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Viola player Bertie Anderson and musician friends – ‘Without Covent Garden I wouldn’t still be playing classical music’ |
Still everything to play for
Bertie Anderson rediscovered classical music in Covent Garden – now she’s fighting to save it, writes Hannah Kuchler
WHEN Covent Garden’s owners Capco picked a fight with a bunch of buskers, they probably expected them to be a walkover.
Instead, their plan to cut the musicians’ performance time in half attracted a national media campaign backed by opera star Lesley Garrett.
For Bertie Anderson, who started the campaign, the Covent Garden musicians’ pitch is close to her heart.
After learning viola at the Purcell School of Music, Ms Anderson could have toured the world with the London Symphony Orchestra.
But in her first year at the Royal College of Music, she realised that her outgoing personality could no longer cope with the restrictive world of classical music. She said: “I hated it with a passion, so I left half-way through the year without telling anyone.”
It was then, 10 years ago, that she stumbled on the classical music pitch in Covent Garden. “I truly believe that without Covent Garden I wouldn’t still be playing classical music,” she said.
She met other musicians there who felt that classical music needed to be liberated from the clutches of the privileged few. Joining an altogether different type of string quartet, Bebeto, she began to tour. They danced during their performances, and encouraged their audiences to sing and clap along.
“It was the first time in years I was enjoying playing, rather than worrying about getting every note perfect,” she said.
Since then she has travelled the world with like-minded groups, all of whom she met in Covent Garden.
The pitch has also allowed Ms Anderson to meet and talk to her audiences. “I often have parents tell me their children have asked to learn the violin after they’ve seen us play, so it’s a great way to recruit more musicians,” she said. “It’s important because the audience for classical music is shrinking because it’s getting older.”
The musicians don’t earn much, but they do get to know their regular donors. “We call one of them The Benefactor,” said Ms Anderson. “He comes down at least once a month to listen, and always leaves a big donation. He sometimes takes us out for a drink afterwards as well. People like to feel a part of something.”
Through the Save Our Shows campaign, which has collected more than 10,000 petition signatures, the buskers have got to know even more of their admirers.
“When I went out with a petition, I met a group of old ladies from the north. They’d come to London to see a show and to watch us play. They told me, ‘We don’t come here to shop, we can shop back home; we come here for the entertainment’,” Ms Anderson said.
While market landlords Capco have said that they support street performance and that the time reduction is because of complaints about noise levels, campaigners fear that it is part of wider plans to introduce upmarket retailers to the area.
“They want to let designer shops in,” said Ms Anderson. “There are even rumours they might be taking up some of the cobblestones because they’re too troublesome for women’s high heels.
“The market is at risk of losing the traditional atmosphere,” she added. “It’s the same thing that happened at Spitalfields and in Camden market.”
But Bertie Anderson and her campaign are determined to stop the unique atmosphere of Covent Garden slipping away. “There is no other musicians’ pitch as dedicated, successful and long-running in the world,” she said. |
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