Page 55 - Headingtonian Magazine 2017

figure during my years at Headington, and she was at the very heart of the musical community. Her ambition and tireless hard work provided us all with so many exciting opportunities, both in and outside school. Her exceptional leadership of the school’s three orchestras and three choirs was an inspiration, particularly as all this was undertaken in addition to the many demands of her academic and instrumental teaching; she went about it all with an admirable sense of calm, kindness, humour and empathy. I will always remember her with great fondness and gratitude.”
It was indeed wonderful that she encouraged the playing of demanding works by the orchestras, for example, Juliet playing the Rachmaninov’s Second and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concertos. “I was incredibly fortunate to play these concertos: no mean feat for a group of schoolchildren, but we did it and had great fun in the process!” I remember that it was during the concert that included the Rachmaninov that the new music rooms behind the old cells were ’opened’ by the previous Director of Music, Sir Thomas Armstrong, with a chord of C major
on the grand piano which he had donated to the school. The school won the Oxford Music Festival and the orchestra was invited to play on Radio Oxford.
Mrs Vichniakov set up the Chamber Choir which performed on special occasions such as the School Carol Service at Christ Church Cathedral and made two records, one of Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat Mater‘ and the other of Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols.’ InadditiontheChamberChoirwenton foreign tours, to the Netherlands, to Rome, to Salzburg and Vienna, to Paris and Chartres, and, in my last year, to Venice. We performed in churches and different venues and included instrumental items as well.
During Mrs Vichniakov’s time, following a tradition of school productions, she staged ‘Dido and Aeneas’, ‘The Beggars Opera’, a version of ‘The Magic Flute’, called ‘The Golden Flute’, ‘Carmen’, and unusually, ‘The Boy Friend’.
After caring for his wife devotedly from Easter until December, Misha Vichniakov invited many of her musical friends from Durham University
to sing Thomas Tallis’ ‘Ye who Love me, Keep my Commandments.’ Another Durham friend, Stephen Shipley, gave the address.
Jean Cooke
Miss Jean Cooke has died at the age of 96 years. Intensely devout, she was a botany specialist and a theologian. Over the years, she taught
in Cardiff High School, Headington school, High Wycombe Girl’s school and others.
She worked as a missionary with the Indian population in Durban, South Africa, and was Principal of a theological college in Oxford. Jean corresponded with hundreds of people
all through her life, never forgot a birthday or anniversary, and prayed continuously for them all. The thanksgiving service for her life was attended by 300 people from all over the world. A truly remarkable person, Jean influenced many people and is missed by all who knew her.
Joan Considine
Joan came to Headington in 1969 when she arrived with her three sons from Kenya.
Joan had great tenacity and this showed itself in her work and her home life. Girls were grateful to her for her efforts to find a way to explain
a concept, particularly those girls who found Mathematics challenging. They were pleased to find themselves in a division she was teaching.
Nothing escaped her eagle eye, be it irregularities of uniform or badly presented homework,
so it is no surprise she oversaw the public examinations with their myriad of regulations with quiet efficiency.
Joan joined Hillstow as a resident member Staff with Senior House Mistress, Miss Raikes and Margaret Connell who was also resident.
Joan could turn her hand to most things. She handled a screwdriver or a paintbrush like a professional, often to help others. I remember once standing shining a torch at where she was fiddling with the innards of a car which refused to start. Needless to say Joan won and this at 7pm on a cold and windy winter evening.
In retirement one of Joan’s projects which took up a lot of her time was editing and producing a magazine for those who, like Joan herself, had lived in East Africa and missed the vast open spaces with its such varied and numerous wild animals.
Daphne Elizabeth Fallows
Daphne Fallows (Bunney) died on November 30th 2016 aged 85. She was at Headington from 1945 to 1949, having been joined by a younger sister Jenny, now living in New Zealand.
Daphne was born in 1931 in Hucknall, near Nottingham. She was the oldest of a family of three girls and one boy. Her father was a mining engineer and so her early life was spent in the coal mining area of Nottinghamshire.
In her notes ‘why I wanted to be a nurse’, she reflected on incidents in her childhood. She remembered having a tonsillectomy operation and being sent to recuperate in a nursing home in Southampton run by a religious order. Many of the nurses were nuns and they ran a very severe regime, where there did not seem to
be much caring for the individual. In contrast, she visited elderly and sick people in the
local Nottinghamshire mining village and was impressed by the self-help and caring spirit of the local community. During the war, when her mother was helping the Red Cross, she learnt
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