By Michael Field
We all have occasion to reflect on people who made significant impacts on our life, and, in my case, they undoubtedly include a member of the extraordinary Mackerras family, whose most famous member, Charles, we remember this November in the centenary month of his birth.
I was privileged to attend Sydney Grammar School in the years 1963-1968, and at that time Charles’ younger brother, Alastair, was Master of the Lower School and also my mathematics and Latin teacher. Alastair was the quintessential British-style schoolteacher, donnish and scholarly but also quirky and eccentric.
He not only inspired my love of his two subjects he also made me aware of the great classical music culture of Europe, including familiarity with the achievements of his famous brother, whose star at the time was still rising on the international music scene. Some of my fondest memories were outside the formal classroom setting, such as when Alastair would stride around the school playground singing arias from Wagner operas, or when he urged me to listen to Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, or played Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet music during a summer holiday get-together at his Kiama holiday house.
But I also had a rare opportunity to rub shoulders with other members of his family on occasions. At one private gathering to which I was invited as a keen music student (I was learning the flute at the time), I met his elderly mother, Catherine, whose strong influence on all seven of her children was widely acknowledged, and I also met his younger sister, Joan, through her relationship with the school’s music master at the time, Graeme Hall – they later married and relocated to England.
Of course, we all feel familiar with the psephologist Malcolm Mackerras from his years of calling the outcome of Australian elections and earlier this year I met another brother, the distinguished academic sinologist Colin Mackerras, when he gave a talk about Wagner to the Northside Opera Study Group.
I never met Charles himself in person, but one of the most thrilling experiences of my life was when my then girlfriend (now wife) Gabrielle and I had seats in the second row of the organ gallery at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House at its official opening concert in 1973, when Charles Mackerras conducted a program that included Wagner’s Dich Teure Halle, from Tannhäuser – with all three of us captured in an official photo of the occasion (see photo).
Related program: Saturday Matinee: At the Ballet, presented by Susan Freeman on Saturday 15 November at 2.30pm