How did you end up doing opera?
I am a pianist, trained as a soloist at the Royal College of Music. I also did a lot of ensemble work at school, in chamber music. I play the viola and I also did a lot of viola accompaniment at the college. A couple of singers asked if I would play for them and the lady I married was a student on the opera course. Then I got interested in the idea of being a repetiteur.
When I was about 16 we did opera scenes from The Marriage of Figaro at our school and that must have been my first contact with opera. I really enjoyed it - but I still wanted to be a soloist.
Then I was asked to play for various singing teachers at the lessons. I have been playing for Ludmilla Andrew in London for about ten years. Then I played for ENO Jerwood Young Artists’ Programme. Once you get your name out there, it kind of rolls on, people start knowing you.
Were your parents interested in opera? Did you listen to opera as a child?
No, they weren’t. I wasn’t interested in opera at all when I was younger. To be honest, I had the view most people have, that opera is noisy and a bit ridiculous.
When I went to secondary school, which was quite posh, in Chigwell, they had singing teachers there. I had a friend who wanted to be a singer and was singing bits of Mikado, quite terribly, and I was playing for him thinking, “Oh my God, why is he doing it”. The music sounded dreadful, I didn’t like G&S at all.
It’s only when I started doing Figaro, I thought, “Yeah, that’s good!” I like Mozart a lot. In general, I prefer Mozart operas to his concertos and sonatas.
Now obviously I listen a lot to opera but I feel I could know much more.
What was the first opera you went to see?
I think it was The Magic Flute, in Ilford, before I went to college. I played for a local singing teacher and a singer who did Papagena in a local production of The Magic Flute at the Kenneth Moore Theatre in Ilford. I really enjoyed it. It is a long opera and there are several moments where you can get lost if you’re not really very much into it, but it was in English and it was quite accessible. And knowing a singer in it made a big difference. Then I played for some opera galas and concerts.
My first visit to a proper opera house was in Covent Garden. I went to see Il barbiere. The soloist, Vesselina Kasarova, happened to be a friend of my ex-wife’s, from her days in Bulgaria. She came to visit and offered us the tickets to see it.
When I was at college, I queued to see Die Valkuere, but I didn’t get in. It is very expensive, and even now I get to see a lot of opera mostly when I get a free entry (he laughs).
Who is your favourite opera composer?
I would have to say it’s Wagner. He seems to speak to me most immediately and I respond to it in a very emotional way. I’m not as knowledgeable about the whole Wagner repertoire as I could be; it takes a whole lifetime to get to know him, I think. What I know, I know very well, but I need to discover more. I am already starting to do that.
A lot of people find Wagner pompous. They also have their reservations about the Nazi party and so on, but if you forget about that, then there is nothing more powerful than his music. It is just absolutely incredible.
I do love other composers, particularly Puccini and Mozart.
How would you try to convert those who cannot stand Wagner?
It goes so beyond everything. He links human and universal themes so well.He thinks on such a huge scope, but at the same time is able to relate that to a single person. It’s like you’ve got two worlds which seem impossible to link. At the same time he does the human, emotional element so well. Sometimes you don’t feel any sympathy for these characters, because you can’t relate to them. But when you hear the music, you can! He has those moments, like when Wotan says farewell to Brunnhilde, or Isolde’s Liebestod form the end of the opera – it is just absolutely irresistible. I don’t think I could ever not react to it. It’s so powerful, it goes so deep. You don’t even have to understand it. I think Wagner’s music, more than anyone else’s, speaks to me from the primeval aspect, the way he uses the orchestra. I’m not very intellectual, so I don’t think why or what – I just know that I love it. It sounds a bit funny when I try to articulate it…
Come to Wagner with an open mind. Don’t listen to it all in one go. This will sound really hilarious: try not to listen to the singing. Just don’t pay too much attention to the fact that the singers are singing. Listen to the orchestral moments first. You’ll get an almost transcendental experience. I love the grand moments, like Siegfried’s journey in Goetterdammerung. Listen so you can feel the music speak to you. When you’ve learned to understand it, go and start to listen to more. Be a naïve, as you have never heard any other music before. Put it on, close your eyes, take no more than ten minutes. Don’t open your eyes. Just listen. You cannot fail being moved by it. If you just let yourself melt into it… This is what you should experience listening to music in general.
The problem with Wagner is that there are so many interpretations of interpretations, books on books. I didn’t come to Wagner from knowing facts about him, I just listened to his music. You don’t have to identify with a lot of things, and often you can’t. I think too much intellectualising gets in the way when it comes to music.
What about other opera composers?
Mozart. The more I experience him, the more I like him. He really knows how to bring out the human element without being too obvious about it. Such a prolific composer and an incredible person. The more you listen to him, the more your body responds, “O my God, it’s just incredible”. It takes a while to get into that state, it’s not what you feel at the very beginning. You have to know it very well, more than from the first listening. It helps to have worked with it and have got inside it. I love The Magic Flute now, having worked on it. I love Don Giovanni, although I haven’t worked on it that much.
How about contemporary music?
I didn’t like it, until very recently. I started to work on modern music with the piano sextet, Piano Circus. What I find incredible about more contemporary music is that they can make something really work within fractured sound. I studied some Schoenberg for my A-levels and knowing nothing really about music at that time I couldn’t understand it, or wasn’t willing to understand it.
But recently I went to see Lulu at ENO and I was amazed. There was this four hour opera which I didn’t know – and I was captured all the way through. It’s difficult to sit through something that long for the first time but I was blown away by how Berg could speak, how he could write like that. It was alien to everything we know and still it made so much sense. But I think you just know when something is good. The more I do modern music, the more I like it. Recently I’ve come to think that Berg and Schoenberg are real geniuses.
Contemporary music is a real challenge. When you work on it, you just have to become a counting machine. When you’ve done the basics and become quite scientific with it, then you find it actually comes out. However, when you try to approach it from an emotional point of view, it’s very, very difficult. When you’re listening to it and it’s well done, it’s good music, it’s on par with Mozart and Wagner.
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What are your plans for the nearest future?
There is a variety of things that I do. I play with the Piano Circus, a group of six. We are getting more concerts. If it does really well, I wouldn’t have much time to do opera. We are in the early stages of being together as a chamber ensemble. It takes a lot of rehearsal time and big commitment.
Piano Circus was formed by six pianists, mostly from the Edinburgh University, who wanted to play Steve Reich’s piece, originally for a hundred pianos, then honed down to six. It’s a minimalist masterpiece from 1970s. The six pianists play minimalist repertoire, jazz-inspired pieces and electronic stuff. It seems to be quite successful and I really enjoy doing it.
As for opera, I will be working with ENO’s Philip Thomas on Siegfried.
What do you like about coaching?
Unlike solo work, coaching isn’t about being note-perfect. You are also running on your instinct. It is about knowing what the conductor wants and how he brings it up. It takes a lot of experience to pick up on their signals. I love working on bringing out meaning.
I love working with people, moulding, helping them to reach their full potential. Coaching I found most rewarding. I like being part of a supporting team, I like helping. I love the process from the moment when the singer doesn’t know the music at all to the final performance. There is nothing quite like that. When people are singing the best they can, they are happy.
You have also worked as chorus master for Opera Holland Park.
There is a lot of responsibility in that, for the sound, for the awareness of precision in getting the text out. When they go on stage, it is beyond your control, and yet it is representative of your work. It is quite daunting. I mostly do coaching.
An accompanist works as a duo with a soloist. In an audition situation you are their servant; in a concert situation you are their partner. A coach is a mentor. As a chorus master you are a leader of a big group of people. I am much more comfortable working one-on-one.
Have you thought about becoming an opera singer yourself?
I wouldn’t like to be an opera singer. I think it’s far too difficult for me. I’m much too reserved and self-conscious. I don’t have the voice for it, either, although I can sing and I enjoy singing in choirs.
I empathise with singers as they get a lot of stick from other musicians, like instrumentalists. They think singers are not musicians. And that really makes me annoyed. I lived with a singer for many years and I’ve got a real understanding of what it’s like. Instrumentalists often say singers are not good musicians because they can’t count, they make unreasonable mistakes, and why do they need somebody to teach them how to do this stuff.
Well, first things first: singers come into singing generally later in life. There is no point in starting singing training at the age of five. They come to singing much later, so they won’t have the consistent, long training that instrumentalists get. Even if they start singing very early, they go off to do some other things in their life. I’ve met quite a few company directors, lawyers, scientists, teachers who did that. They get some life experience and then they go back into singing. Consequently, they become less blinkered – and a lot of instrumentalists are! I know that myself: if I hadn’t gone off to play for ballet and opera, how boring I would be. Well, I still think I’m far too boring because all I’ve known is music, my life experience is only music.
I think to be a good opera singer is to have a far better understanding of life. You’ve got to work with words. And actually the words are just as important, if sometimes even more important than the music. Instrumentalists don’t have to worry about that. If they did, they would find it a completely different ball game. I know it myself: I consider myself a musician, yet when I’m working on a role and I have to sing other parts in the ensembles, I know that the rhythm goes out of the window!
If you look at Maxim Vengerov or Jacqueline du Pres, they move around, they pull funny faces, they gesture, they can do whatever they want because it serves the music. As a singer you can’t do that. Because if you indulge yourself, or get deeply into the music, you won’t be true to your character! You are not allowed to enjoy yourself half as much as the instrumentalist, the straight musician. Of course you have to be supremely talented to be a top-notch instrumentalist, that’s not the question.
As a singer you have to be an actor as well. If you don’t do that, you are boring. If you don’t focus on the music, you go wayward. You’ve got to marry the two successfully. That’s what is harder, that’s why singers need to be helped. Quite apart from having consistent training for a long time.
Is there an issue you’d like to raise that doesn’t normally get into interviews?
(long pause) Open-mindedness in the business. I wish that the importance would be on people’s potential and giving them a chance to grow, rather than on the list of things they’ve done. I wish people in charge had more foresight. Less conservatism and more trust. I understand people don’t want to take a chance because you might fall flat. I wish they did. It’s getting in the way of some very talented people out there.
Too often is it the matter of agents and age. Sometimes you don’t push your career hard enough because you don’t have enough confidence, but confidence does come along when you get an opportunity. Sometimes you don’t do good auditions.
People think, “If he’s famous, he must be the best”. Quite often he has just been lucky to get a good agent. There are lots of excellent people in the business who are not being recognised. I think it’s a shame. But then, that’s life.
What are your hobbies?
My main hobby outside music is oil painting. Not that I have a lot of time for it… I’m into sci-fi. I think Giger’s paintings are superb. I would love to do illustrations if I were talented enough… I like swimming. Or I sit at the piano and play Rakhmaninov for three hours. Just play the piano for pleasure, for myself.
VIEW Kelvin Lim’s page HERE.
Two days after this interview Kelvin was offered trainee repetiteur's position at ENO.
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