The nearest John O'Conor gets to a proper holiday is the time he spends in Positano, Italy. He goes there every summer to give masterclasses. He works from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and his afternoons are free. "Mary, my wife, comes with me. It's wonderful there. Absolutely out of this world," he says. If he had the time, he'd practice the piano for 10 hours, every day. As it is, he spends four hours every day at the keyboard and limits himself to 75 concerts per year. For the rest of his time he's director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM).
O'Conor took up music at the age of three. It was the only way he could get the attention if his sisters who were keen musicians, he says. His love of music continued through secondary school - Belvedere College, Dublin - but he came under parental pressure to choose another career. "I was good at maths and I desperately tried to conform," he recalls. "I considered other jobs - airline pilot, architect, even the Jesuits. My mother wanted me to become an accountant, but I was desperate to become a performer and world war three broke out when I told her that I wanted to be a pianist." As a compromise, he went to UCD to study music.
After graduation, he taught piano full time at Dublin VEC's College of Music, where he himself had studied. He won a scholarship to study at the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna, Austria. By 1973, he was married and earning very little. He had almost decided to give up pursuing a career as a pianist when, to his surprise, he took first place in the International Piano Competition in Vienna. This launched him on his international career. Ironically, the offer of a professorship at the Hochschule prompted the O'Conors to make the decision to return home - they wanted to live in Dublin and have their children educated in Ireland.
They came back to Dublin, where he got a teaching job at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. "They've always encouraged performers on the staff. I could go away to do concerts provided I kept up my teaching commitment." In 1986, O'Conor helped put Ireland on the international classical music map when he established what is now the Axa Dublin International Piano Competition. Each year, this televised competition attracts over 200 entries from around the world. "It's brought a worldclass level of piano-playing to Dublin and gives Irish students a standard to aim for," he says.
In 1994, O'Conor was appointed director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Sometimes, though, he feels more like the college's chief scrounger, he says, as the academy, which was established more than a century ago to promote the musical education of young people, lives from hand to mouth. The college receives £1.5 million per annum from the Department of Education and Science to cover salary costs.
In 1998 it was given a once-off government grant of £2.5 million to refurbish its 18th-century buildings. There are up to 100 students enrolled on RIAM third-level courses, which include undergraduate degrees in music performance and musical education - the latter in association with the DIT and TCD - and a master's in music performance. The college also offers a one-year access course and a one-year, diploma-in-music course, which O'Conor would like to convert to a three-years degree programme. Some 900 students aged between three and 30 years - from all parts of the State - attend the college every week for individual music lessons. On top of this, each year, the RIAM sends teachers to every corner of Ireland to examine 30,000 music students.
It's important, says O'Conor, that children are allowed pick their own instruments. "If they're not talented at one, they should try something else. Why everyone wants to play only the piano, violin or flute is beyond me. Amateur orchestras are screaming for double-bass, bassoon and trombone players. I tried quite a few instruments before I settled on the piano."
For years the talk in musical circles has been about the setting up of a national conservatory of music. In 1997, O'Conor proposed the establishment of a national academy of the performing arts on the National Concert Hall site in Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. His lobbying took off and DCU's then president, Dr Danny O'Hare, offered the proposed Irish Academy of the Performing Arts (IAPA) space on the campus.
Studies supported the DCU site, but recommended that the IAPA offer only third-level programmes. Understandably, the RIAM has baulked at this. You can't set up an academy which only admits students aged 17 or more, O'Conor argues. "My professor - Deiter Weber, one of the greatest pianists in the world - only had three students - me, aged 24, a Brazilian aged 14 and 12-year-old Lebanese. Admitting people to an academy must depend on talent - not on age. That's always been the case with music. You can't say to highly talented 11-year-olds `Come back when you're 18'.
"I have a highly talented 18year-old student from France, who is already a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire. The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia never asks about age, only ability. At the Juilliard School in New York, the great violinist Itzhak Perlman is also teaching juniors. You have to teach the really talented students at a young age. You can't do remedial work when they're 18."
Meanwhile, a steering group, chaired by Danny O'Hare, was set up last February to develop a blueprint for IAPA. O'Conor remains a member of the group and is hopeful that a successful formula for the inclusion of the RIAM will be found. "Ideally, I still want the RIAM to be part of the IAPA - but the question is how?" he says. In darker moments, he wonders why he ever got involved in the establishment of a national academy of the performing arts. But then, he shrugs, "somebody has to do it. It's for the next generation. I'm trying to set up something that should have been in place when I was growing up - something that I see in practically every other country in the world."
