Vera von der Heydt Annual Lecture
Saturday 4 June 2016 2:00PM
In this unique lecture-recital, Professor Paul Robertson, leader of the world-renowned Medici String Quartet, offers his perspective on the inner workings and emotional dynamics of ensemble playing.
In conversation with Tia Kuchmy, Jungian analyst and musician, Paul answers questions that continue to intrigue and fascinate about how a string quartet comes into being, rehearses and forges its joint interpretative decisions. In what will almost certainly be their very last appearance together, the current members of the Medici String Quartet perform Beethoven’s ‘Cavatina’ as a tribute to their and their previous colleagues’ musical life as an ensemble. As with Jung’s ‘stages of life’, these works move from the heroic optimism of youth into the mature power of Beethoven’s middle period, before opening out onto the transcendental mystery of the final great quartets.
This is a pattern which resonates with Paul’s own personal narrative, for, like Jung himself, he underwent a prolonged near death experience that affected him profoundly, and which touched that timeless, archetypal realm which Jung saw as the living source of all deep creativity.
© Jim Fitzgerald
Jungian psychology's deep understanding of the unconscious as the source of creativity - in this case music-making - is at the heart of this event. Paul, having dedicated his life to music, has a living connection with the unconscious. This event celebrates his wholeness, and the possibility of wholeness for us all. To quote Jung, ‘To round itself out, life calls not for perfection, but for completeness.’
The quaternity of the Medici String Quartet symbolises just that. 1st and 2nd violin, viola and cello together play Beethoven’s ‘Cavatina’ to bridge apparently irreconcilable opposites and apparently hopeless splits. This performance of the ‘Cavatina’ at Wigmore Hall is a completion of sorts that will inspire reflection on the nature of relationship, with-in and with-out, and its special place in each of our lives.
Presented in collaboration with The Guild of Analytical Psychologists