KRISTIAN Winther sits at a South Melbourne cafe in the spring sunshine with his back to the Australian National Academy of Music. The classical bulk of the institution looms large, literally and figuratively, in the life of the young violinist.

Having studied there between the ages of 16 and 18, he has returned at 24 for a year of playing and coaching. The decision was prompted by ANAM's threatened closure last year, which made him realise its unique role in Australia's creative life.
"It's the most interesting place musically to be in the country," he says. "There's no other place that's playing as much music and as much contemporary music with as many great people."

One of those people is Brett Dean, ANAM's artistic director and the man who spearheaded the ultimately successful campaign to secure the academy's autonomy, funding and home in the former South Melbourne town hall. Dean is also a composer and his 2006 work The Lost Art of Letter Writing won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award, often labelled the Nobel Prize for classical music. The piece, first performed in Cologne in 2007, is having its Australian premiere this weekend and Winther has been chosen as soloist, a role performed by the considerably better known German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in Europe and the US.

Is he daunted? Winther gives a wry laugh. It's definitely a challenge, he concedes, one of the hardest pieces he's had to learn, "partly for the number of notes and also for the depth that each movement and each character needs".

The characters are four letter writers, as suggested by the title. Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Vincent Van Gogh and Ned Kelly form a strange quartet, but each of the letters was written in the latter half of the 19th century and each creates its own world. Brahms's letter to Clara Schumann is a veiled love letter to the wife of his mentor, while Wolf's and Van Gogh's are "cries for help from those on the edge of the abyss", according to Dean. Kelly's Jerilderie Letter, a manifesto outlining his grievances against the police and justification for his crimes, may seem the odd one out but chimes with Dean's interest in outsiders and misfits. "It's a difficult piece to describe," Winther says. "I'm trying to think of another piece where there are four movements that are so different, all with such distinct personalities and all with the stamp of a single composer, and I couldn't think of one as extreme as this."

Although Winther has not yet spent as much time discussing the piece with Dean as he would like, he identifies with the all-rounder, who is also a violist and conductor: Dean will be conducting his concerto at this weekend's performance, which is sold out. Winther is pursuing the same multi-disciplined career path, with a recent appearance at the Canberra International Music Festival conducting Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's De Stijl and another at the Melbourne International Arts Festival conducting Sofia Gubaidulina's Seven Words.

Winther laments the specialisation that has become the norm in the modern era. Even at the start of the 20th century, he says, it wasn't uncommon for conductors to compose. He says his own compositions are not great, "but if you don't keep doing it you're not going to get better".

He comes from a family where hard musical work was the norm. His mother, Vivienne Winther, is artistic director of Stopera, the ACT's chamber opera company, and has had a long career as a repetiteur; his father is concert pianist John Winther. At the age of five Kristian saw a violin in an orchestra and decided that was the instrument for him.

He cites Canberra-based teacher Josette Esquedin-Morgan as the person "who taught me everything I know about the violin"; more recently he has studied
under violinist John Harding, a former artistic director of ANAM, and received coaching as a conductor from John Curro.

Despite doing well in competitions -- in 2002 he was a grand finalist in the Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Award and in 2003 won second prize in the Michael Hill International Violin Competition -- he thinks they are "terrible". He is also scornful of "pushy" types who "are always talking to people and always having wine and cheese evenings. I can't stand it, I think it's disgusting."

For someone who professes not to actively pursue opportunities, he has not done badly, having performed as a soloist with, among others, the Melbourne, Sydney and Tasmanian symphony orchestras, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Auckland Philharmonic. He was guest assistant concertmaster of the Adelaide and Western Australian symphony orchestras and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Although not averse to working overseas, Winther denies that Australia lacks opportunity. "You can do just as much in Australia as anywhere else," he says. "Probably more, because there are fewer inhibitions and traditions."

In 2007 he joined Melbourne's Tinalley String Quartet, which won the coveted Banff International String Quartet Competition that year, but left after 18 months because he was "fed up" with the violin and wanted to study conducting. Although his admiration for the ensemble is huge, he says, he ultimately found the idea of playing with the same people for years limiting.

Some have identified a restlessness in Winther's character, but Dean says this is a key to his virtuosity. "I've admired him for some years," he explains. "He's one of the most exciting instrumentalists I know, with a young and inquiring mind."

While eschewing the one-track ambitions of some of his peers, Winther anticipates a busy few years ahead, although he doesn't know -- or, he claims, care -- where that will take him. "I'll do concerts and I'll do Australian premieres of composers that I love and I think audiences will love, and I'll do Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, but if there's no work, then that's fine: I'm happy to just teach people music, because it's good and it's fun and I can still go home and play for myself. That's fine with me."

Fiona Gruber

THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) (19 November 2009)