QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Dietrich Lasa

(This had been the first German orchestra to tour internationally to rebuild cultural relationships with the rest of the world after the Second World War.) There were 17 in the orchestra, and only four viola players, so if one was not there, an absence would be noticed; for Dietrich, another appeal of the small ensemble was the greater bond with the audience. The last concert in which Dietrich took part was in the White House in 1984. By that stage he had already resigned, with the tickets to Australia already in his pocket. “At that time,” said Dietrich, “I thought I had to escape from all an almost ‘aristocratic’ family tradition which I felt was too much weight on my psyche. I wanted to go barefoot, to live my own life, and not to have to live up to all these family expectations. I had never been in Australia but I liked the idea of its open spaces, political stability, and multicultural environment where I could do as I pleased … I was seeking less stress, a less congested environment, clean air and the beauty of Australia’s nature. I must say that Australia has given me that.” He applied to come to Brisbane because a fellow Stuttgart player knew Werner Andreas Albert, then Chief Conductor with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Although that orchestra was short of viola players, union stipulations required that two nationally-circulated advertisements be unsuccessful before any non-Australian performers could audition. However, Dietrich had already bought his tickets. So keen was he to get away that he took his family first to Fiji, where they stayed in a shed for three months, then on to New Caledonia, because that was closer to Brisbane, for seven months. Civil unrest when the local Kanak population sought independence from France was the catalyst for the family’s visitor’s visa to Australia. Dietrich arrived the day before Australia Day, 1985, only to discover his application for a work permit could be made only from outside Australia! He pressed his case that he had to flee from New Caledonia and, after six months, was granted a work permit for two years in July 1985, which enabled him to successfully audition for the orchestra. After that, he was granted a permanent visa and continued playing in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. He also taught viola at ‘The Con’ (Queensland Conservatorium of Music). “By 1989 I had something of a ‘midlife crisis’ when I was near 40,” admits Dietrich, “because although it was beautiful to play in an orchestra and make beautiful music, I began to ask myself if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

A bland concrete warehouse exterior in Brisbane’s Kelvin Grove hides within a treasury of stringed instruments – violins and violas on the walls, cellos and basses propped around the floor – all awaiting new owners, presided over by the affable owner of Animato Strings, Dietrich Lasa. Dietrich was born in Stuttgart in 1950 and grew up in a city about 75km away where his father was a teacher of physics and mathematics. His father’s passion, however, was to play the viola, and its sound forms some of Dietrich’s earliest memories. His father loved the string quartet (two violins, one viola, and one cello). He had five children and it was understood that all would play a stringed instrument. “So when we started music lessons at the age of eight,” Dietrich recalled, “we would practice just as naturally as if we were brushing our teeth. We formed a family musical ensemble, which occasionally performed in public at functions.” Dietrich was fortunate to have good teachers when he began learning the violin. After finishing his schooling, he went to the Darmstadt Academy of Music where his teacher was a disciple of David Oistrakh, one of the most acknowledged violin players. Later, Dietrich attended the North West German Music Academy at Detmold, where he studied with people such as Tibor Varga, a famous violin soloist who had travelled the world, tired of it, and settled at the Academy. There he also had a chamber orchestra of 17 to 20 players which Dietrich joined – his first – and they travelled Europe in the early 1970s. “I then played the viola because I felt it to be more of a challenge to me as I had grown up with and mastered the violin. Also viola players were in high demand. This situation applies even today. Although there is less written for the solo viola, compared to the violin or cello, the instrument does play an important part in the orchestra by ‘gluing’ the violins and cellos together to give a richer orchestral tone.” Dietrich could have set his sights to become alternate first violist with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra but by his own admission, at that stage of life, was very much into ‘relaxation therapy’ and took himself off for America where, amongst other things, he worked for a time as a cowboy. Returning to Germany he obtained a job as a music teacher in the town in which he was raised. He even taught classical guitar, until about 1980, when he became a member of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra,

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