Culture That Made Me: Cork violinist Mairéad Hickey on Attenborough, Schubert and Basil Fawlty
Mairéad Hickey is involved in the Ortús Chamber Music Festival in Cork city and county.
Born in 1996, Mairéad Hickey grew up in Bermuda until moving to The Lough in Cork aged seven. She studied violin at CIT Cork School of Music.
She has won international prizes and performed in the world’s major concert halls, including London’s Royal Festival Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
In 2016, she co-founded the Ortús Chamber Music Festival.
- Ortús 2024, which she will perform in, is staging six different concerts in venues around Cork city and county, Sunday, February 25 – Sunday, March 3.
- See: www.ortusfestival.ie
Growing up, I watched a lot of David Attenborough documentaries. I still love all his latest programmes. It's beautiful to see all that nature, things a normal person never gets to see. He does it in a way that's interesting and nice and inviting. I'm sure his voice has something to do with it as well.
I loved Fawlty Towers growing up. It’s simple, old-fashioned humour. Manuel, the Spanish waiter, was my favourite character. He was so funny. I travel a lot, so I've experienced his difficulty with the language barrier, misunderstandings due to language. I still think it's funny now.
I recently saw Sir András Schiff. He played all the Bach piano concertos in Paris. It was about two years ago. He was with his own orchestra. It was incredible. Schiff is someone who inspired me a lot. He has a way of trying to find the truth in the music, and giving everything he has to share that message. It’s what musicians aim to do.
Mozart’s music is so pure. It seems very simple, but some of his great pieces you could work on for a lifetime and always find a different way of playing it. In January, I did the same Mozart quintet – two violins, two violas, and one cello – twice in the same week, but with different people in separate concerts. Both times were wonderful, but it was a totally different experience, a completely different way of playing. When you're dealing with great music, there are so many possibilities. Even if you play the same thing for a hundred years you can keep playing it differently. In a way, Mozart feels like the music comes from heaven. With Beethoven, it feels like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I fell in love with Schubert’s string quintet when I was a teenager. I listened to it all the time. Now I've played it many times. It's amazing music. I always think it's crazy that before he wrote it, there was a world in which this music didn't exist. This is one of the pieces I could play for my whole life and each time would be different. Each time I'd find something new.
Contemporary music is challenging in a different way. Maybe it's a reflection of our time. Musicians live in the past, performing music that was written 200 or 300 years ago. Contemporary music for musicians feels extremely modern. One of the pieces we're going to play in the Ortús festival is by Sam Perkin, a composer from Cork. He wrote a duo for marimba and violin. It’s very rhythmic and interesting.
My all-time favourite violinist is David Oistrakh. He was one of the biggest violinists of the twentieth century. My teachers would have seen him play live, or even met him. With him, the music just comes through – the expression is so clear. I don't hear any ego or extra bits or trying to fluff it. It’s pure music. He's such an exceptional violinist. All you hear is music.
Maxim Vengerov is one of the best violinists alive. When I was 11, I saw him play in Limerick, a Beethoven violin concerto. It was wonderful. When you hear his music, you just hear pure expression. It was amazing.
I listen to Maria Callas a lot. It doesn't matter if they're singing, or, say, playing the violin or piano, I'm always drawn to people that you don't hear the instrument or the voice, just the music and the soul of the music coming through. As a violinist, we're trying to imitate a singer. Singing is the most pure way of making music, because it comes directly from the singer. Sometimes you hear someone like Maria Callas singing and it catches you. You can't not listen. You can't do something else at the same time because it takes all of your energy to listen to it.
I love the movie Grease with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. I’ve watched a lot of great films, but it’s a film I come back to if I'm having a tough time or a difficult month. Sometimes you want something that you know, something that will cheer you up. I like the soundtrack. It's visually pleasing. I like the way they dress and I don't love new movies, how everything is in such high-definition. I prefer standard-definition television.
I love the movie Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn. All those older movies are more my scene. In the film, she goes to Paris. I live in Paris. There's a great scene when a French chef is teaching her how to cook. I love that she’s so classy – she’s a very elegant lady. I love her voice, she has this soft voice.
I recently finished Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and I’ve bought the next book in the series. It shows what anyone can accomplish. Nothing came to her easily. She had to make life happen for her against all the odds. It's beautifully written, so descriptive. She grew up poor and black in the American South of the 1930s, in a small town in a segregated community. She had a difficult childhood. She was abused by her stepfather, but she managed to survive. The book is written in a very positive way. She’s not complaining. It's really inspiring.
I loved The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I identified with the character, who is in a mental institution, which sounds a bit weird. I guess maybe because musicians don't have much structure, so you're inside your head a lot. We have concerts, but everyday you’re on your own. You have to practice and sometimes you're insecure. You feel like you're going crazy. It was that – we're always stuck in our own heads – which interested me in this novel. You have all the thoughts of this girl. I identified with that in a weird way.
