A progressive spirit

By WILLIAM DART

I was a short-trousered schoolboy in Whakatane, it was my first symphony concert and Charles Nalden conducting the Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra in the War Memorial Hall seemed to me as debonair a maestro as any Sargent or Barbirolli.

The programme featured Barry Margan in a Beethoven Piano Concerto and the orchestra played a movement from a Vaughan Williams symphony which, back then, was almost hot off the press.

Within a decade, I would be one of Nalden's students at Auckland University, unaware of the extraordinary background of this bright-eyed man, who dashed along corridors in what seemed like a perpetually flustered state.

Born in 1908, he spent a grim, almost Dickensian childhood in London's Foundling Hospital. At 14, the Army was the only option, and he found himself, in uniform, working towards a career as a bandmaster.

The whole story, much of it heart-rending, would eventually be revealed in an autobiography, Half and Half: The Memoirs of a Charity Brat 1908-1989.

When it was time to leave England, Nalden chose New Zealand over India and Germany, opting for an academic life over that of a bandmaster.

When he took up a professorial chair in 1956, Nalden proved to be a progressive spirit. Terrier-like, he fought to introduce performance as a subject - hitherto, talented instrumentalists and singers had to undertake a terrifying leap from private teacher to an overseas institution. By his retirement in 1973, there were seven full-time performance teachers on the staff.

This man was no ivory-tower academic. He firmly believed in the need to give a solid musical training to our youngsters in secondary and primary schools and applied himself to this very task. On one occasion, he proudly told me his youngest student was a mere 10 years of age.

This special bond between music and community continued through into his retirement: along with the gardening and the golf, one of his greatest pleasures was conducting his small but loyal Mozart Orchestra which, in its regular rest-home concerts, must have lightened the hearts of so many residents.

Charles Nalden, CBE, died on June 17 at the age of 94. A funeral service will be held at St Barnabas Church in Mt Eden today at 2pm.