Five questions for…..Frederick Stocken
Frederick Stocken
Frederick Stocken is a British composer – the only child of a British-born father and a mother who came to the UK as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. As Organ Scholar at St Catharine’s College Cambridge, he studied with Peter Hurford, gaining his ARCO at sixteen with five prizes (and a further three on gaining his FRCO). He started composing as a fairly small child, though the first piece of music that came to the attention of the world in general was his Lament for Bosnia, which was top of the classical charts for several weeks. This has led to one composing commission after another – see Frederick’s website for a full list and catalogue, and go to SoundCloud for clips.
He’s also an organist (currently Director of Music at St Mary’s Woodford in north London), and a tutor for the RCO Academy: I have the privilege of bringing my stumbling attempts at harmony and counterpoint for his comments, as I study towards ARCO. His latest piece will be given its world premiere next month – see below. In the meantime, here are Frederick’s answers to my five questions:
Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
I’m trying to learn my own Faith, Love and Hope, which I’m giving the first performance of soon. Learning something I have written ‘for me’, as it were, has led to all sorts of revisions as the music gradually sinks into the system. This is in marked contrast to the experience I have had writing for other people, and especially for large forces, where there is usually little, or no, opportunity to revise the music before a first performance. Playing the piece myself means I really have to ‘own’ every note (to use the jargon) in a very solid way, and that is a rewarding creative process that extends beyond what I thought would be the end of the writing.
What has been your best experience as an organist?
I can think of recitals in my teens where I really felt things were coming together for the first time, but I dare say I would blush if I were ever to hear a secret recording that had been made of those performances now. I remember some lessons I had with Peter Hurford with particular fondness, where he was introducing me to a much wider spectrum of possibilities for articulation than I had previously understood. I recall having some particularly satisfying lessons on Bach trio sonatas and thinking, gosh, this is wonderful – and subtle.
What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Mechanical failures of all sorts! One recent bizarre experience of a different nature – I was booked for a wedding on the other side of London, which took me nearly two hours to reach. The wedding was one and a quarter hours late starting. I was not required to play before because a string quartet had been hired, which I suppose was a blessing of a sort. Then, in the service, none of the hymns was announced to be sung – perhaps the frustrated priest was trying to make up for lost time – so, by the end of the service, I had played precisely nothing. There then ensued an unseemly dispute about whether I should be paid because I hadn’t played anything.
What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher? (and who was it?)
“Eat two bananas thirty minutes before playing a recital” by Peter Hurford. I do think I play better when I’ve followed the advice.
What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Perhaps: “Be a perfectionist in your practice but forgiving in your performances”. This probably sounds banal, but there is quite a lot behind this statement, not least that most stumbles in performance actually stem from some internal criticism of what has already happened, not about the actual stumble itself. It’s important to realise the very different mentality needed for practice – where you are always looking backwards as well as forwards – from performance, where you must always try to be in the present and future. Getting near to a performance, it’s important that you actually sometimes stop all those good practice habits and also practise performing itself – being careful to create strict boundaries between the two modes of work.
The first performance of Frederick’s Faith, Love, Hope will be during a recital at St Lawrence Jewry, next to Guildhall in the City of London, on Tuesday 11 February at 1pm.
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