Plugging the gaps with music
Thessaloniki – Uwe Matschke, an East German pianist and leading professor of music who was recently appointed head of the newly established Musical Sciences and Arts Department of Thessaloniki’s Macedonia University, is currently going through the demanding task of cementing the nascent department. It was created to cover gaps in the country’s system of musical education by giving special emphasis to the execution of works, higher-level educational methods covering all symphonic instruments, and composition, as well as Byzantine and traditional Greek music. Tomorrow, Matschke and a select group of his students – taken from the 128 students in the department as a whole – will be in Athens to perform compositions for piano at the Goethe Institute. And on April 30, Matschke will return to the capital for a night at the Athens Concert Hall with the Dresden String Quintet to perform Schubert’s “Pestrova.” No stranger to either Greece or higher-level education, Matschke, who has worked and lived in Greece over the past 15 years, is returning to the university milieu with this appointment after the lack of specialization in the country’s musical curriculum left him without a post when he had moved here. Prior to coming to Greece, Matschke taught at the former East Germany’s Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar between 1980 and 1987. Besides his experience in education, Matschke has also recorded two CDs, the most recent featuring works by Schubert, and has performed countless concerts. His career in Greece, a country which the expatriated East German considers his second home, has not been easy. In an interview, Matschke noted that he has found it difficult to operate in a country with a long-term planning problem, while its casual approach to organizing artistic events here, he pointed out, has “severely restricted my artistic activities.” As a foreign artist here, Matschke feels that he has been left out of artistic inner circles, he added. You are an established artist with a rich background of activity in a country whose musical education field you have characterized as “murky” in previous comments. What prompted you to become a university professor? On the one hand, the artistic hemorrhage of a country with a rich dynamic of artists, and on the other, the loss of hope and objectives. In both cases a feeling of bitterness prevailed when, as an instructor at a conservatory, or before I was elected for the Macedonia University post, I found myself in the unpleasant position of having to convince students who stood out because of their talent and diligence to pursue studies in other European countries or further afield. Few of those made it. As a newly established department, and indeed as one in the arts, is yours confronting problems? Many times; unsolvable ones on issues concerning insufficient building infrastructure, instruments, restructuring and organization of studies with a clear-cut view of educational objectives, filling in educational gaps, and making effective selections of prospective students. What exactly do you mean when you say effective selection? Under the present legal framework, the selections made are based on grades achieved in university entrance examinations as well as the degree of success in Dictee lessons and harmony. This method does not allow for the proper assessment of candidates in relation to their main [prospective] field of studies, such as one’s dexterity on an instrument or in singing, and fails to give a clear picture of one’s talent or the level of previous training acquired, which is a basic selection criterion for advanced musical studies. Considering our principals, first, that the existence of advanced, tertiary-level musical studies must cover gaps left by conservatory-level education and offer quality training, and second, that the number of students required in advanced musical education is limited because of the curriculum’s workshop nature – most lessons are conducted for either individuals or small groups of students – then the current selection system’s unsuitability for our faculty is obvious.
