Helene Pohl
January 2025
One of my favourite memories of a performance in a school was in a small town in the South Island a number of years ago. We were doing a game where student volunteers come to the front of the stage and hold posters depicting emotions, which they are to lift up when the music reminds them of the feeling depicted. A boy, perhaps 9 years old, with a beanie on and some sort of attitude that we couldn’t quite read put up his hand and came up front. Every time he lifted his poster to match the character of the music, his classmates all roared with approval. After the concert, we saw his teacher at the back, visibly moved. She told us this boy had never once put his hand up for anything in school, that this was the very first time. Hearing our music made him want to join in, and all the other kids were showing their support. It was a beautiful reminder of the power of music to reach kids that might lack confidence in other ways - and of the warmth that kids can show each other.
August 2024
In June of this year a beloved relative of mine died quite young and quite tragically of cancer, having only recently retired and looking forward to many more enjoyable years with his wife and family. His funeral happened to be between two concerts we had on our Canadian tour so Rolf and I didn’t think twice about making the trip to Germany to be there. We played at the funeral, and by his wife's request I brought my violin along to the cemetery after the service. It started to rain, but other relatives stepped up with big umbrellas to shield the violin. I began by playing the hymn from the service while family members each said their own goodbyes, stepping up to sprinkle earth and flower petals on the grave, and then I noticed that more and more mourners were coming to pay their own last respects, so I repeated the hymn a few times. As more and more people joined the line, I began to improvise on the hymn, then I couldn’t very well play for them but not for the next ones, so I just continued improvising… some a bit Irish, then a bit of Bach Chaconne, then the hymn again, then lots more that I don’t specifically remember. In the end I played non stop for about 30-40 minutes. The experience was unlike any performance I’ve ever given - not a performance as such, but rather a framing of the situation, a wish to express all the feelings that we were sharing, of loss, grieving, but also consolation, a moving of a relationship to another plane. My mind was at once quite full ("where am I in the phrase?” "Should I modulate now?" type things) and empty, just feeling with everyone, letting the music come out of my violin.
In this era of ubiquitous music, with everyone having access to all types of music in their pocket-computer, it was powerful to feel the shared nature of the experience, and that this is indeed why wordless music exists - to say things words cannot, and to bring us together in our shared humanity. It was a privilege to be the vehicle of this communication.
I hope to take this feeling into all of my concerts - particularly in some of the most spiritual moments in the music, to lift the musicians as well as our listeners up from whatever our current concerns are. Of course it’s delicious to know that our music speaks from a variety of vantage points - playful, dramatic, loving, dance-like, teasing, serious, and many more. But for those deep places in our soul, I’ll never forget what this experience taught me.