Interview: Dame Fanny Waterman

IT IS a milestone birthday, but to this remarkable woman, it's just another step along the way in an extraordinary life.

Dame Fanny Waterman is taking her 90th in her stride, but is quietly pleased at the fuss being made by others. She has sat for a portrait by renowned artist June Mendoza, the Royal Philharmonic Society has made her an honorary member, and next Monday will see her feted at a party and concert for 130 guests in London, at which one of the greatest winners of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, Radu Lupu, will give a recital.

A wider audience will have the chance to hear her when she appears on an upcoming edition of Desert Island Discs on Radio 4. Dame Fanny is keeping secret her choices for a book and luxury, which she would take to the desert island, but her musical choices will include works by Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart and her friend, Benjamin Britten.

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Closer to home, she will oversee the Harrogate International Festival this summer, the presidency of which she accepted last year.

And then there is the travelling. Two weeks after her birthday party, she heads for America to conduct masterclasses at the University of Indiana, before stopping off to see friends in Washington. Then it's on to more masterclasses in Hanover and Leipzig before Harrogate beckons her home. From there, it's off to China and then on to South Korea, and that will be 2010 taken care of.

Next year is a little unclear – "something will come up," she declares airily – but 2012 is already looking busy, not only because there is the next "Leeds", but also because of the Dublin Festival, of which she is president.

Such a busy schedule has sustained her for decades, and she has absolutely no intention of giving it up.

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It is now 55 years since The Times dubbed her "a legend" of the musical world, and the world continues to beat a path to the door of her elegant home, in north Leeds, to play on one of her twin Steinways.

Established concert pianists still come for lessons, as do beginners, some of them, like an eight-year-old Chinese boy, with the potential for professional careers, others simply to share her love of the piano.

She has pupils from Germany, Canada and Taiwan at present, and reaches out to countless more with her series of books, which are the standard piano tutorials around the world.

Hovering over every aspect of her life is the "Leeds", the competition she conceived one sleepless night and grew from the first staging, in 1963, into the leading event of its kind in the world.

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She remains completely in control of it, personally raising half of the 860,000 it cost to stage in 2009, and the day after it ended, started work on organising 2012's competition, which will be the 17th.

Dame Fanny is entirely unfazed by her 90th. "I don't think I'm 90 years old, I am 90 years young," she said.

"I think there was a fairy godmother at my birth bestowing on me marvellous gifts of good health, talent for music and motivation I have had since I was a child, and that has lived with me all my life, and I have been very fortunate that I have got all this energy and motivation."

Despite all the accolades, a damehood, the OBE and CBE, honorary degrees, and the one of which she is most proud – the freedom of Leeds –she still harks back to the influence of her parents, Myer and Mary,

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who set her on the road to success, first as a concert pianist, and then when she moved into teaching so that she could bring up her two sons.

"My parents, who although not musically educated, recognised my talent and fostered it, even though they were poor and could not afford many lessons.

"Their gifts were that they taught me the values they believed in life, and that was never to value anything money can buy – all these things that were ephemeral – but to value good health, talent, integrity and beauty, and I was very fortunate to meet my husband who also had those values."

Her husband, Geoffrey de Keyser, a doctor, was the other great strength in her life, and his death, in 2001, was a terrible blow.

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"I was married to Geoffrey for 57 years and our marriage was made in heaven. He used to cherish me, and tell me how much he loved me, and I said 'Why do you love me?', and he said 'Because you are so unpredictable'. Because of him, my career flourished."

Teaching keeps her young. "When I go to the hairdresser's and hear the conversations about Mrs Such-and-Such dying or being in hospital, it would make me miserable, but I know that I am going to see lovely, shining faces eager to learn, and I am listening in this room to the masterpieces, and that is as near to heaven as I can get.

"I've never lost a pupil yet, even though my lessons are very strict. They go away full of ideas of how to get over hurdles. It is a musical injection and they can't wait to get to the piano and try out what they have learned."

Retirement, or even slowing down, is not on her agenda. "You go on working until the end of your days, and if you want to keep going,

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keep going. Music is therapeutic, and the musical fraternity are very special people. The people I have known are wonderful human beings; all of them I have known I've been privileged to know, and they have inspired me."

The party on Monday will salute not just Dame Fanny's astonishing musical achievements, but also the indomitable spirit of a teacher and catalyst who still gets up and embarks on a 10-hour working day, and relishes the next challenge.

"The biggest mistake is to feel you have arrived. Being aged 90 is not a destination. I feel I have still a lot to do."

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