The John & Andrée East Award
2021
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Angela
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A Very Musical Family
About my father, Denis George East (1919-2012), my mother, Raina Kveta Saudek (1921-1986) and various other ancestors~ by Angela East, cellist, teacher and member of the ensemble Red Priest.
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When one is born one accepts one's environment as the norm, although in my case it was unusual. I was immersed in classical music probably as a foetus and from then until the present day. My father, Denis George East was a professional violinist who practised from 7.30am every single morning. The other members of his string quartet lived next door and they came round regularly to rehearse.
My mother was an oboist whose place, as a woman, was in the home but who played in the Boyd Neel Orchestra during the war. She was born into an intellectual Jewish family, her parents being from the Czech Republic and Germany. |
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It was not until I researched her on ancestry.co.uk that I discovered that she was Jewish. It was a well-kept secret, surely for purposes of protection, from both my mother and her brother. There were suspicions on account of her and her brother’s appearance, by the fact that they were brought up in Golders Green and because of their numerous Jewish friends. She herself had no idea. My research revealed that several sisters of her father, and their families, had ended their days in Auschwitz. I also found that my mother’s aunt had an entry in a Berlin telephone directory where her address was in the Jewish quarter of Berlin.
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Her father was a well-known graphologist – still well-known by graphologists today – who wrote many books and who spoke seven languages fluently. His circle of friends included many writers, including George Bernard Shaw and even the photographers employed by the family were well-known and can be found on the Internet today, so it is not surprising that music was part of my mother’s upbringing.
My father, on the other hand, had no such upbringing. He came from a family in Child’s Hill, Hendon – a house that must have been in the family for about 100 years - where the men were agricultural labourers and the women were in the laundry business. His father was born there, as was his grandfather and possibly his great grandfather. |
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Although the last mentioned fitted the description of an ag lab whose wife was a washerwoman (reminds me of Wind in the Willows!), my father’s grandfather managed to break away from the tradition and became a carman whose business was furniture removal, particularly beds. My grandfather worked for the film company, Ilford’s, cutting glass plates and coating film.
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At some point, the housing in Child’s Hill was demolished and my grandfather bought another house in Cricklewood. He was very proud of living there, almost patriotic, having come from such a poor background.
He played the banjo, though this was before I was born and I never heard him play. I’m told that my grandmother’s father played the euphonium in the police force band (he was a Peeler). That is the extent of the musical background that I know. My grandparents kept a piano in their house and were surprised when my father, as a boy aged 9, decided to teach himself to play it. He managed to pass Grade 1 without any outside help! |
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His parents (my grandparents) came to the conclusion that he must be talented, so they took him to see a lady called Ruth Lawrence, who was one of the seven Lawrence sisters who founded Roedean School. She was a violinist (who had herself taken a lesson from Brahms) and my father began lessons with her. It was a lot tougher then than it is now; not a case of constant praise but one of constant criticism and she would throw her wooden beads at him on a regular basis! She took him under her wing, since my grandparents were not very well off, and sent him to William Ellis School, where he would not otherwise have gone. He told me that he once got a detention after coming top in a history exam, on the grounds that ‘If you can do it once, you can do it every time!’ At the age of 15 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied with Maurice Sons who was the very first leader of the very first Prom concert with Sir Henry Wood. The information that he passed on to me about these lessons has been very useful to me personally for my interest in historical performance practice. His career looked very promising, with concerto engagements in the diary with the London symphony orchestras, when the war broke out.
In 1942 he was called up to fight in Singapore. The troops travelled there by ship but were immediately captured by the Japanese upon arrival and he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp in Burma building the railroad to the bridge over the River Kwai. We all know how they were treated and the ill-health they suffered. He became covered with tropical ulcers over his arms and legs. Most prisoners with this complaint had their limbs amputated but because everyone knew he was musical, an Australian doctor, who was also a prisoner, found some way of healing them, even though the scars were with him for life.
During his time in the camp, he made musical instruments and taught other prisoners how to play. Strings were made out of telegraph wire. He then put together an orchestra. He wrote out the whole score of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (from memory of course) – after which the monsoon came down and washed all the notes away – but they did eventually get to perform it. I don’t know how they acquired their concert clothes but remember finding a bright yellow harlequin outfit in the loft when I was a child that was apparently what he wore. Not many of those prisoners made it home at the end of the war. My grandparents had received a telegram fairly early on saying that he was ‘missing, presumed dead’, so having tried to come to terms with this (and he was an only child), he suddenly turned up on the doorstep one day. His mother was so shocked to see him that she sent him away! Can we imagine what that must have been like for all of them? That was all before I was born of course.
What had been his home was now only half a home. The first floor of the house had been let out to a family whose house had been bombed and they remained there for as long as my grandparents lived in it. They were left with two reception rooms, what they called a scullery (kitchen) and a long garden that my grandfather treated as an allotment. Apart from a path running down the side, the entire area was devoted to growing fruit and vegetables. They cooked on a range and my grandmother was an excellent cook. They had no fridge but a wooden box hanging from the ceiling with an aerated door. I used to stay with my grandmother regularly as a child and do remember the day that I thought this wooden box would make a great swing! The whole lot came crashing down, milk bottles and all! I don’t remember a bathroom but then not everyone had one in those days. His early career was now long forgotten but he did manage to get a job in the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult, where he stayed for 18 months before leaving to freelance. His string quartet was very successful and he gave a number of first broadcasts of Mendelssohn String Quartets on the recently formed Third Programme on the radio.
After the war, everyone feared that there would be another one, so there were many shotgun marriages. My father fell into this trap and had a marriage that lasted all of three weeks! This unfortunate lady subsequently married one of my father’s colleagues and I am still in touch with one of their children today. My father met my mother in a work situation and it was not long before I was born and then my sister.
My parents never talked about the war as I am sure it was considered unsuitable material for children, so I really know very little. I do remember that my father had bouts of malaria for years afterwards. My father was very keen to have a son who could follow in his footsteps but together with another marriage after that of my parents, he ended up with four daughters! My grandfather was the ninth child and all his siblings were daughters, so many East families are no longer Easts! As the name appears to have been a lot more common in the 19th century, it seems that a lot of Easts had a lot of daughters! Anyway, I had to fill the role of an imaginary son and was given piano lessons at the age of four. That is common nowadays but was unusual then. I began the cello at 9, which is fairly elderly by current day standards. I was under the impression that everyone did the same job as their father and it never occurred to me that there might have been a choice.
During his time in the camp, he made musical instruments and taught other prisoners how to play. Strings were made out of telegraph wire. He then put together an orchestra. He wrote out the whole score of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (from memory of course) – after which the monsoon came down and washed all the notes away – but they did eventually get to perform it. I don’t know how they acquired their concert clothes but remember finding a bright yellow harlequin outfit in the loft when I was a child that was apparently what he wore. Not many of those prisoners made it home at the end of the war. My grandparents had received a telegram fairly early on saying that he was ‘missing, presumed dead’, so having tried to come to terms with this (and he was an only child), he suddenly turned up on the doorstep one day. His mother was so shocked to see him that she sent him away! Can we imagine what that must have been like for all of them? That was all before I was born of course.
What had been his home was now only half a home. The first floor of the house had been let out to a family whose house had been bombed and they remained there for as long as my grandparents lived in it. They were left with two reception rooms, what they called a scullery (kitchen) and a long garden that my grandfather treated as an allotment. Apart from a path running down the side, the entire area was devoted to growing fruit and vegetables. They cooked on a range and my grandmother was an excellent cook. They had no fridge but a wooden box hanging from the ceiling with an aerated door. I used to stay with my grandmother regularly as a child and do remember the day that I thought this wooden box would make a great swing! The whole lot came crashing down, milk bottles and all! I don’t remember a bathroom but then not everyone had one in those days. His early career was now long forgotten but he did manage to get a job in the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult, where he stayed for 18 months before leaving to freelance. His string quartet was very successful and he gave a number of first broadcasts of Mendelssohn String Quartets on the recently formed Third Programme on the radio.
After the war, everyone feared that there would be another one, so there were many shotgun marriages. My father fell into this trap and had a marriage that lasted all of three weeks! This unfortunate lady subsequently married one of my father’s colleagues and I am still in touch with one of their children today. My father met my mother in a work situation and it was not long before I was born and then my sister.
My parents never talked about the war as I am sure it was considered unsuitable material for children, so I really know very little. I do remember that my father had bouts of malaria for years afterwards. My father was very keen to have a son who could follow in his footsteps but together with another marriage after that of my parents, he ended up with four daughters! My grandfather was the ninth child and all his siblings were daughters, so many East families are no longer Easts! As the name appears to have been a lot more common in the 19th century, it seems that a lot of Easts had a lot of daughters! Anyway, I had to fill the role of an imaginary son and was given piano lessons at the age of four. That is common nowadays but was unusual then. I began the cello at 9, which is fairly elderly by current day standards. I was under the impression that everyone did the same job as their father and it never occurred to me that there might have been a choice.
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My mother was a secretary in the Foreign Office during the war – apparently the fastest typist in the pool – and she knew about D Day before it happened (which made her very proud). My grandfather did not talk about the 1st World War either. He was stationed in the UK and it seems from the records as if he were in the RN and the RAF simultaneously which is puzzling.
My great grandfather died when my father was three, so not much is known about him apart from his being a carman. He appears in the 1851 Census with a wife, three sons and three daughters, though I haven’t been able to trace any of them. This is partly because their ages don’t seem to be credible. William East is supposedly 60, with a wife aged 46. They lived in Thomson Cottages in the Childs Hill area, probably one of the new cottages springing up in that area at the time. Since writing this article, I sent off for the death certificate of a William East that was registered, apparently, in 1852. However, when the certificate arrived, the 1852 had been copied incorrectly. The death actually occurred in 1832 and William was only 22 years old, so born in 1810 approximately. He lived in Childs Hill and had parents called William and Mary Ann, the same as the ones in the 1851 census but obviously born rather earlier. The indications are that he will have come from our family but I do not yet know how he fits in. He was born in King St near Gravel Lane, which was a very poor area.