My 22 year association with this great orchestra was the high point of my career. For 13 years (1998-2011) I was Chief Conductor, and for 5 years after that a regular guest, as Ehrendirigent, before Covid cut my visits short. I was privileged to conduct the orchestra’s very last concert (a 2016 Prom at the Albert Hall) before it was merged with Freiburg SWR.

We first met in 1994, with Rossini’s Semiramide at the Pesaro Opera Festival. (Read the Pesaro chapter for the lurid details). The orchestra was to be the Stuttgart Radio, and my first experience of them came in June, at their home base. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I got to the studio  early and watched the players arrive and greet each other in a very friendly manner. We got on well and sorted out some pretty rough orchestral material. There was so much good humour that at the end I asked the foreman if it was always like this. He simply replied “It’s a tradItion here’.  I remember thinking”This is the sort of orchestra I should like to see more of.”

The show was a success, and Pesaro asked me for a new production of Zelmira for the following year. But even more interesting, the Stuttgart managers kept taking me to lunch and hinting that in fact the current Chief Conductor Gelmetti was leaving and was I interested? I was so surprised that I must have seemed rather rude in my vague replies. However that made them the more insistent, and soon we began to visualise possible plans.

I had seen  enough of shotgun marriages in other orchestras to insist that the whole group should decide after a concert in their own hall. I had some valuable sessions with Mozart in the summer of 1996 But because of cancer and date clashes, Stuttgart sensibly made a two year holding contract with an elder statesman. We finally achieved our concert in 1997; the orchestra voted very favourably, and I started as Chief in 1998.

I had conducted many symphony orchestras by now, but never had one “of my own”.  I had no detailed plan, but of course had very strong views, and did wonder how far the players would be prepared to follow me down the historical path that I was used to with many chamber orchestras. As far as the big question of vibrato was concerned I had the confidence of many years with the London Classical Players, in kinds of repertoire up to Bruckner and Wagner. I didn’t have to make experiments; I knew it worked. If I wanted to change things it would be up to me to invite, to persuade, to convince.

The other key historical elements were: taking the composers’  tempi seriously, using appropriate phrasing and bowings, and balancing the numbers between strings and winds. The typical orchestra up to the time of Brahms had 8 first violins, (about 30 strings), and he for example was perfectly happy with that. Today all big orchestras play with 16 firsts, (so about 60 strings), and still only 8 winds. It’s clearly ridiculous for balance, and in the C19 conductors were well aware of it. They regularly doubled the winds when a large string force was involved. It is virtually unknown today; we did it all the time. Listen to the glorious sound of the wind “choir” in our Brahms 1 recording for example.

From the start I worked in excellent harmony with the Boss, Felix Fischer. I decided to have a 20th century piece in each programme, so there was less to persuade there. In the traditional repertoire the players were expecting Haydn and Beethoven to be “different”. But when we first programmed Brahms they smilingly supposed “Now for vibrato”.  It took a while for me to convince them that there was another way. There must have been some very worried musicians in there, and they had been known to insist on having some conductors fired after only one rehearsal. Luckily they listened, and enough of them liked it enough. They were in the end very open and helpful. This orchestra showed me that it would be possible to convert any group willing enough to try.

Within a year we had a “sound” and everybody got used to playing without the traditional wobble. Some critics were offended: “You can’t treat Brahms and Mahler as if they were Early Music!” But others understood what we were trying to do,- put a modern orchestra in touch with its past. And before long commentators all over Germany were mentioning the “Stuttgart Sound” as something worthy of note. Our players began to be rather proud of their new celebrity. Because all our concerts were broadcast , other orchestras were able to hear what we were doing, and often wanted to try it. After a while I was working as a guest in Berlin (3 orchestras), Hamburg (3), Cologne, Leipzig (2), Dresden (2) Munich, Bremen, Dusseldorf, Weimar, and Essen.

Our programmes were fairly mixed, with world premieres, commissioned by the Radio, alongside Bruckner, Nielsen, Tchaikovsky and Martinu.The commissioned composers were quite surprised when we asked them if they wanted vibrato in their pieces or not. Some wanted “the usual”. Others were thrilled and said they had always hated vibrato!  A third lot asked if they could choose when and where. Of course they could! That’s the way forward, as Wolfgang Rihm has so clearly shown us in his later works.

In 2002 we were asked by Helmuth Rilling to give a Beethoven symphony cycle in his Stuttgart Musikfest. In the spoken introductions to each symphony he also asked for, I took the opportunity to explain how I approached this amazing music from a historical perspective: Size of orchestra, seating on stage, speed, sound, etc etc. The audience got a real insight into how historical theory could be realised in modern practice, and the orchestra played superbly. Even so I was surprised some months later at the suggestion that we make CDs of the set. Hearing the broadcast tapes quite changed my mind; the unedited, correctionless performances were superb, and onto the market they went.