Audio File
Ida Carroll
Northern School Of Music (NSM)
2020

Fae Jones talks about her admiration for pianist Clifford Curzon, a great friend of the Northern School of Music.

Fae: A little link for that, just a little story which I think is quite heart warming. Two years ago I went up to the Lake District. I’m a great fan of Clifford Curzon who was a perfect Schubert pianist, I love Schubert. And… I knew he had done a lot to help the Northern, he really had. I mean—He gave a lot of time to the Northern to do master classes and things and if you look on the archives he was very involved in it… And he is buried in Patterdale in Lake District.
Heather: Is he?
F: Yes, wonderful. And I—Went to his grave and— It was really to say ‘thank you’ because I just thought, of all he’s—did, for me personally because I love the way he plays. But secondly all he did for the Northern, he didn’t have to do all that. He was an international artist and he supported Ida a lot and… It’s really lovely when you go to this place in the middle of nowhere and it says ‘to music’ on it ‘thou greater art’. It says it in German - I can’t pronounce it, I didn’t do German. But… But, it was a wonderful moment, you know, when it all came back. I thought… You know, what a lovely man to have done all that. You see, I think there must— Well, you will know, that there must have been competition with these pianists and famous people, you know, where would they go to teach. And it was lovely that he supported Ida Carroll in that. It was a great thing.

Part of the #NSM2020 project "A 20/20 Legacy: the centenary of the Northern School of Music" supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.