Name: Jennifer Pike
Course: Music, LMH, First Year
Spare time: Professional solo violinist
I was apprehensive about our meeting. A precocious talent who, at twelve, became the youngest winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year, whose meteoric rise has seen concerts with the major British orchestras, as well as a Times Breakthrough Award, Jennifer Pike has a CV more like that of a well-heeled industry veteran than the youthful twenty-year old I was about to meet.
She seemed full of energy, having spent the weekend at home ‘just relaxing’ and, without time to dump her suitcase, had come straight to the café after a brief stop at the library for books. After tea, however, she settled down and we talked music. She talks music rather well.
The impression Jennifer gives is of someone genuinely in love with the art, but whose success was never moulded by pressure. She describes quite honestly how music ‘was always just a hobby…getting the violin out as sort of chill-out at the end of the day’. Would she say that she always wanted to be a musician? ‘I never channelled all my efforts into being a
soloist, although I always loved the idea of it for sure, and it was so natural. I always knew I wanted to become a musician, and that it would never leave me. Going in for BBC Young Musician… wasn’t like being plunged into deep water which, I think, can be the danger of those sorts of competitions.’
Pike divides her time between studying and playing in various concerts: a balancing act she describes as ‘a bit tricky’. ‘I have to be really good about writing up notes on a missed lecture. I’m really serious about Oxford.’ Yet one can’t help wondering why a person who played a solo Bach concert in the middle of the Albert Hall at fifteen has decided to come and study, rather than pursue a career that in many ways is achieving lift off.
‘I know it’s a path that not many concert musicians take. But I love university life and the learning environment…to have a grounding, a place to develop my musical boundaries whilst kind of taking more historically-informed interpretations onto the concert platform. That’s what Oxford, for me, is about: discovering all sorts of areas of music which I can’t do.’ It seems that the opportunity for exploration is paying off, having confirmed a concert in London of work by female composers, something she was inspired to do by studying such composers here.
I ask her about performing and to what extent personal interpretation comes into it. She smiles and answers intelligently. ‘The most important thing is to be a vessel for the composer’s intentions. It’s not the performer who everyone should come to see, it’s the composer’s music.’ There is a seriousness about Pike which shines through. Celebrity comes second to music. ‘The thing that’s a bit sad – or rather challenging – for women is that often people are coming just to see a brand, a performer, a dress, the whole package. It’s very difficult because, for me, the very important thing about performing should be remaining versatile, making sure that you change your style and way of playing to suit the composer.’
We talk for a while about the invasion of pop into classical music, which she calls ‘quite scary’. It turns out she was recently offered a lucrative recording contract which she rejected. I press her for details. ‘It was exciting, but it was crossover, a lot of film music – which I like – but I think they wanted Strictly Come Dancing music too; immediately the alarm bells started ringing…I’d need to go to confession afterward. That’s not what I want to be.’
Looking ahead to the future, the tour dates are already piling up, with a special BBC concert replaying her competition-winning Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and a stint in Japan doing the same piece. (‘I do know other pieces’, she laughs.) I am struck at times by how young she still seems. For all the concerts, for all the ball gowns and garlands and recording contracts, she is still a fresher, cramming in the essays, trying to fit in.
