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.