PAIRS

Curious that we often experience composers in pairs:

Monteverdi and Schütz

Bach and Handel

Haydn and Mozart

Beethoven and Berlioz

Mendelssohn and Schumann

Wagner and Liszt

Brahms and Dvorak

Bruckner and Mahler

It’s highly artificial of course; there are always more composers around. But some invariably stand out.

Individuals rarely come singly it seems.

How lucky we are to have them all, every single one.

SACRED AND PROFANE

Some conductors are serious creatures. They take themselves and their music very seriously. They are well trained and musically educated. They don’t make jokes, particularly as they get older. I’m reminded of the composer Spontini. When Richard and Minna Wagner dined with the Spontinis in Berlin the famed Italian wore full medals. When Minna made some little joke he uttered the epic rebuff “In this house we do not laugh”.

I seem to be very different. I love laughter in rehearsals, even in concerts. I want the orchestra to be happy. My first rule of conducting is not so much “Is it in tune or in time”, but “Are the musicians enjoying themselves?” If they are they will play significantly better. Perhaps because I was an amateur from he ages of 10 to 28, I always expected to enjoy making music. Even when I was at the RCM I remember someone saying that they had never seen any one enjoy conducting so much. It reminds me that Berlioz said he could conduct with pleasure every day of his life.

That attitude was probably valuable in my early days, when I was often working with amateurs. They would only sing or play for me if they were enjoying themselves. But it turned out that almost all really good professional orchestras also preferred that warmth as well. There were exceptions: Chicago were a little stiff; Cleveland very po-faced; the Berlin Phil and the Leipzig Gewandhaus took themselves rather seriously. “Res severa est verum gaudium”. These guys played well, but didn’t want to dance. But with music-loving, instinctively dance-loving groups, I could achieve wonders; we spoke the same language. In the end, despite lot of intense professional experience, I guess I always remained an amateur, a lover of music. I certainly didn’t have an awful lot of theoretical or technical training, and was mostly self-taught. Instead I relied on a burning enthusiasm, a lot of self-examination, research, study, and,- common sense.

MEDITATION?

Some people are drawn to meditation, if only to center their minds from spewing out  a constant stream of unrelated thoughts. Playing music is wonderful because it completely concentrates the mind both intellectually and emotionally. It’s hard work, but also relaxing. And it allows you fully to live in the present.

When not making music I hear an almost constant soundtrack of all kinds of music going on: recently heard, or heard long ago suddenly reappearing, switched on by hearing a single word or a musical phrase that reminds me of a song. A melody remembered before sleep may well still be going on when I wake up.

INTERNET FREEDOM

How on earth did I manage my career before the internet? I didn’t use an agent or latterly even a

secretary, and so needed to be fairly efficient on my own. How difficult it could be by phone and fax alone. A laptop and smart phone completely changed all that.

In earlier days to hear a piece I had to find and buy a CD. Now I can hear any piece in the world on Idagio within seconds. Email and texting has totally transformed and speeded up correspondence. I could regularly provide a same-day service.

To listen to a potential solo singer or instrumentalist I used to have to contact their agent and ask for a tape; it could take 2 weeks. Now I can find the artist’s own site and hear them instantly. It’s an enormous help with last minute replacements.

Writing scripts and articles was usually by hand.

Now I have a word processor constantly by me, and have forgotten  how to write!

Scholarly work was very slow and often meant visiting distant libraries. Now I can access scholarly papers and early editions of scores at home. And Wikipedia supplies plenty of the simpler stuff.

Little things like on-line banking, a built-in metronome, and maps to find halls and hotels on foot,  all make a huge difference.

Thank goodness the last 30 years have been much easier than the first.

THE BATON

The use of a baton in conducting needs more thought than it is regularly given. One sees it far too often doing nothing at all. Amateur conductors and chorus masters faced with an orchestra seem to feel a baton essential, usually with embarassing results. Dead in their hands, it can simply get in the way of what their hands might do quite naturally.

But even with professionals a baton seems entirely inappropriate with chamber orchestras and small choirs. These are simply large Chamber Music. It does not call for authority but complicity. A baton can actually distance you from the musicians.

When I started conducting I also sometimes used a baton when it was inappropriate. I gradually became wiser. One powerful turning point was the new production of Die Zauberflöte at the Vienna State Opera in 2000. By then I never used a baton for Mozart, but thought perhaps it might be necessary in a big opera house. But every time I tried a stick in rehearsal it simply felt wrong, and I finally abandoned it altogether. The smallish orchestra at my feet clearly did not require it and, provided I gave clear upbeats, the soloists and chorus found it perfectly easy to keep in time, even at the back of the stage.

After that I realised  that a baton is only occasionally needed for very large forces, as a lively extension of the arm. I used one less and less, happily directing for instance the suave Brahms Requiem with coaxing hands alone.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS?

Looking back at the explosion of interest in Early Music during the 1970s, I’m surprised to realise how little I learned from the directors of other groups. I learned a lot from the players themselves in the London Baroque and London Classical Players, but went to very few period-performance concerts by other people. I seemed to want to plough my own furrow, do my own research, make my own discoveries. And of course I was usually ahead of the pack, trying out the next musical period, enjoying the thrill of solving the problems when they were as yet unsolved.

It wasn’t so much trying to be “first”, as having a clear field of tempting  and untouched research waiting to be tackled. Instead I went to a mass of avant garde music, which I regarded as equally important. Several times week I would be down to hear the London Sinfonietta, the Fires of London and many other groups. You could say there were three areas of study: Unknown early music, brand new modern music, and music we thought we knew (like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms).

DISAPPEARENCES

Am I a dangerous influence? I seem to have been involved with so many groups that have subsequently vanished:

The Schütz Choir

The Schütz Choir of London

The London Baroque Players

The London Classical Players

The Bournemouth Sinfonietta

Kent Opera

RSO Stuttgart (Merged)

Beware!

BRACES

I like wearing braces to keep my trousers up. More comfy than those dragging belts. In the RAF I was issued with an incredibly well-made pair, which I used for over thirty years. They had my service number clearly stamped upon them: 2548197. They finally bit the dust on a tour with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, but by a delightful bit of timing that very day the young players gave me a present of a beautiful pink pair. Then in my collection I find a pair signed all over by members of the Stuttgart Radio. And a red pair covered in white crosses from the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, soon followed by a red German pair from a Hamburg band who were not going to be outdone. Then there’s a nice brown pair from a student who I taught in Berlin, and a few other gifted pairs (one bright green) whose origins are lost in the mists of time. I am grateful to all of them for so affectionately keeping me up along the way.