majored’ in mathematics.

Operaman: And we’ll talk about that next time, Rob. I can’t wait! Thank you.

Ainsley: Thank you Operaman. I look forward to it as well.