How it all started...

In January 2009 a concert took place in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It was given in Robert H. MAsters'  honour. The final item was a wonderful performance of Dvorak's piano Quintet given by the 5 young musicians surrounding him in the picture. Apart from Clement Leske (standing behind his left shoulder) - an Australian pianist - the four string players, cellist Emma Jane Murphy, violinists James Cuddeford and Natsuko Yashimoto and violist Caroline Henbest were all students at the Menuhin School in England during the 12 years Masters was its Director of Music.

Masters, who recently turned 93, has a long and exiting history in the service of music. For more than 40 years he collaborated with Yehudi Menuhin, and he also became the first artistic director of the Menuhin Competition.
In connection with this year’s competition Masters will be a member of the jury for one of the prizes: for the best performance of Bach in the senior sections. He is also donating the prize, which is 10.000 Norwegian crowns.

"No problem"
And like last time in Cardiff in 2008 - this is something he will do from Sydney in Australia, where he now lives. And his judgement will be based on the live streaming of the competition on the Internet.
“There is no problem with streaming as long as the reception is perfect - as it was two years ago from Cardiff. In fact it has an advantage - I can listen more than once if I am in doubt. Unless the reception is perfect I shall not offer a vote”, says Robert H. Masters – in an interview via email.
The first meeting between Masters and Yehudi Menuhin was – according to Masters – a bit unusual.
“My concert Agent telephoned asking if I would go with my violin to St Paul's Cathedral in London and meet Yehudi Menuhin - how could I refuse! Menuhin was shortly to give a charity concert of 3 Bach Solo Sonatas before the Queen Mother in that beautiful but very resonant edifice and he needed help in deciding the best place from which to perform.
Firstly I played from different positions while he listened and then we reversed roles and we both agreed that the pulpit, with its vast stone column at the players back was the only place to give the player any sense of what was happening to the sound”.

The Menuhin Festival Orchestra
This was in the middle of the fifties, and Masters had noticed that Menuhin was occasionally venturing into conducting.
”So I went to him with a proposal that I would be happy to organize and lead a chamber orchestra if he wished. With the best London wind players, the nucleus of strings would include three well established London Quartets - the Allegri, the Aeolian and my own. Menuhin accepted my proposal with enthusiasm and two concerts were set up in June 1958. Fortuitously Menuhin was soon to be invited to be Director of an annual Festival in the City of Bath and the orchestra was to be known firstly as the Bath Festival Orchestra and subsequently the Menuhin Festival Orchestra. During the next 20 years the orchestra made many recordings, toured annually through Europe and made three World tours through Canada, North America, Australia and New Zealand”.
Menuhin's next enthusiasm was to establish a school for talented young musicians. When this came to fruition with the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, UK, in 1963 Robert H. Masters resigned his post as Professor at the Royal Academy of Music to join the staff as the senior violin teacher and from 1969 to 1981 was the school’s Director of Music.

Folkestone 1983
As to the Yehudi Menuhin International violin Competition - this was initially Masters' inspiration.
“Having been invited as a Juror at the Wieniawski competition for Young Violinists in Lublin, I returned to London enthused by the wonderful stimulus such an event brought to young violinists together with the opportunity of travelling abroad and evaluating their playing in relation to their peers.
Menuhin accepted my proposal, again with great enthusiasm, and the first competition took place in the seaside town of Folkestone in 1983 - to be repeated every two years”, tells Masters.
Asked how today’s competition compares with the first event in Folkstone, Masters comments:
“ Compared with the first competition which was a relatively modest event concentrating exclusively on the competition itself,, the competition today has become more of a Festival of concerts and master classes given by Jurors as well as other events directed at the education and entertainment of the competitors and listening public -all obviously requiring more finance than we were able to raise at our modest beginning”.

"Shows real musicality"
What inspired You to give a prize for the best Bach performance?
“The six solo Sonatas and Partitas of Bach are a very important part of the violin repertoire. Their technical difficulties are mostly a result of changes in the violins and bows of Bach's time - in particular the bows which formerly gave the player the ability to change the tension of the bowhair allowing more strings to be sounded together. Successful performances of the Sonatas with their complicated fugues will show real musicality. The Partitas are musically a little more obvious with their Dance Movements”.

Masters adds that he has high expectations for the competition in Oslo.
“With each successive competition I am astonished at the improvement in the standard of the competitors. I expect no less in Oslo”.