At age three, she was learning music with her mother, herself an accomplished pianist. Olga Craen (née Athaide) was put on the stage, aged six, when she gave her first public concert, flawlessly performing impossibly difficult and demanding works by Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov. She went on to study under Edward Behr who was probably the most renowned teacher in Bombay and by the age of 18 had completed her Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (LRSM) with outstanding results. She then took Bombay by storm becoming famous as a classical pianist and an extraordinary teacher.
Above: The memorial concert Photo: Perfect Vision to honor Olga Craen (inset)
Parsis played a very important part in the life of Goa-born Craen. Behr recommended her to the Tatas who funded her education at the Tobias Matthay School of Music in the UK. It is said that Craen’s first piano in Bombay had been gifted to her by Lady Navajbai Tata. The pianist’s association with the Parsi community dates back several years to 1931. Zinnia Mehta-Khajotia, one of her illustrious pupils and the driving force behind The Olga and Jules Craen Foundation (OJCF), remembers Olga’s students included the "Holy Trinity” comprising three Parsi musicians — brothers Minoo and Phiroze (Philly) Mehta with Farah Rustom-Beal.
This was a time when western classical music was dominated mainly by Parsis and Roman Catholics. Most of Craen’s students were Parsis: Khushroo Suntook, the Mehta brothers, Roshan Suntoke, Rustom-Beal, Zarine Adrianwalla, Shireen Baria-Isal, Roshun Birdy, Roshan Chowna (who went on to become principal of the Calcutta School of Music), Dr Rumi Kapadia, Cyrus Guzder, the late pianist Hilla Khurshedji and especially Marialena Fernandes, an outstanding pianist and professor of music at the University of Vienna for Music and Performing Arts where she has been teaching since 1991. The slightly younger brigade comprised Smita Godrej Crishna, Rohinton Hirjibehdin, Mehta-Khajotia, Zarir Baliwalla and of course, Blossom Mendonca who teaches and manages The Living Voices Mumbai Choir.
The OJCF was established in 2012 to honor Olga and Jules Craen who, for almost 50 years, dominated the western classical music scene in Bombay.
A lasting tribute is the announcement of the Young Musician of the Year (YMOY) award. The young recipient, selected by visiting examiners of the UK boards of music, from any instrumental or vocal discipline and residing anywhere in India, is nurtured over the period of one year. The inaugural event took place at the National Centre for the Performiong Arts (NCPA) on February 6, 2013, Olga’s birth centenary year. It commenced with a biopic film on the couple, produced by Birdy and Baria Isal (both of whom also compiled a handsome brochure, released on the occasion, from Birdy’s meticulously maintained archives). The musical background to this film was provided by Minoo Mehta and the film edited by Roxane Isal.
There was a performance by the 2013 YMOY Tanay Joshi as also by Minoo Mehta (a live recording of a recital in the USA in 2011), Chowna, Dr Ernavaz Bharucha who accompanied violinist Zubin Behramkamdin (a pupil of Jules Craen’s student Adrian D’Mello) and Fernandes.
Top: Jules and Olga Craen; r: at the inaugural memorial event in 2013;
above, seated front row, from r: Khushroo Suntook, Dr Pheroza Godrej, Marat Bisengaliev
Photos: Perfect Vision
Unfortunately, in 1958 Olga developed carpal tunnel syndrome in her left hand which put an end to her career as a performer. But she continued teaching, despite the pain in her left hand. Six days before her pupils’ concert in 1959 Jules passed away. But the show had to go on and Olga ensured that her students performed at their very best.
Most students found her lessons musical but strict and demanding. Suntook, chairman of the NCPA, still remembers her vividly over 50 years later. "I am afraid I could not meet her standards, as I was involved with sport and my studies. She was very unforgiving about inaccurate pianism, and could be rather severe with her remarks and her demeanor. We were often questioned on tempi (the speed at which a passage of music should be played) adapted by different interpreters of music where no indications were mentioned by the composer so that you could do your own thing. She refused to accept that tempi could be changed. What I bless her for is that she created a love for music, which carries me through even today.”
All her students without exception said she was imperious, oftentimes impatient, even rapping their knuckles with a pencil; tough, rude, very outspoken, no-nonsense, strict, demanding, but adopting a highly disciplined approach to ensure improvement, lesson after lesson. This attitude could be quite upsetting for some of her younger students who found her formidable and attended their lessons with great trepidation. "Looking back,” said one of them, "I don’t think concert pianists or pianists of her ilk should have taught beginners like me!” However, other students like Mehta-Khajotia are eternally grateful that Olga took on a six-year-old which meant teaching her from scratch to build a strong foundation. Similarly, Baria-Isal knew no music teacher other than Olga, having started the piano under her guidance at age seven and having remained a recipient of her brilliant training till beyond her LRSM.
Olga had extremely high standards and that didn’t mean just a note-perfect performance. She was insistent that the music had to say something and go somewhere. Birdy says she can still hear Olga urging her students to "sing, sing, SING!” "Every note of every piece was in her head! If you were playing something and she went into the other room and you struck a single wrong note she would shout from inside and tell you exactly where you had goofed and make you play it over and over again. Her visual memory and acute ear were remarkable, to say the least; once learned, nothing was forgotten. She had the rare ability to read a complex score like a book and hear the music in her head.” Baliwalla made a very valid point when he mentioned that "she emphasized equally on technique and playing from our soul.”
Even today, Mehta-Khajotia remembers, "Technique and hand position were so ingrained in us, something one never loses. She always took it as a given that her pupils would win any competition they participated in. ‘My pupil, after all!’”
Mehta-Khajotia also narrates how Olga became part of her family and would frequently visit, regaling them with her playing and her stories, glass of gin in hand. One of her pupils, Aspi Kapadia, inherited his grandparents’ flat where he readily had Olga live the last years of her life. He visited Bombay frequently and said, "I have great memories of Olga’s delightful piano playing late into the night, especially when she was mildly inebriated.”
Chowna has always instilled in her students the need for rigid discipline as taught by Olga. She remembers a birthday in her mid-teens when she was kissed and wished by Olga. However, since it was evident she had not practiced "without a thought that it was a special day for me — she shut my book, handed it to me and sent me packing!”
Rustom-Beal remembers Olga’s first comment: "‘You are talented,’ she said quietly, and then angrily added, ‘But you don’t pedal so much in Mozart! And you have no technique, eh! For six months you will only play technical exercises!’ As a result, for the first six months I played only Austrian composer Carl Czerny’s The Art of Finger Dexterity, preparing a new exercise each week and Olga screaming, ‘Lift your fingers! Spaghetti fingers!! ATTACK!’” When Rustom-Beal was preparing for the FTCL (Fellowship of the Trinity College of Music, London) Olga kept saying that she would never pass. But she did, and with flying colors, with the examiner’s report mentioning, "This exceptionally gifted candidate played a challenging program with a remarkable strength and unfailing accuracy. Both technically and musically, the performance, entirely from memory, was masterly.” Olga read it and said "Bravo.” When Rustom-Beal reminded her that she had said she would fail, she simply said, "That was just so that you would practice, eh?!”
Olga was so sought after that one of her students, Bharucha, used to come from Poona every Friday for her weekly lesson by the early morning Deccan Queen and stay in Bombay all day. Such an impact did Olga create on Kapadia that he is still studying music at the age of 85! "Olga was a devoted teacher but understood that my medical studies had to take precedence over my musical ones. She treated me with understanding and support. I had to practice on the piano in the Nurses’ Home when I was on call, but managed and took part in at least four recitals at the Taj Ballroom while a medical student.”
Baria-Isal feels Olga as a teacher was brilliant not only in the way she imparted her knowledge but in her capacity to draw out, from all her students, the utmost they were capable of. She was strict — perhaps too strict, some would say — but she produced results, year on year, and thus came to be acknowledged as the leading music teacher of her time. "She instilled in us a sense of perfection. She settled for nothing less. And that was a lesson I learnt not only in my musical studies but in many other spheres of my life.” The same sentiment is reflected by Guzder, "To be her pupil was a life-changing experience. She taught us not just how to play, but how to learn; so that her influence endured with us long after she left us.” What more can one ask from a teacher?