We had an invigorating time exploring historically informed performance and performance psychology with our Young Mannheim Symphonists at the 2021 National ONLINE Spring Academy. We created our exciting and immersive online course for dozens of participants aged 12-22 who logged in from NSW, VIC & QLD over two days in September.

Rachael Beesley and Nicole van Bruggen began the proceedings each day with sessions entitled Investigating Primary & Secondary Sources – A Research Guide to enable students to understand more about the process of research, and expand their concept of performance led research. We shared short videos and written responses from our many academically inclined Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra musicians describing their doctoral research and process of investigating Primary & Secondary sources, and included short biographies of their career paths. We then learnt how they envisaged their research and how this influences the performance and understanding of HIP today and into the future.

We welcomed back internationally respected experts – guest speakers Anthea Cottee, psychologist and cellist who shared practical advice on Motivation & Peak Performance, and Prof Neal Peres da Costa gave a brilliant talk on cutting edge research into Classical & Romantic Style and Performance. Conductor Dr Mario Dobernig introduced insights specifically into the 2022 YMS National Winter Academy repertoire, including listening to recordings and providing historical context to the repertoire.

We also held live masterclasses by Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s Principal Musicians, enabling the students to perform live or submit a recording of a Classical or Romantic work (on modern instruments) plus Q&A mentoring sessions with the co-artistic directors and the guest speakers throughout the Academy.

The National ONLINE Spring Academy is a unique opportunity for students to gain confidence, knowledge, inspiration and expertise to empower them to begin making informed musical decisions on their own.

Participants’ responses to the National ONLINE Spring Academy:

“Most other programs have been cancelled but ARCO remained.”

“It was a great opportunity to reconnect with the ARCO YMS community - both those I met last year at the National ONLINE Winter Academy and those I met in person at the Queensland Intensive this year.”

“Each speaker offered different perspectives on the meaning of HIP and what it means in practice.”

“It was great to cover such a variety of topics pertinent to HIP over the two days! I personally loved hearing about all of the research done by ARCO musicians, Anthea's lecture on performance psychology (which feels much more pertinent to me this year as I'm really trying to focus on positive self-talk and focus in performance), and of course Neal's fascinating look at 19th century performance practice (especially all of the recordings - even though we can access a lot online, it's great to be pointed in the right direction).”

“I really enjoyed the masterclass! It was great to have the opportunity to play and get some feedback from my tutor, who had some really creative ideas about how to take my Mozart concerto to the next level. A lot of her ideas were based on rhetoric and harmony, and I liked the way she stepped through how that could look in the context of my piece.”

“I found all the masterclasses interesting, even the ones for other instruments, because there was a much greater focus on style than I usually get in a normal private lesson, and so I could learn even from other instruments' masterclasses. It was interesting seeing how the HIP things we'd learnt applied to our own pieces, and it provided some really interesting things to experiment with in my practice.”

“The most valuable thing that I learned is that more research and knowledge of what would have been done does not mean more rules. In fact it allows us to have a completely authentic interpretation with so many more expressive options.”

“I enjoyed discussing the purpose of music in society, I thought it was interesting to reflect on the bigger picture of why everyone creates music, especially in these times when most of us can’t come together to play. I valued some of the information during the presentations which were related directly to what I am currently undergoing; motivation techniques for recording auditions, for example.”

— 2021 Young Mannheim Symphonists NOSA participants

“The only dumb question is the one you didn’t ask.”
— Richard Gill Founding Artistic Director Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra