An Odyssey to Music – An Interview with Warren Lee

THE ODYSSEY

Childhood

“My first impression of music was at the Yamaha Music Classes. When my elder sister was three, my mother enrolled her into the beginner piano lessons for children, and I tagged along every time because I couldn’t be left alone at home.”

Warren quickly displayed his extraordinary sense of musicality. “One morning, without ever seeing the score, I played the sonatine that my sister was learning on piano.” His parents, naturally amazed, asked the teacher at Yamaha’s to take in Warren as well, but was told that his hands hadn’t developed enough to play the piano properly. “So, I started my first piano lesson on my fourth birthday, under the guidance of Ms Law (羅明貞).”

After a year or so of weekly lessons, Ms Law confirmed Warren’s potential and transferred him to Ms Gloria Wong (黃應年) for a more comprehensive education. “Ms Wong lived on MacDonnell Road, and most of her piano students were from St Paul’s Co-educational College (SPCC). In fact, she was part of the reason I could get into the family of SPCC.” Warren had previously tried to get into the SPCC primary school but he was instead placed in St Joseph’s Primary School. “It was through Ms Wong that I got to know Ms Kotewall, then-principal of SPCC, who took to my piano playing and admitted me.”

Debut

Warren had already garnered quite a reputation for himself at a young age. “It was December of 1983. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPhil) was performing at the Hong Kong Coliseum, collaborating with pop singers like Danny Chan (陳百強) and Johnny Ip (葉振棠). It was HKPhil’s first cross-over venture into pop music, so it attracted some media attention. I was invited to play Handel’s ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ live on stage, and this became my first foray into the public limelight.”

It was quite an experience for the young boy. “I was too young to feel any stage fright, and I remembered asking for a glass of milk right after the performance – I was only six! Everyone was so nice to me, treating me like a baby and pinching my cheeks. Even my school principal asked me for an autograph, though I barely knew how to write at the time.”

With the appearance broadcast on TV and radio, Warren naturally became an overnight sensation. Many a pianist would capitalise on this exposure but Warren wisely chose the opposite. “Performance invitations rained in after my debut but Ms Wong declined all the engagements, shying me away from public attention and allowing me a somewhat normal childhood. I was grateful for this decision, as this allowed me to properly develop my musical style instead of becoming a ‘performing monkey’.”

Ms Wong

Ms Wong was well known as a strict teacher and, talented as he may have been, Warren was no exception to her stern treatment. “She would hit me with a baton whenever I did something wrong, like when I over-pedalled in a Mozart sonata. I remember she once even locked me inside the maid’s room. It was pitch dark, without any windows.”

Despite the harshness, a close bond formed between the teacher and the student. “I understood her actions as a necessary form of discipline and, looking back, she went above and beyond for my music education. I wasn’t the type who would willingly sit still and practise, so Ms Wong would dial in every night, telling me to put the receiver next to the piano and practise under her audio supervision. It was the Zoom calls of the ’80s.”

Alas, good times were not to last. “After the Coliseum debut, we waited patiently till Ms Wong deemed me ready for the next concerto performance, which was four years later with the Macau Chamber Orchestra. Surprisingly, once I got back from Macau, Ms Wong chewed me apart, nitpicking at every aspect of my playing.” Warren only learnt afterwards that Ms Wong was planning to emigrate to Canada, and she had hoped to ease the parting blow by distancing herself away from her beloved student.

Ms Wong’s antics were of little help to Warren. “After Ms Wong left Hong Kong, I lost motivation to continue my piano studies. In fact, I stopped taking piano lessons in Form 1, and even quitted accompanying the school choir just so I could play more basketball.”

And then Warren met Ms Eleanor Wong. “Ms (Eleanor) Wong’s elder son was in the same form as me, and I would walk with him to their home every week for piano lessons. With her fresh ideas, Ms Wong injected back in me a renewed interest in piano playing.”

To London

Warren went to UK after completing Form 3 at SPCC. “I entered into a boarding school, Marlborough College in the UK.” It was a cultural shock for the student from Hong Kong. “I was bullied and pranked, and I was so homesick that I dared to ask a fellow Hong Kong classmate if he could lend me money for a plane ticket back home.”

Fortunately, Warren’s musical prowess saved him. “The school’s music director stepped in and arranged for me to perform in front of the school assembly. I played Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor, and by the end of the performance my dormmates were so impressed they gave me candy treats!”

Royal Academy of Music

Upon completing his GCSEs, Warren received a full scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM). Surprisingly, it was not a calculated act on Warren’s part. “I was actually not that keen to study music at the time; I only enrolled for the scholarship as a test for myself. Since age six at the Hong Kong Coliseum, everyone assumed I was into music, so I simply went with the flow. No one ever gave me any career advice on what studying music entails.”

There are emotional concerns as well. “Going to RAM means I would miss out on the best parts of boarding school, where we would have more freedom in the upper years. Instead, at RAM, I become the lowest in the hierarchy again. I was not bullied there but I felt lonely.”

Warren competed in the International Stravinsky Piano Awards in the United States in his first year, playing Liszt’s “Vallee d’obermann”, a Haydn sonata, and a modern piece by Morel. This experience cemented his view on competitions. “I felt terrible, even though I won. It was too competitive. People were snooping around and disturbing each other.”

Warren was also turned off by the unfairness of the system. “Amongst the competitors that year was a blind Austrian boy. His eyeballs were gouged out and he had to be escorted on stage, yet he had a most beautiful sound. He ended up being first runner-up, and I asked myself, ‘How was that fair?’ For every piece I played, he would easily need three to four times the effort to play the same. Looking at him, I decided that I wouldn’t participate in competitions anymore. Music shouldn’t be used as a basis for competition.”

Summer, 1994

The year 1994 was a turning point for Warren. “That summer, I went to a summer camp held by the Yale School of Music. It took place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where professors would fly in from Yale and conduct masterclasses with the participants.” In the camp, Warren got acquainted with Professor Boris Berman, who offered him another way out. “Boris said that if I was not happy in London, then I should go to Yale to study with him.”

This was easier said than done. “I was still sitting Year 1 at the Academy, but the Yale School of Music was a graduate school, mostly only offering master’s courses or above. Fortunately, they also offer a Certificate of Performance for students who had not had an undergraduate degree but who would still want to prepare for the postgraduate courses.” Chris Elton, Warren’s teacher and then head of keyboard studies at RAM, fully supported Warren and suggested him to go to Yale as part of an exchange programme.

The only problem was, no such exchange programme had previously existed between the Academy and Yale. “To facilitate my exchange, Philip White, the registrar of the Academy, flew to the US to discuss the matter with Robert Blocker, the dean of Yale School of Music. I am forever grateful to the lengths my professors went to for me.”

Yale School of Music

“The environment at Yale was very different. I was happier at Yale because I could take subjects outside of music. Furthermore, there is more of a human connection in Yale. I went from a gigantic institution, situated in the big city of London, to a department of only 21 pianists in the small college town of New Haven. The students grew very close to each other.”

What started as a one-year exchange programme grew to three years, and Warren went back to the Academy with a new look and yet another resolution. “I went back to the Academy to finish my undergraduate degree at Year 4, but at that time I was almost ready to give up on having music as a career. During my four years of study, I had the chance to observe my more talented peers who showed me that, even if you have a successful career, the road of a soloist was not an easy path, and it was not always enjoyable. I still love music but I was getting cold feet because of the limited career prospects. Anticipating that I had to make ends meet, I thus set my heart on law, even going so far as to pay a deposit to the University of British Columbia’s law programme.”

Back to Hong Kong

As the saying goes, true love always finds a way, and music quickly wormed its way back to Warren’s life. “The year of my graduation, Victor Chen (陳司翰), a secondary school classmate of mine, persuaded me to go back to Hong Kong for an audition. He wanted to enter the Cantopop music scene, so I wrote some tunes, he wrote some lyrics, and eventually I signed onto Chiu Tsang Hei’s company as a songwriter, writing melodies as a side gig. One of them, ‘花犯’, was particularly memorable because it was written for a classical piano trio. It was picked up by Hacken Lee and accompanied by Richard Bamping and Dennis Kim from HKPhil.”

Warren also landed himself a stable job. “Shortly after I went back to Hong Kong, the Director of Yew Chung Education Foundation invited me to work in their schools, initially as the artist-in-residence and later as music director. Then, in 2008, I became the music director at my alma mater, St Paul’s Co-educational College, where I have been serving to date.”

On Track

Despite his commitment to SPCC, Warren had actually been quite restless in his early years. “Because no one had given me any career advice, I always thought that I could have done more.” Warren started different ventures once every few years, from getting an MBA at HKUST to becoming the head of global business development for Naxos Music Group, but he always eventually circled back to the field of music education. “It wasn’t until I was 30 that I realised my true calling was not to merely be a musician but to work in the dual discipline of music and education. I can’t stay on a single track.”

MUSES

On Composing

Since youth, writing music has come naturally to Warren. “When I was four, I impromptu-ed on the piano during a radio interview.” Despite authoring several compositions since then, however, Warren still hesitates to call himself a composer. “At most I would call myself a songwriter. You see, I hadn’t really had any formal training in composition, with only an elective or two during my days at Yale. In fact, part of the reason I went back to Hong Kong to write pop songs is because the composition professor at Yale thought highly of my works and encouraged me to write more.”

Apart from pop songs, Warren also dabbled in choral pieces. “Student choirs in Hong Kong have an extraordinary capability – they are ready to take on whatever the repertoire thrown at them, be it extreme octaves or clashing dissonances. Sadly, there is not much repertoire that suits them. This is especially true for Cantonese pieces, where the children’s ones are too simple but the more sophisticated pieces are all written for the adult register.”

This is where Warren came to the rescue. “So, I wrote some pieces for them. Some are what I call 口水歌 (limerick-y pieces) but I also wrote some serious pieces as well.” The help goes both ways. “I am blessed to be surrounded by so many talented student singers in my daily work. By immersing myself in their sounds, I also learnt a lot about the nuances of writing for choirs, for example how to position lyrics so that that they can be heard clearly, or how to balance a third voice between two registers. It’s knowledge that can only be acquired through first-hand experience, not something that can be taught in university.”

Inspirations

We asked Warren how he approaches writing music. “To me, writing cannot exist in a vacuum. Most of my desire to write is born out of necessity. I cannot fathom writing a string quartet if no one will play it.”

Some composers feel that they don’t create music; they are merely discovering music. Warren harbours the same feeling. “It is like what Schubert said when he composes, ‘God took my hand’. Oftentimes, the inspiration came from somewhere up there, and later when I look back at my work, I often feel amazed by how I had thought of such melodies.”

Of course, composing is more than thinking of a melody. “The creative spark may come in the form of a melody or idea but then it is up to the composer to develop it. In choral compositions, for example, there is still much to do after you decide on the harmony and melody. I treat the part-writing to be a second creative process. Sometimes it might be a struggle to get started but, once you get into the zone, everything will start to make sense.”

On Teaching and Role Models

Outside of composition, Warren draws much inspiration from his university days. “Robert Blocker, the former dean at Yale, was an inspiring figure for me. He was my mentor at Yale and, being a pianist, an administrator and a business school professor at the same time, his career path is very much like mine. To date, we still chat regularly over the phone. In fact, I just played Mozart’s Concerto for 2 Pianos with him in China this summer.

“In terms of teaching styles, I owe much to my two teachers, Boris and Chris. The two have very different teaching styles but they complement each other. In Chris’s lessons, he was so inspiring that the student usually was able to immediately play better during the lesson, but it is sometimes hard to replicate that outside the lesson. By contrast, Boris is very intellectual. He would ask you questions instead of telling you what to do in certain passages. I remember once during a three-hour lesson he was asking me questions all the time and I only got to touch the piano for less than five minutes.”

Boris emphasised the importance of quality practising. “Playing without thinking is not actually practising at all; it is just aimless repetition. Initially, it might take more time for the student to understand but, once he gets it, he will remember it more deeply. That’s why when I teach students now, I tend to ask questions more than tell them what to do directly. At the same time, because I had studied under Chris, I know that sometimes you just have to sing and inspire.”

The Smarts of Practising

Of course, that’s not saying practice is not important. “Nowadays, I view talent as an accelerator. If you’ve got talent, every step you take is worth 20 to 30 that of others. Yet there are also people who have no talent but would be willing to walk 300 steps. So, you can reach your destination either way.

“When I was young, I didn’t like to practise a lot. Before I left Hong Kong, I practised abysmally little in terms of hours. As a teacher once told me, it was a miracle that I could have achieved so much with so little practice. But in a way this incentivised me to search for the quickest way to achieve what I wanted during practice.”

Warren shared with us his way of practising. “Every practising session, I will set up in my mind a short-term goal, a medium-term goal and a long-term goal. They dictate what I should achieve in the next minute and in the next five. Every time I stumble during practice, I stop and understand what happened first; I do not repeat for repetition’s sake.

“Mindful practising is very important. If you enjoy practising, you are simply entertaining yourself. I feel like we have not been taught enough on this. I used to call it the arts of practising but now I call it the smarts of practising. You have to learn to practise smart. It is a common refrain for teachers to tell their students to practise more but the crux is actually on the how, not on the length.”

On Performing

We asked Warren about the role of the performer in a piece. “As a performer, our role is to recreate the composer’s intention, at least to the best of our understanding. It’s a big assumption because everyone’s understanding is different. That’s why you need to do research, to listen to different recordings and be curious about the piece. It is all to maximise your understanding.”

Pre-planning is also important for a successful performance. “I remember hearing Murray Perahia once saying, during a masterclass at the Duke’s Hall at the Academy, that ‘to achieve spontaneity, you need thousands and thousands of repetitions’. There are things that can be left to the spur of the moment but, personally, I won’t go unplanned even for that 1% or 2%. You need to plan 100% so that you can have the ease of mind to achieve spontaneity on stage.”

As a performer, Warren prefers chamber music settings more than that of the concerto. “One has the luxury of rehearsals in chamber music. Usually, with solo concertos, you only get to run through the piece once or twice. In this limited time, you don’t really get to know the music together with the orchestra; you just try to play in sync. Compare this to a recent chamber music concert I had with the violinist Dan Zhu (朱丹) in Zhungshan, where we rehearsed for some 16 hours. I was so spent, but at the same time it was so much more gratifying, exploring the nooks and crannies of the music with my chamber partner.”

On Recording

For someone who works full-time in music education, Warren has quite a substantial discography. “I recorded a lot of CDs, and one of my favourites is the album on Tan Dun and Bernstein. One would think that they are very different composers, but stylistically they are quite similar, both having a penchant for accessible miniature pieces. At that time, I was playing Tan Dun’s Watercolours, which was similar in tone to Bernstein’s Anniversaries. So I tried to pair them together, and thus the album was born.

“Making recordings is something I quite enjoy doing, especially when I am recording pieces that are near-forgotten but still worthy of a listen. There is not much point in re-recording a Beethoven sonata when there are so many excellent ones out there. If I make another recording of Beethoven’s op. 109, it would just be to satisfy myself. On the other hand, if I record lesser-known pieces that the whole musical scene hasn’t heard of before, then I am contributing to the arts.

“Take Robert Fuchs’s six violin sonatas, which I recorded with violinist Heyjin Chung on Naxos, for example. No one would bat an eye if I say these were written by Brahms. A successful musician requires talent and opportunities. As Brahms’s contemporary, Fuchs might not have as good an opportunity as Brahms, but musically I’d think the two are on a par with each other.”

Living Composers

As a performer, Warren particularly enjoys working with living composers. “When working with living composers, I get to chime in and influence the process. Sometimes, with their permission, I even borrow the composer’s manuscript and rewrite parts of the score so that it can be more pianistic.”

Warren recounted an experience with the late Joseph Horovitz. “Joseph had a clarinet sonatine which was very famous. When I and Andrew Simon recorded his piece for the CD Ebony and Ivory, I half cold-called Joseph to see if we could play it for him before our recording session.” To Warren’s surprise, Horovitz agreed.

“It was an insightful visit. He told us a lot about the piece, and we even convinced him to change some articulations on the score, even after countless performances before us. In a way, a living composer’s pieces are not finalised until the composer stops moving.”

An unlikely friendship formed between the pair. “Horovitz was of a generation still with meticulous calligraphy, but even so it was not always easy to decipher the markings on the manuscript. Once, I was playing one of his unpublished pieces, and I could not resist transcribing it digitally via notation software. I sent it to him and he used a typewriter to reply to me that ‘on bar 22, these three notes should be slurred’. Before his demise, I would visit his house every time I went to London, where we would compare notes over English tea. Joseph said that we both have ‘composers’ eyes’, which is why we get along so well.”

SPCC

Competitions

We asked Warren what it was like to be in charge of music at such a prestigious school as SPCC. “Music should be a place to de-stress, and not be distressed. This is particularly important at SPCC, which is a very academically demanding school. That’s why when I became in charge of the school’s orchestra, I took them out of competitions.”

Warren recounted the harrowing experience that led him to this decision. “One year, I was listening to the primary school orchestra rehearsing for the Hong Kong Schools’ Music Festival competition. The set piece that year was an excerpt from the last movement of Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 1. It was only a three-minute piece, yet the orchestra was rehearsing the same piece for five hours each week for seven months! Naturally, the orchestra played each note almost flawlessly, and then it devolved into a race for speed. Each rehearsal, the conductor would push the orchestra to play faster, saying that ‘other schools are already playing 128 beats per minute. We need to make it 132 to have a chance to win.’ On the day of the competition, none of the nine competing school orchestras used a music stand; some choreographed the players’ movements like synchronised swimmers! It was a display of gimmicks. I was physically repulsed by the time I listened to the last team. I said to myself, this is not music education.”

Warren empathised with Bartok’s saying that “competitions are for horses, not artists”, and in the following year he invited the London Mozart Players (LMP) to a four-day side-by-side concert with the school’s orchestra. “The LMP was a chamber music group specialising in musical education, and I flew 13 of their musicians to Hong Kong, spreading the professional musicians amongst the students to play together. Additionally, instead of a three-minute excerpt that got truncated at a dominant chord, the orchestra gets to learn and perform 40 minutes of a complete symphony. It was a much more rewarding experience for everyone.”

In recent years, Warren has taken note of a newfound competition with a similar philosophy. “There was an organisation called the Hong Kong Inter-School Choral Festival, where the events are structured as competitions-cum-masterclasses. After every team’s performance, the judges will go on stage and conduct a masterclass with the performing team. This way, everyone can learn something from the event. There is also an award for everyone, with either gold, silver or bronze awarded based on an absolute score but not dependent on the relative strength of other competitors. It made the competition much less cutthroat but more rewarding and educational at the same time.”

Talent Music Programme

Within the school, Warren has also set up a programme for gifted students. “The core for this Programme for the Musically Gifted is on chamber music. Every year, I focus on a different chamber work, and we will analyse the work, compare recording versions, and I will find professional musicians to coach each student’s playing. This year, for example, we are focusing on winds and brass, à la Mozart’s Winds and Brass Quintets.”

Career Advice

Despite having trodden a successful career in music, Warren admitted that his road is not for the faint of heart. “I am infamous for dissuading people from the music profession. I give anyone who asks a reality check. Basically, it’s a teaching profession. You shouldn’t expect to be wearing glamourous outfits and playing Tchaikovsky every week. Most of the musicians need to teach to earn a living.”

Instead, Warren offered a more palatable alternative. “For most people, instead of going professional, I would suggest that music can be a hobby. You can still seriously enjoy music as an amateur.”

Planting Seeds

Summarising his contributions to the school all these years, Warren compared himself to a gardener. “I view my job at SPCC as that of planting seeds for a meaningful relationship with music.”

Warren recounted one heartwarming moment. “I was giving a concert in London one day, and at the end of the concert a group of SPCC alumni came up to me and gave me a Christmas card, replete with signatures and messages. When I chatted with them, they say they still remember my coaching or my choral music, and they still sing in choirs or play in orchestras after graduation. I was deeply moved, and it reinforced my belief that music education was my calling. Nowadays, I have gotten past the point of getting trophies for the school. Instead, I felt that my mission is accomplished if I could kindle a student’s interest in music.” ′

Interviewed by Vantage Music and written by Chester Leung.