National Symphony Orchestra

Having written about the London Concert Orchestra, I should definitely write about the other orchestra in my life of which I was Music Director for 25 years: the National Symphony. 

This orchestra had a glorious past, being one of the oldest freelance bands and the orchestra of choice for the great British films of the war and post-war years. As a matter of interest, the other British orchestra used for those post-war films was the Sinfonia of London. The NSO was led by David McCallum who was the father of the actor of the same name and played Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Generally, these films were conducted by Muir Mathieson. I met both the conductor and soloist of Brief Encounter, the film having been shot in early 1945 and one of those famous NSO war films. Mathieson came to the Royal College of Music when I was a student in the 70s to conduct an orchestra playing film music in which I played the piano; and Eileen Joyce, who had played the solo part to Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto in the film, was great friends with my great-aunt and played in her trio with Marie Wilson (ex-wartime leader of BBC Symphony). 

The orchestra was always a very happy one as, by the time I conducted them, they had a force of nature by the name of Anne Collis in charge, and she treated the whole enterprise as one of great joy. She claimed she had been the first female musician into the Royal Philharmonic and I wouldn't be surprised. You wouldn't dare deny Anne anything! She was a percussionist and is responsible for the NSO being the only orchestra in the world to have a Tacet (do not play) sheet printed for the percussion section in the string piece Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. At a concert, she had neglected to pay close enough attention to the running order and played an enormous cymbal crash for Carmen's Toreadors March as I brought the baton down and everyone else played the Mozart!

The National Symphony was the direct competitor for the London Concert as the NSO was the house band for Victor Hocchauser, but the LCO was owned by Raymond Gubbay. Both Raymond and Victor were concert promoters in London from the 70s. My first appearance with the NSO was on the 30th April 1988, a week before my first appearance with the LCO, and I managed to juggle these two rival promoters and orchestras for nearly a year, before I got the call from Raymond to choose. 

The NSO was a very different orchestra in those days. It was a very happy, family affair and if, occasionally, things went wrong, it wasn't a big deal. I remember starting Ravel's Bolero at the Royal Festival Hall without the 2 solo saxes, each of whom had 16 bars of solo, and one who had the Eb clarinet solo as well: that's 48 bars of nothing apart from a rhythm. My fault probably as I should have noticed, but equally, so should the orchestra manager! There is no room here to tell you how I solved the problem of having started the piece, we played it in its entirety and the audience never noticed the missing instruments. You will just have to buy my autobiography, "Sit Down, Stop Waving Your Arms About" published on 28th April 2023, where I recount the story. Pre-order here 

Every year, the NSO and I cross the Atlantic (this year 11/9/23) on Cunard's liner Queen Mary 2 and next year will be the 15th anniversary. The friends I still have in the orchestra cross with me and after Anne's early death (and there's another extraordinary story in the book), Justin Pearson, the remarkable cellist and human being, has taken Anne's passion to another professional level. I return fairly regularly to them being careful not to conflict with the LCO. Though both work with Katherine Jenkins, it's kept quite even-handed!

I am so lucky (and privileged) to have been so closely aligned to two such great, yet very different orchestras. 

London Concert Orchestra

I make no secret of the fact that the orchestra, of whom I have the privilege of being the Music Director, the London Concert Orchestra, is an extremely happy band! Historically that has not always been the case. I first conducted them on 6th May 1988 in the Barbican Centre and Marcus Dodds, the orchestra's only other Music Director had died some 4 years previously. My memory of the occasion is hazy and my experience of orchestras at that time limited, so can't remember whether in 1988 they were happy or not. The violinist Joan Atherton, who, on 30th December 2022, retired from the orchestra after very nearly 50 years playing, did say at her retirement speech, she remembered my first appearance with the orchestra and that I conducted Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet. I didn't ask her the reason for remembering that occasion for fear that it was not a good one! However, I think she was in error of the piece, as I make a note of the works I conduct at every performance, and in my score of Romeo and Juliet, I note that I first conducted it with the Philharmonia Orchestra in  February 1988 at the Royal Festival Hall, and not with the LCO until 1993 in Symphony Hall Birmingham. 

However, leaving that aside, as time went on, the orchestra became more and more unhappy. The quality of us conductors were not always of the best, the booking by the fixer was done by a who was available system and not who was a principal and who was a sub-principal. Musicians only accepted the job of playing in the orchestra if there was nothing else. The standard of the orchestra deteriorated and it became a case of performing as best you could and hoping the audience would not notice! I don't think they ever did.

Fast forward to the noughties and I realised as I was conducting them more and more, that they needed an identity, moreover an identity that was different to other London bands. Talking with Anthony Findlay, CEO of Raymond Gubbay, and James Rutherford who at the time was Events Director the idea was created of a successor to Marcus Dodds, some 40 years after he had died. I believe every orchestra needs a figurehead, someone they can focus on. It generally creates unity as the majority of the orchestra either likes or dislikes the conductor. I accepted the position of Music Director, and we began the process of re-building the orchestra to be at the forefront of the London orchestras at what we did. We weren't going to play the Mahler and Tchaikovsky symphonies, as there was no room in the dwindling London market for that. But we would do modern film music and popular classical compositions. With it, we would have fun and take the audience along with us; maybe even include them in the concerts. 

We have done this remarkably well and now have a huge reputation......and it doesn't matter who is conducting them! It was demonstrated for me in a comment by a musician a few years ago, when he said, "The LCO has gone from being an orchestra you had to play in to earn money, to being an orchestra everyone wants to play in!" The musicians of the LCO seem to agree with that. Rehearsals are fun and full of laughs; the concerts are long and good value, but no-one minds; the standard of playing is extraordinarily high, and we know it; and most important, at every single performance we get one, two or three immediate standing ovations. We all like that! The orchestra is a very happy one, I've been told that over and over, and I think it shows in their playing. 

The standard of all our orchestras in this country is extraordinary, and the London Concert Orchestra is up there with the best.

The art of conducting

As I get to the age when most people have retired, I realise that I can't do that, and whilst I have my faculties, never will. I am one of the those fortunate ones, whose work has always been their hobby. And who ever voluntarily gives up their hobby? For me, there is nothing better than standing up in front of 70 or 80 of your colleagues and being the facilitator for everyone's talents to become one. I keep explaining, that is the job of the conductor: you have between 70 and 80 incredibly talented people on stage, all of whom believe they know the tempo and direction of the piece of music you are performing as well, if not better, than you. But you can't have 70 slightly different tempos, 70 slightly different accelerandos, 70 slightly different dynamics etc., so there has to be only one. You could sum up the art of conducting as: a dictatorship of one person with the consent of all.

Reduced sized orchestra

In these difficult times, when the outside world is going mad and everyone is so angry and intolerant of others opinions, I have been creating a library of popular pieces of music that can be played by a reduced sized orchestra so that promoters can promote with less risk and those that want to maintain social distancing can do so. The basic orchestration for most of these pieces is 1 flute, 1 oboe, 1 clarinet and 1 bassoon. 2 horns, 2 trumpets and 1 trombone with a timpanist, 2 percussion colleagues and a harp. Bringing up the body of the orchestra are the string players which can number from a few to many. This is the available repertoire Inglis Music Library. I think there's a broad cross-section of repertoire here. 

It was begun when in order to tour an orchestra with soloists or cross-over artists and make using an orchestra more viable, we had to reduce the size in order to reduce the costs. I started with a few pieces and as the concept grew, added more to the list and therefore choice. I was never interested in just dropping instruments and pretending they never existed; they did and should not be ignored. Therefore the wind and percussion sections were re-written so to the average person attending a concert, there would be no noticeable difference: it would still sound full and rich, and as close to the original as possible. For instance, generally speaking, you would not want to miss out the 3rd note of a chord in any passage; it would sound bare with just open 5ths. Quite often, the 2nd player of the woodwind section would fill these notes out. Leave out the players, you leave out the important notes. So I rearranged and and redistributed the notes. Now, no important notes are missed out, but the original spirit of the composer's intentions are maintained.

I believe in the idea so much that we are taking it to some smaller theatres where a full sized orchestra of 70 or 80 musicians would make no financial sense. However, one of 33(ish) most definitely does. 

If in Milton Keynes, Oxford and Richmond in March and April 2022, look out for us! 

Visiting a new orchestra

It has been a long time since I last posted anything on this site, so having been out to Thailand for a very fleeting visit (3 nights!), I thought I would write of what it is like to visit a new orchestra. I should add that my visit last week was not in fact brand new, as I had last conducted the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra in March 2011 when minus its royal title. But though I remembered I had conducted them, I remembered nothing else of my visit apart from the fact I thought they had a reasonable standard. 

The orchestra and I were to support the mezzo Katherine Jenkins and as there was no other vocal support, we would need to provide some orchestral items during the performance for her to have a little break and change dresses. Remembering my previous visit, I thought I could challenge them with some well-loved popular pieces of classical music and chose: Shostakovich Festive Overture, Bernstein Candide Overture, Libertango, Traviata Prelude, Prelude to Carmen and Faust ballet music. I had been provided with four three-hour rehearsals plus a general and was asked whether I wanted more! I replied, absolutely not. It is easy to over-rehearse; one must always leave something for the performance. However, they decided to rehearse the orchestral items with a local conductor the day before I arrived. I'm glad they did. 

At my first rehearsal, a number of musicians remembered me from my previous visit and I was not sure whether that was a good thing or not. Did they remember me because I was inspiring, or because I was rubbish? I have to say I could not remember any of them.......it was 12 years previously and I had conducted many orchestras since! 

However, we started and by the break, my first impression was that I was pleased I had 4 rehearsals prior to Katherine joining us. Katherine's rep is technically not challenging to play, but it has a style all of its own and the tuning is very important. Sometimes, a song will start on a high note in the violins and it is vital that is prepared carefully before the downbeat. At other times, the sound created by arrangers such as David Foster, Stephen Baker and Patrick Hamilton requires a delicacy of touch rather than a fortissimo of attack! So I devoted two rehearsals to Katherine's rep and the other two to the six orchestral items, all of which have their technical challenges. 

With a great deal of hard work and yes, humour, we broke down the compositions into their various sections, playing them slowly and quietly before gradually picking up the pace and dynamic until we were at tempo and could play them. I believe music should be taken very seriously, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun and enjoy it! One of the comments often made to me is, how much fun my rehearsals are. I believe laughter is good for the soul, just as I believe music is good for the soul. So when you combine the two, well, you've reached nirvana! 

The resultant concert in the Cultural Hall attracted a standing ovation for Katherine and the musicians of the orchestra who had played unbelievably well. Both Katherine and I received plaudits for the orchestra, with lots saying they had never heard the orchestra play so well. This was as a direct result of the star performer, who elevates everyone around her to give of their best, and the hard work done by us at the rehearsals. 

Well done RBSO. I hope it is not another 11 years before I see you again!

Terrible Times part 1

I thought it might be of interest to any blog readers I may have, to know what I am doing during the current terrible times for the entertainment industry. On 18th March 2020 I conducted what, unknown to me at the time, was to be my last concert until.......well, that has not yet been decided. I had conducted in St David's Hall a few days previously, and we had wondered at that time whether the concert on the 18th would go ahead. But to those musicians like myself who were hopping from the London Concert Orchestra to the National Symphony Orchestra, much to our surprise it went ahead. Little did we know then how long this close-down would last. We all thought it would be a month, maybe 6 weeks and we'd be up and running with the summer concerts. Now here we are nearly 5 months later and no sign of this disastrous state of affairs ending. To begin with, as I thought this would be temporary, I started to do some on-line videos with the London Concert Orchestra playing individually at home. I think I'm right in saying we were one of the first, if not the very first, to attempt to do this with an orchestra by using multi-screen of the musicians, and we had 30 musicians on the screen at the end. I asked my old mate Wynne Evans, a tenor I have known a long time and who has found fame as the face (and voice) of a certain comparison website to sing Nessun Dorma; but this would be Nessun Dorma with a difference. We would alter the words and pay tribute to all those essential workers who were doing so much to fight this frightening disease that at the beginning no-one knew how to fight. And some were paying with their lives. From my life with the Two Ronnies, I knew the theory of making a click track, and then playback to that click track, but not how then to put that into practise on the screen. So I rang another mate, Steve Carr who happens to be one of the very best sound engineers mixing for all sorts of orchestras and stars including Katherine Jenkins, and explained the theory. He thought a bit and said, yeah, that should work! Then I had to find someone to do the vision. I didn't know a vision mixer, so inquired of my eldest son, who is a pilot in the RAF and therefore technically minded, if he would do it. He thought a bit, looked into the possibility, asked for a video editing software package and agreed to learn. It was a very steep learning curve for him, which he overcame brilliantly. Not knowing what reaction I would get from the musicians themselves, I tentatively emailed around and of course, received 100% enthusiastic replies from this marvellous orchestra, who all contributed their amazing talent. So I made a click track, which when you've got a piece with plenty of rubato, pauses, rits and accels, is not that easy. But I worked out how to do all of that, sent it to the musicians and Wynne and the result is for all to see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=addeWnAwMxQ more soon...................

Live music at all costs

On the current Katherine Jenkins Guiding Light tour on which I am conducting my own orchestra The London Concert Orchestra, as well as the Manchester and Scottish concert orchestras and Ulster Orchestra, I must give a huge shout-out to Katherine who has mentioned in concerts the orchestra and how important live music is to her and how easy it would be for her to follow others and cut the number of musicians. Of course she's quite right to think of the importance of live music, but I thought I would explain why she's right. In this day and age where profit versus cost seems to hold sway over the most ardent of artists, the end result seems to get lost in the ever-persuing race to maximise the profit. The first thing to be cut in this race are the musicians, but of course there is a limit to the numbers that it is possible to cut, and the danger is we go beyond that number. A normal orchestra is between 70 and 80 musicians depending on the repertoire. But we are realists and realise in this day and age, unless you have massive sponsorship the costs of touring an 80 piece orchestra are too enormous to contemplate without that sponsorship, not just in wages (though God knows those national wages are scandalously small for such highly qualified people), but in hotels and travel costs etc. So we reduce the size of the orchestra to make it more viable. What has to be to remembered though in this over-amplified world is that you cannot amplify what is not there. This may sound obvious, but I'm not talking about a missing trummpet or a missing flute, but the sheer body of sound. 16 1st violins playing together will sound better accoustically than 10, which will sound better than 4, which of course sound better than 1. It is the same when put down some wires to a Yamaha sound desk at the back of a hall. Whatever the big sound desk says, it cannot recreate the sound of 16 violins when only 1 is playing. No amount of reverb or technical wizardry will make it so! Similarly no machine has been invented that can mimic the sound of finger on finger-board, bow on string, vibrato and articulation, no matter who says it, and some extremely well known names have! But of course the accountants will say every finger that touches wood or brass has a cost, whereas one machine, after its initial outlay, costs no more than one human being and a little bit of electricity. We have to compromise and help with the costs and make the accountants realise every single human being on that stage matters and has a role to play in helping the solo artist relax and perform at the peak of their powers. This then makes audiences around the world want to come back. So how do we balance cost versus size? I had to think of a combination that was cost effective yet would create a sound and colour that would be as close to the original as possible, not just to the audience but to Katherine and me. In other words I had to weigh up the balance of the orchestra versus cost. I originally came up with the ideal reduced orchestra line-up in 2004 when Katherine and I first started working together, and whenever a full orchestra is not available she has performed with it ever since: 1 each of flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon (the woodwind); 2 horns, 2 trumpets and 1 trombone (the brass); 3 percussion who play everything; harp and keyboard; and 6 1st violins, 5 2nd violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos and 2 double bass (the strings). This balances beautifully. The brass do not drown the strings or woodwind, and the woodwind can have their solos, the strings balance aginst the wind: it's perfect! The sound department also have something to amplify. We have a team of wonderful engineers on this tour headed by Steve Carr who has some state-of-the-art equipment supplied by the best in the business R G Jones, and as he says, he doesn't interfere with the process of musical recreation. He leaves the dynamics entirely up to the orchestra and me. The result is as close as it's possible to get if you were standing where I am. Everyone hears the musicians creating the light and shade, and we have had many wonderful comments as a result. There is no chasing by the sound engineer's fingers on a fader of individual musicians; it is set at the rehearsal, adjusted for the hall we're in and left alone. As a result, hopefully we won't get the revue one artist touring with a small cut-down orchestra did of bombastic, loud, terrible sound. I'm assuming the sound department would have been trying to amplify what is not there. There never was a better adage: more is less, but in this case it is more going in is less coming out! Possibly even more importantly, everything we play has been arranged specifically for this combination of players, we do not play something written for full orchestra, then just drop various instruments. I have arranged specially for this combination of musicians all the orchestral music for this tour including the Swan Lake Suite. We do have to make compromises, such as the cygnets, originally written with a prominent part for 2 oboes. The 2nd oboe part has been transferred to the clarinet (as we do not have 2 oboes), and the clarinet part elsewhere within the orchestra. Afficionados will notice, but I think we maintain the integrity of the dance and the music and not many will notice. We just have to be practical and realise that in order to tour, occasionally we have to think outside the box and do things a little differently. It has meant employment for 33 musicians and a wonderful chance to perform great music with a star singer, and hopefully entertain thousands of people in venues up and down the country. Judging from the reaction to Katherine and the orchestra, we have succeeded. So thank you Katherine Jenkins for having faith in the product and helping you on stage. It is a privilege.