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But by the end of the nineties he had reached a plateau: he had ceased to compose concert music and, he says, ‘saw no need to return.’ At this crucial juncture, a new opportunity presented itself in the position of artistic director of Musica Viva, Australia’s leading chamber music organisation.
Vine took the job and, immersed in the world of musical performance, he found not just a new passion, but the rekindling of an old one. In 2002, after a four-year break, and two years after taking up the Musica Viva post, Vine began to write again. Seven years later, he remains a leading figure in contemporary classic music, and is still proudly at the helm of Musica Viva. Balancing the demands of a composing career with the nitty-gritty of arts administration might seem a daunting task, but Musica Viva has been ‘very understanding and generous’ in allowing Vine the scope to maintain this dual existence. ‘It’s ideal,’ he says, describing the position of artistic director as effectively ‘one third of a job’, a largely advisory and planning role that does not require him to spend every day in the office.
Now in its sixty-fourth year, Musica Viva is one of this country’s most respected performing arts organisations, its broad focus on chamber music encompassing a wide variety of artists and styles. Asked if he has witnessed any major changes in the organisation during his nine years as artistic director, Vine points instead to its consistency: an unwavering adherence to its basic principle, ‘dedication to pure music’. The one significant recent change he does highlight is the size of its audiences: after twenty more or less static years, they’re growing again. Musica Viva audience numbers hit their highest peak, Vine explains, ‘in the seventies, when there was no competition – no ACO, no Australian String Quartet, no Brandenburg Orchestra’. Since then, a variety of chamber ensembles have sprung up, many of them created or materially supported by Musica Viva. The sense here is not of rivalry, but of a set of friendly musical allies united by a common goal, Musica Viva’s guiding philosophy: delivering chamber music to as wide an Australian audience as possible.
An important part of Musica Viva’s mission is its dedication to supporting Australian composers. Every year since 2002, Musica Viva’s season has included a featured composer, whose chamber works are included in programs throughout the year. The initiative is Vine’s own, although the organisation had already tried other schemes along similar lines. In the eighties there was the resident composer project, in which a composer supplied new works throughout the season. In the nineties, ensembles were required to include a five-minute Australian work in every performance. Although both approaches were well-intentioned, they each, says Vine, had their drawbacks: even the most gifted resident composer could have difficulty maintaining a consistently high standard while writing to order (Vine calls the scheme ‘disastrous’) while the inclusion of a mandatory five-minute work ‘smacked of tokenism’ and meant the pieces were so short they went almost unnoticed.
By contrast, Vine explains, the featured composer scheme focuses on composers who have already built up a substantial catalogue of chamber works, so that high quality, representative works may be selected for performance. The decision to program these contemporary Australian works alongside more standard European chamber repertoire is beneficial in avoiding what Vine terms ‘a ghetto of modern music’. Offering nothing but contemporary works in a program is, he says, ‘not healthy’, in part because some of that music is ‘simply not very good … new music is not guaranteed to be good.’ And he believes Australian audiences are ‘big enough and brave enough’ to appreciate these diverse facets of the chamber repertoire side by side.
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