Violinist Wilma Smith - chamber music with friends

Wilma Smith is in New Zealand for a chamber music tour in September and the annual Martinborough Music Festival, of which she is Co-Artistic Director. She arrived just before the current Delta variant outbreak in New Zealand and her tour plans are now in a state of flux. But she’s smiling, as usual.

Wilma Smith gives some credit for her remarkable career as a violinist to “Mr. Wilson”. Her enlightened primary school teacher believed every child should play an instrument. “I was a rarity, a brown-skinned child playing the violin.” Last year, writing in support of Radio NZ Concert during the campaign to save its services, she described herself as “proudly Pasifika, Fiji-born and bred and New Zealand raised, and fortunate to have spent my entire career immersed in service to one of humanity’s greatest achievements, western classical music.”  

After studies in New Zealand and in the US at the New England Conservatory, Smith stayed in Boston as founding first violinist of the prize-winning Lydian String Quartet, also taking on orchestral work including with the Boston Symphony. When Chamber Music New Zealand and classical music aficionados decided in the 1980’s that New Zealand should have its own professional string quartet, they invited Smith to return as founding 1st violinist. She invited others to join her, including her friend and colleague Gillian Ansell, who still plays viola with the ensemble. The New Zealand String Quartet presented its first concert in Wellington in 1987 and the warm relationship between Smith and New Zealand audiences began.

Six years later came another invitation, this time from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. In 1993, as New Zealand celebrated one hundred years of women’s suffrage, Smith became the first, and, to date, the only female Concertmaster of the NZSO, a role she held with distinction for a decade. She then moved to Melbourne as Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, retiring from that role at the end of the 2014 season to focus on chamber music.

Melbourne has recently passed the milestone of 200 days of COVID lockdown. How is Smith feeling about being locked down in New Zealand? “It’s very much like ground-hog day,” she says. “I’m used to it. And I like being in New Zealand where lockdowns are treated like lockdowns.” She laughs a lot, though in our recent conversation her laughter sometimes has a rueful edge. “In our first lockdown in Australia I followed the New Zealand rules, I was doing ‘what Jacinda said’. I thought ‘come on, guys, why aren’t we doing that?’ Eventually Victoria did come on board”.

As usual, her focus is positive. “We were lucky because two entrepreneurial people, Chris Howlett and Adele Schonhardt, started the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall. That was a great thing to keep us going during those long months of concert halls being closed– we could get into a venue, perform a concert, and live stream or record it. Without that it would have difficult to keep going, to feel motivated to practice and learn new repertoire.”

The Flinders Quartet

Thibaud Pavlovic- Hobba (violin), Zoe Knighton (cello), Wilma Smith (violin) and Helen Ireland (viola)

Recently Smith has “gone back to her roots” and joined a Melbourne-based string quartet. “I’m now the 2nd violinist in the Flinders String Quartet and I’m loving that. Sadly, I started when the whole COVID thing began – we managed some live performances but not nearly as many as there would have been.” She laughs when I ask why she’s playing 2nd violin. “It’s so much harder being 1st violin. So many more notes, so much more responsibility. And there’s a beautiful 1st violinist in the Flinders Quartet, Thibaud Pavlovic-Hobba, whose playing I adore.” More seriously, she adds “I often thought I was born to the 2nd violin role - the way you can pop out and have your moment in the sunshine. And working with the inner voices, they’re the glue in the harmonic fabric; I love that role. As well, I really enjoy supporting someone else at the stage of their career when they should be playing 1st violin.”

Smith has always taken an interest in younger musicians and under lockdown has continued to teach online. “It’s far from satisfactory but it means keeping in touch with students and giving them some motivation. But I feel for the young ones!”  Immediately after our Zoom chat she has two Zoom lessons planned. “My first student today has been online for basically two-thirds of her degree. It’s especially hard in music, which is a practical, hands-on field. It’s so sad!”

Wilma & Friends in Whanganui in 2017

Alexandra Partridge (cello), Andrew Leathwick (piano), Wilma Smith (violin) and Caroline Henbest (viola)

Alongside her support of young musicians, two other threads stand out in the fabric of Smith’s career - chamber music and friendship.  While at MSO she combined all three by starting a chamber music series called ‘Wilma & Friends’. “It’s in its 10th year and that’s been really fun,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to play chamber music with some of the younger emerging artists, brilliant young musicians who are starting a career. I’m targeting the really exceptional ones for that series and it’s great being in a position to give them the opportunity to play with their more seasoned peers. Only three groups a year and some of those groups have come to New Zealand too, over the years.”

Smith’s current New Zealand tour plans are a case study in how nimble and adaptable performing artists have been during the pandemic. When the trans-Tasman bubble closed, she took the opportunity of a week’s grace to “scurry” to New Zealand three weeks earlier than planned. New Zealander Matthias Balzat, described by Smith as “a brilliant young cellist”, was already in managed isolation, having travelled from Germany. With her young Australian colleague, pianist Laurence Matheson, unable to enter New Zealand, she invited her long-time collaborator Michael Houstoun to become part of the Argyle Trio for the tour. The programme was also changed. Preliminary rehearsals began.

Then New Zealand locked down. Rehearsals stopped, tour dates were changed, plans B and C developed and everyone waited. “I’m hopeful,” Smith told me then, “that some of what is planned may still happen.”

The Argyle Trio

Wilma Smith (left) with Michael Houstoun (piano) and Matthias Balzat (cello)

The revised Argyle Trio touring programme was suggested by Houstoun himself and Smith is “overjoyed” with it. “I can’t wait to play it,” she says, “we all hope we get to do it.”  The programme includes Beethoven’s mighty Archduke Trio, which the three musicians played two years ago at the Martinborough Festival. At that stage Houstoun had already announced his plans to retire at the end of 2020. “It was bittersweet,” she says. “I thought it was going to be the last time I played chamber music with Michael, and for Matthias it was to be the first and last time. So, it’s really wonderful that we’re hoping to do it again.” The programme also includes Ravel’s only Piano Trio, a sensuous and colourful work Smith calls “breath-takingly perfect” and Beethoven’s earliest Piano Trio Opus 1 no 1.

“I’ve always looked forward to playing Beethoven, in particular with Michael,” says Smith. “I’ve learned so much from him over the years. And with the amazing Ravel, it’s a programme to die for, really!”

With parts of New Zealand moving to Level 2 restrictions this week with the additionally restrictive limit of 50 for an indoor audience, the planned tour of the Argyle Trio is now being revised again. The Martinborough Music Festival is likely to be postponed and organisers are exploring options to repeat some concerts so that smaller audiences can attend. Chamber music presenters around the country are also considering other options. In typically optimistic, resourceful and flexible style, Smith says “I don’t feel we’re at the last resort stage of cancellation yet.”

Chamber music festivals like Martinborough offer the opportunity to combine musicians in different and larger ensembles to extend the repertoire. Smith is particularly looking forward to playing Brahms’ String Sextet and Piano Quartet and the string sextet arrangement of Mozart’s beloved Sinfonia Concertante. She’s also discovering some new works. “There’s a great work for flute and string quartet by Amy Beach that I haven’t played before, and another new discovery is Jenny McLeod’s string quartet Airs for the Winged Isle.”

Once her engagements in New Zealand are over, what does the future hold for Smith? “I think about the future quite a lot, about the best thing to do with my remaining days on the planet. I’m aware that my playing days are not infinite; there are aches and pains and bits of shoulders and neck and all the things that tell you you’re 65,” she admits, laughing. “I’ve always taught, but right now I want to focus on the playing more. I feel as if I’m spread a bit too thinly, so I’m trying to streamline the teaching next year.”

Smith is clear that, although she currently lives in Australia, she’ll always be a New Zealander first. “I don’t think where you feel rooted changes, not for me, anyway.” And when I ask, tentatively, whether she has any ambition to return to Aotearoa to live, her answer comes immediately. “I do, yes! I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’ve had that ambition for a while.”

Argyle Trio playing music by Beethoven and Ravel, Wilma Smith (violin), Matthias Balzat, (cello) Michael Houstoun (piano). Tour dates around New Zealand in September. Contact your local chamber music presenter for latest dates and times.  

Martinborough Music Festival, Martinborough, Wairarapa. More details here.

Find out more about Wilma & Friends and the Flinders Quartet.