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.

click tracks

Click Tracks! Two words immediately designed to set me on edge! Let me start off by saying I have no objection to them being used in a production where it is necessary, or as a brief interlude that adds something to the music that is being performed. In this day and age, it can be of benefit. But for a whole concert? That for me detracts. I know I am a musician and perhaps might notice things others don't, for instance, a small orchestra in vision when suddenly I hear some trumpets or timps playing yet none are visible within the orchestra. That annoys me hugely as I think it's a con! But it's so much more than that. A click track restricts the way a musician performs; it limits hugely his or her performance. They can only do what the track dictates and if is a repeat performance, what the track did on the previous occasion and the previous occasion to that. Also, the musician must surely be concentrating intently on the click/count through some headphones and not listening to the other musicians around them or their own playing, a practise that is so vital to a shared musical experience. They certainly wouldn't need the conductor. There is no room for spontaneity or that freedom that musicians like to call "art". They are confined to the rhythm, tempo and dynamics of the track. I come across music to be played at a live concert that has been written for a recording orchestra to play, and the rit(ardandos) have been written out so they fit with the clicks. For those not cogniscent with Italian(!), ritardandos mean slowing down in Italian, the language of music. So, if the music is written in 4/4 (4 beats to the bar) and the arranger wants it to slow down, the click that the orchestra records to and to which they are all listening, is given 5 or maybe 6 beats in that rit bar. That of course extends the bar and is supposed to make it sound as though it's slowing down. But in reality, all it does is give an extra beat or two to the bar, a pause, and not a gradual slowing down of the music. My understanding is that it is easier for producers to edit a click recording should they need to. I was once asked to conduct a recording session for an international singing group that always perform to playback. The recording session, played by musicians of a full symphony orchestra would all be wearing headphones and listening to a click. I asked what I would actually be doing. I presumably didn't even need to start or stop it, as there would be a count in! Of course I turned it down saying I was a musician who wanted to make music with the orchestra, not a traffic policeman waving my arms about in front of a wonderful body of players, all of whom would be ignoring me! And no, the redundancy of conductors is not really what appalls me about this! To put the opposing view, I can understand that if an artist wants to do the same thing every night, then it is very easy to just stick on a playback CD and do the same as you've done every other night. But surely, if you're a real artist then you want to do something different every night. To get that spark of spontaneity and strive to reach the heights of greatness, you have to live dangerously and do something slightly different every night. You don't want to do exactly what you did at the previous performance. There may be occasions at a live show where all does not go smoothly, but hopefully on those occasions no-one in the audience would notice. We are professionals and never fall below a certain standard. But then you can get those marvellous evenings where the performance takes on a special meaning. It has the indefinable degree of greatness that all who are there know happened, and it was shared by audience and performers alike. That is what we all strive to do every time we walk on to a concert platform. No, for me, keep music and musicians live. One reason why I adore my work with Katherine Jenkins. She is an artist that doesn't use click tracks, always sings live and together with the orchestra I think we make music that never falls below the level of wonderful. We lay ourselves open to failure every single time, and every single time we win. Everyone should do that. That's art.

Rewards in Music

There are so many rewards in music for a conductor, it is difficult to know where to start. But the rewards for musicians in an orchestra are fewer and harder to quantify. They are horrendously underpaid, yet those in the premier orchestras are at the top of their craft. They have spent years studying and have reached the pinnacle of orchestral playing. When they do a live concert, they have a 3 hour rehearsal on the day in addition to the concert (so let's say 5.5 playing hours); got to the venue either by public transport or their own car/bike; parked the same and paid for the privilege. They have had to pay for refreshments/meal, provided their (expensive) instrument and their concert clothing. All this for a fee that is sometimes scandalously in the low one hundred pounds. No, the rewards in music are not of the pecuniary sort for the musicians in an orchestra! Rather, they come in the performance that goes to a level others don't reach. And when the audience react in a way that makes you realise they too have experienced the out-of-the-ordinary, the rewards are of a different kind. This it has to be said is not a regular occurrence, the majority of performances being merely wonderful. Wonderful is good, wonderful is rewarding. But wonderful should be rewarded better, and not just by the reaction of the audience. Wonderful should be financial security. The problem we have here, is that an orchestra is labour intensive. You can't just drop a trumpet because the box-office figures don't stack up. It would be like only booking 2 original members of The Who because you can't afford all 4! Actually that's a bad example, because there are only 2 out of the 4 now left, so only 2 of the original group ever turn up! But those 2 are the originators of their music and have rearranged their music to cater for the band being cut in half, or added extra players to take the parts no longer played by the 2 original members. We can't get in touch with Beethoven and tell him to cut a trumpet and some violins! Then you have to balance the loud instruments with the soft and make sure you have enough of the soft instruments to balance with the loud! No, we are labour intensive and cannot cut. What is the solution? Performance related pay? Only get paid by the numbers in the audience? Sadly, it would be wall to wall Mozart and Tchaikovsky and then only limited pieces. Music would die and we would be thought of as a museum experience. We must experiment to find the next composer; we must experiment to be creative. The best way forward to achieve good audience numbers is for the orchestra, soloists and conductor to take the audience on a journey together. A journey of discovery and creativity. Then ensure they stay with you for life as you perform the interesting and the challenging alongside musical favourites. The problem with all that is the people who are prepared to do that, stay with you through thick and thin of the journey, are not infinite in numbers. In fact quite the opposite. This is where government and the Arts Council step in. Which may be where my next blog takes me. Meanwhile, reward better the musicians who bring you that great art with their huge talent and expertise. Otherwise, fewer musicians will be able to afford to learn an instrument, knowing their financial security for them and their family is pitiful.

Audience participation

I have recently had the opportunity of watching a number of shows from the view of an audience member and am distressed by what I see, or probably more accurately by what I hear. For ages now I have not gone to a public cinema, preferring to watch movies either on an aeroplane whilst whiling away the long hours between long-haul stops or shorter minutes between champagne refills, or else in the comfort of my own home watching Netflix, Apple TV or terrestrial TV. The age of popcorn being munched and fizzy drinks being slurped has long not appealed to my enjoyment of watching other people's performances on the silver screen. At least though the performance is a recorded one and though disrespectful, the performer would have been unaware of that disrespect, even if others were. But now, this age of armchair front-room viewing has hit the West End in a big way and that disrespect is felt by live performers. I saw a West End show recently where I would estimate more than half the audience took either sweets and drinks into the auditorium and consumed them while watching the performance. The sound of hissing fizzy drinks cans being opened competed severely with the sound of quiet contemplative songs being sung by talented performers giving their all. it was almost as though there were lots of suspended cymbals being stroked and I am certain artists don't want added orchestration during their big solo numbers. I certainly don't. The sound of sweet wrappers being unwrapped! Why should I have to listen to this while someone is giving their all on the stage? This of course then permeates further. People are so convinced they are sitting in their sitting room watching their own private TV, they now have conversations with their neighbours. Sitting, watching Phantom the other day there were a number of conversations going on around me and despite others trying to quieten them down, this seemed to have no affect on the perpetrators. Worse is when an audience member can't sit still for the first half of a show and insists on getting up and going either to the rest rooms or to take/make a phone call, thereby making sure everyone in their row and those behind are disturbed. Phone calls! Don't get me started on these devices where people are unaware where the off switch of a mobile telephone is. The glow from the screen when people are checking their Facebook status or Twitter feed or whatever the latest social networking craze is, is a light show all of its own. I switch my phone off when I enter a theatre, concert hall or place of performance, or it is left behind. Of course, audience members are not solely to blame. Theatre owners are keen to capitalise on maximum revenue and part of that revenue is drinks, sweets and food. This only used to be available before the show and in the interval. Now, due to demand from the audience it is available for the whole show, from beginning to end, and very possibly big money is being made from bar takings. But at what cost to the enjoyment of lots of audience members? How soon before this "way of life" during any sort of cultural entertainment enters concert halls and opera houses?

Travel and Work

Quite a lot of us conductors have to travel exceedingly long distances in order to pursue our art. I personally have been known to fly from London to New Zealand and spend just 4 days in that wonderful country before flying back. During those 4 days I had 3 rehearsals and 2 concerts. And all of my Australian concerts are accomplished in 5 days; we have never been able to organise two Australian orchestras in consecutive weeks! One glance at my website will show you that last year I went to the Melbourne Symphony, came back to the UK for 10 days (and 4 concerts) then went back out to the West Australian Symphony in Perth. How does one cope with that distance and then have to conduct orchestras that quite rightly, will not tolerate tiredness? There are a number of factors that have to be in place before I undertake journeys like the above. The first is that on getting on board the B747 I have to turn left (or go upstairs!), or in the case of the A380, get on the top deck. Busines class beds on aircraft nowadays are superb and in the case of the Qantas A380 of fantastic quality. On-board entertainment is superb on all long-distance aircraft in all classes these days, but the difference between sitting bolt upright and lying flat is as the difference between Epsom Downs and Everest. Recently (4 years ago), due to an error in booking, I did a day-time flight from London to New York with my own orchestra and went economy. I spent the entire time fighting on one side with my next-door neighbour for the arm rest; and if it wasn't the arm-rest it was leg space! What is that all about? Young men seem to like sitting with their legs wide apart and they don't seem to have respect for other people's "personal space"! Fortunately on the other side (yes I was in the middle of the middle....horrendous and never again!) was a very attractive young girl. In the end we played each other our preferred music to see whether we liked each other's taste in music. I was flying Virgin and there was not much classical music choice, but in the end she got Beethoven, I got Lady GaGa! She got the better deal! But I digress. A flat bed is a necessity. The next important factor is to make sure the flight arrives late afternoon or early evening. In the past I have done flights that arrive at 5am and in my view that is a huge mistake. You have to spend the day trying to stay awake, and no matter how much sleep you had on the flight, that is very, very difficult. So I arrive in the evening, have a light meal (as let's face it, you've eaten your full and drunk far too much champagne....a tipple my Twitter friends will know I am inordinately fond of), then go to bed with a book, having taken half a sleeping pill! The only time I ever take sleeping tablets is on long distance trips. The next morning I wake up completely refreshed having had 7 hours sleep straight through and ready for almost anything. I generally take half a Zopiclone tablet for the 4 or 5 days I am there and stop the moment I leave. I am then completely adjusted to exactly the same as I am in my own time zone and able to work in the same way. Jet-lag? Hah! I laugh in the face of jet-lag and never suffer from it!

Conducting something we don't want to do!

We've all had to do it at some stage of our careers! Conduct something we have no affinity for, no allegiance towards and for which we have no sympathy and nothing in common! But I can honestly say, there is no job from which I haven't learnt something. Even if it was something as mundane as during the run of an American ballet company and I had been booked to play the piano part of a piano quintet version of The Blue Danube. I went out drinking with a viola player (the legendary Brian Mack) and thought I could hold my own with him. Never try and out drink a viola player. He made sure I went under the table....and stayed there. That taught me a valuable lesson. But mostly, it is matters of musical education in which I learn something. It may be technique, it may be the ability not to hear what you want to hear, but hear what the audience are hearing. That is quite complicated to learn: the ability to divorce yourself from the emotion of whatever piece you are conducting and conduct from a technical point of view, yet at the same time impart to the orchestra the emotion you are feeling. It is called self-control: going up to a certain point but not straying over it. If you stray over it, the music you imagine you are hearing is not actually what is being performed. You think it is better than actually it is. Some of my best performances I have known about at the time and known they were going well. You can feel the audience are with you as well. However, the reverse is also true. Some years ago I gave a performance of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture with one of the world's great orchestras and I was completely wrapped up in it. The strings, for which they are famous, sounded lush, rich and full of searing heartache. The brass were like fighting families and the woodwind had all the solemnity of Friar Tuck. I thought it was ruddy marvellous! Yet, I had not yet learnt self-control and the performance happened to be recorded. It was not nearly as good as I had thought! Tempi were wrong, dynamics not always well controlled and worst of all, the emotion was all on the surface. I learnt an important lesson that day: do not get so involved in the music as to lose all rationale.

Learning scores

How do conductors learn the music they are about to conduct? Actually an anology of how I do it is very easy. For me, it is like reading a book, only you then have to memorise the contents, or at least know all the reltaionships intimately. Let's say you are reading one of the great classics: a Charles Dickens. And let's take Oliver Twist. When you read the book, you are taken on a journey by Mr. Dickens, from the birth of Oliver to his eventual happiness where we leave him with a bright future and wonderful prospects. But the journey of how he reached this state is what interests the reader. The relationships he has on the way. The disasters he encounters. It is very much the same with a conductor. I sit in my favourite chair and read the score as I would a book. I let my imagination enter the world of the composer and imagine how an orchestra would sound playing these notes. I think of the relationship between the oboe and the clarinet and the various themes they are playing. Why does it sound it one way when the oboe plays it and another when the clarinet does? Why does the composer play it piano the first time through but forte the second? There will be a reason and one must know them before attempting to conduct it. I never listen to a recording, because all one then does is conduct the music the same as someone else. This is how mistakes are perpetuated. A rit here, a tempo change there, all become with constant repetition accepted as "tradition". People are surprised when I show them my ipod. There is very little music on it. I have it for my own recordings (so I can learn where I went wrong) and a few that I consider can never be surpassed, so should not be attempted. Mainly these are the recordings of Rudolph Kempe, a conductor I consider certainly the greatest I ever saw, and to my mind probably the greatest that ever lived, though I do think Karl Bohm was up there with him. My recodings are there not because I listen to them, I only rarely do, but on the occasion of repeat performances, I can play them and think what can I do to make it better. So the life of a conductor is a solitary one. Either you are sitting in your favourite chair wrapped up in your sound world, or you are sitting in your hotel room in some far away country, waiting for a rehearsal to begin so you can put into practise all the work you have done in your favourite chair. Ah, but when that rehearsal does begin, all that solitude has been worth it!

update to Ballet magazine article

The following is taken from another article I wrote for the March issue of Dance Review, replying to various letters the magazine had received.

Interesting reaction to my comments on tempi in ballet. Having lingered over the adjective “dishy” used in the description of me by Patricia Williams in her January issue letter, I suppose my main point generally was that one art form should not be at the expense of another and I believe that that is what can happen in ballet. I parted company with Richard Honner’s otherwise excellent arguments in his letter of February, when he said that I forget at my peril that ballet, for its audience, is first and foremost a visual art form. I don’t think it need be or indeed should be, as one could not do without the other, and I firmly believe that ballet audiences would get far greater satisfaction out of a performance if the music was as wonderful as the dancing and treated by all choreographers and dancers as equal. Is opera a visual art form or an aural one? Are West End musicals visual or aural? Is Shakespeare? The answer is of course, they are all both. Neither one dominates the other in any of those art forms, why can’t ballet be the same? Or is that the problem? Is it conceived by audiences, dancers, management and choreographers as mainly a visual art form? I personally think that’s a mistake and there should be just as much artistic magic and technical accomplishment going on in the pit as on the stage. As Patricia wrote, and I’m sorry to refer to Patricia’s letter again but she is obviously a person of extremely discerning taste, if the technical brilliance of modern day dancers makes the re-creation of original 19th century choreography difficult to execute, then may I suggest it is performed as originally intended with the limitations that implies upon the dancers, or create modern choreography to go with the original music. Do one or the other but not a mixture of both! I have no aversion to variations of tempi that are different to how I personally imagine them to be, but my aim as a conductor is to re-create the music I am conducting how I imagine the composer originally intended it to be heard. But it is only my execution of the composer’s intentions that makes my performance different from another’s. Tempo markings with slight variations however are fairly universal and accepted and should not be interfered with. It is therefore the extremes of tempi and interpretation I cannot tolerate, which is where I disagree with Colin Ede. I was never able to accept Bernstein’s liberal reading of a composer’s explicit markings. My understanding is that he never liked it when it was perpetrated in reverse! Colin Ede may like Bernstein’s Nimrod but I’m fairly certain Edward Elgar would not! Whether that matters is I guess partly what this discussion is all about. Is it Bernstein’s Nimrod or Elgar’s? For me, when a passage is marked Allegro and it is performed Andante, or as in the case of the White Swan solo I quoted, Andante taken Molto Adagio due to the whim of a ballerina’s attitude (in every sense of the word), it makes no sense. Collaboration between performers is the key here, not dominance of one over the other. And far from Mr. Tchaikovsky being pleased his lovely music was being played by ballet companies throughout the world as Robert Harrold in the January issue imagines, I think the composer would be tearing his hair out with frustration, because sometimes to me, and very probably would have been to him, I think his wonderful music is almost unrecognisable!

hypnosis

I touched in my last blog on the subject of hypnosis over musicians as practised by conductors. It is quite extraordinary how if you are absolutley sure of what you want in terms of tempo and any nuances or sudden inspired "moments", these can be transmitted by the power of hypnosis to musicians. However, you have to be absolutely secure in your thoughts to achieve the result you want. I don't know how it is done. I suppose it is something to do with your eyes, your arm and body movements and you know absolutely what you want, so the gesture you transmit is obvious to the musicians for it to happen. This even extends to chords when played by the whole orchestra. If you know absolutely where you want the note placed in relation to your downbeat, then that is where the orchestra will play. Confidence is everything. This is why conductors have to be so arrogant: they know where the chord should be played, they know the tempo of the piece, they know they are going to do a very slight ritardando (perhaps not rehearsed). The trouble comes when although they know where they want it, they are not transmitting it with their bodies. So only the "natural" conductors can succeed in practising the art of hypnosis. Those who have to study how to conduct, will not be able to instinctively show what they want to the orchestra. The conductor is almost in a trance, so there is no point in thinking more of your technique than the music: too miuch focus on the wrong aspect of performance. When this forcing of your will by some power that is within you happens, then that is the performance we as musicians all strive to achieve. It takes the concert onto a higher level of artistic merit.

To memorise or not to memorise

Last weekend with the Ulster Orchestra, I conducted Dvorak's New World Symphony from memory. Whilst this is not an extraordinary feat in itself, it did free me from the constraints of having to follow the music on a bit of paper and turn the pages at the correct time. This sounds obvious but believe me, if the conductor has learnt his trade properly and studied the score correctly he should know the music intimately and therefore huge parts of the music are not necessary for him to follow. However, this has its downside as what happens if he has a score open in front of him and has been conducting for some considerable time without needing to refer to the score, but suddenly comes to a bit of which he is unsure? Too late, the music is not open on the right page and suddenly panic will set in and pages will start flying as he hurriedly looks for the right place in the performance! Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the orchestra will save him, but they can see and sense the uncertainty in his eyes and demeanour, and nothing destroys the confidence of an orchestra in a conductor more than uncertainty. Therefore when I conduct from memory I make sure I know every note, well not quite every note, but I must make sure I can sing the piece all the way through in my mind before closing the score. I have a video recording of Toscanini conducting a live performance of Beethoven 5 and at the end of the symphony with the final chords, you know he expects a chord in one of the silent bars as he gives a definite donwbeat. There is shock registered on his face, then a flicker of disgust with himself, before the orchestra to a man (in those days) saves him and plays not a note. So it can happen to even the greatest of memory men, and Toscanini was one such as he used to rehearse and perform everything from memory. The audience will not have noticed, but the orchestra will, as they sense what all great conductors possess and that is the art of hypnosis as perpertrated by conductors was broken for a few seconds. That is perhaps a subject for another day, meanwhile I will only conduct those pieces I know as intimately as I know the back of my wife's hand. It gives me freedom and the ability to engage with each and every great musician within the orchestra without having to take my eyes off them, look down, and check I'm on the right page. After all, conducting music is a bit like having a conversation with someone, and when you talk to people, do you look them in the eyes or keep looking down at the floor?

Problems in ballet.

The following is reproduced from an article I wrote for the December issue of Dance Review Magazine. Please see subsequent issues for follow-up correspondence.

Now I admit, I haven’t conducted ballet for some considerable time. In fact, the last time I did so Birmingham Royal Ballet was still called Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet! And perhaps subsequent reading will explain why! However, I do still occasionally see our ballet companies as I accompany my 15 year old daughter to a performance of one of the great Tchaikovsky ballets, and I regularly discuss the wonderful world of ballet with musicians who play in the various orchestras of our national ballet companies. The standard of our dance companies has possibly never been higher, with dancers ever more able to hold positions and attitudes, all the time looking wonderfully graceful. However, this is often to the detriment of the music and brings me to the role of the conductor and the musicians who create the aural part of dancing without whom there would be no dance. It seems to me they are there to serve the art of the ballet dancer’s body in the never-ending quest for beauty of line, as the dancers get more competent in their ability to perform more complicated steps. Fairly recently I watched a performance of Swan Lake with one of our national companies and I sat there writhing in agony! Tchaikovsky never wrote the music to be performed as was being performed that evening, in most cases going so slowly as to almost bring proceedings to a halt. White Swan in particular was musically terrible as the conductor waited for the dancer to hop painfully slowly across the stage. I could hardly sit there and if it wasn’t for my daughter, I would have walked out. The tempo marking for the White Swan solo is marked as Andante Non Troppo, the Non Troppo (not too much) being the important part here. So, the literal translation is “at a walking pace, but not too much”. What we got was a crawl…on all fours! Yes, you can argue about the pulse, is it 6 or 2, but as long as the music flows and is not held up by the whim of a technically proficient dancer wishing to show everyone her technical brilliance of balancing on one leg, then I am happy. But it didn’t. After all, if as an audience member you are being told by an artist to look how wonderful she is, how technically clever she is, then in my opinion, as that audience member you do not notice the art. The greatest artists in whatever art form you care to mention, were technically wonderful (though of course there are the exceptions), but when you watched or listened to them, you forgot their technical ability and were transported to a world that the artist had created and forced you by their artistry to enter. You look at a painting by Monet and don’t think how technically wonderful it is, though it is; you watched Rudolph Kempe conduct and didn’t think wasn’t his stick technique superb, though it was the best; you listened to Artur Rubinstein and were not dazzled by his technique, but instead awed by the total mastery of his art form. And I have deliberately chosen great artists who are sadly no longer with us, as I do not wish to upset living artists by not mentioning them, some of whom may be my friends! You do not notice the artist through their technique, but through their art, and as such their technique is a by-product of that art.
I honestly think some ballet choreographers forget that ballet is an aural art as well as a visual art. There should be a meeting of the two and the one should not be exclusive of the other. It’s no good the choreographer trying to put too many steps into too small a time span, and when it subsequently proves impossible to perform, telling the conductor to slow down. I have been asked many times by various choreographers who had created too many steps to slow the music down, though the correct tempo was that much quicker. In most cases I refused, believing it wasn’t the composer’s fault his music should suffer by being played at an incorrect tempo. Interestingly enough, the one choreographer who told me to conduct the music as I felt it (and I attended all his rehearsals) was Sir Kenneth MacMillan. He trusted me and I thought he was a genius of ballet! Now I realise, that in this time-orientated world we live in, conductors always attending rehearsals, and indeed having the same conductor and soloists for consecutive performances can be impossible. But all combinations should be worked out in rehearsal and the ultimate arbiter of tempi should be the conductor, after all he is the only person (along with the orchestra) who is there for the entire evening. Others come on, do their solo, and go off. So as the only one there throughout, the conductor should be the person in control of the overall shape of that evening’s ballet: he must therefore be allowed to shape it. I always said to dancers, if you do not like my tempi, come and talk to me, but after the performance when we will discuss it. During the performance I was in charge! Our ballet companies should become more like our opera companies where the conductor makes the decision on musical matters and any differences of opinions are sorted in rehearsals. Too often in ballet, the conductor is thought of as a secondary necessity. He must not be. He is just as important as the principal dancers, though I appreciate to an audience that may not be the case! However, to the management he should be. All of the above does not preclude the conductor from helping his soloists. It is a meeting of two art forms and the one is as important as the other. From what I’ve recently seen (and heard from despairing musicians), it is heavily biased in favour of the dance, and if they want me to take my daughter back to Tchaikovsky, it’s time some Artistic Directors and choreographers balanced out their priorities. After all, Tchaikovsky was one of the great composers and wrote great music; he never wrote boring music…….unless it is being performed by a ballet company!

© Anthony Inglis

Superman in Melbourne

I have been asked to describe the legendary Full Monty I did in the Hamer Hall Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony during the summer. I should first of all state it was not the full monty, nor did the orchestra join in, except with the laughing! On a previous occasion with the MSO, at the climax of the fanfare theme of the Superman March, I had stripped off my shirt to reveal a T-shirt with a Superman logo emblazoned across the front. This was after I had tried to get the audience to show me how it should be done: shirts pretended to be ripped open ("you Madam can do it for real"), underpants on over trousers ("on dear, you have to put them on!") etc etc. So when I went back and did the same piece, I had to go further. There was only way of going further, at the same climax the whole of my tail suit, including trousers, had to ripped off! A tail suit had been made for me (by the Royal Opera House) that was velcroed together and at the given moment, I would grab it in a certain way, rip it off and reveal the whole Superman outfit in all its glory. Unfortunately, I had bought a Superman outfit several sizes too small and when the moment came, it left little to the imagination! One of the 2 very nice boys sitting in the front row at the moment of reveal, stood up clutching his forehead and shouted Oh My God and fainted clean away! That may be a slight exaggeration, but I did detect one friend turning to the other and fanning him with the programme! He must have had a touch of the vapours! I hadn't realised quite what the problem was until this moment, and spent the rest of the Superman March holding the score either in front of me or behind me, which rather unfairly in my opinion attracted a lot of ribald laughing. Despite the size of the score being A3, it didn't hide my enormous problem! At this point the orchestra rather lost the will to continue playing and according to the management, some extraordinary noises came out of the orchestra while they manfully continued to try and play. Having heard the radio broadcast, I must say they did very well: it's not easy to play the horn (for example) and laugh at the same time. If only this was the only interesting moment in the concert! I had put the velcro suit on for the 2nd half and rather stupidly, I had put the battery pack of the clip-on radio mike I was using into my trouser pocket. Half way through Harry Potter which came shortly after the beginning of the 2nd half, I felt this battery pack slipping down my thigh. Knowing there was no interesting girl rubbing her hand on my leg, I assumed there was a hole in my trouser pocket, until I realised with alarm as it banged against my knee that the weight of the pack had pulled the velcro apart and my trousers were actually falling down. There was only one thing to do and that was abandon the podium, orchestra and audience in the middle of the piece and flee! This should have been OK as the concert platform was dimly lit (atmosphere!) and I reasoned I might not be missed too much. Providing I corrected the problem and reappeared before the change of tempo at the end, people might not even notice I'd gone; for heaven's sake the orchestra might not even notice! However, the follow spot operators possibly thinking this was an invisibility cloak gag, followed me to the platform exits and towards the double doors leading off; where I met a problem! I couldn't open them! There is obviously a trick to opening these doors, and as I was panicking by now, I could not work out the trick! So holding up my trousers at the back with one hand and hammering on the doors with the other, I bellowed to be let out! Apparently It looked for all the world as though I had enjoyed a particularly good curry along the Yarra prior to the performance and now needed somewhere very quickly! A quick zig here and an adroit zag there, the wardrobe malfunction was corrected by a very smart lady who had opened the doors and I was back by the change of tempo. The orchestra were fantastic and had played most of the piece without a conductor, thereby proving how much us conductors are needed! I have no idea what the radio audience made of the shenanigans that evening, but all I know is that my conducting career in Australia may well be over, but a whole new one is opening up in the Kings Cross area of Sydney!

RLPO

I have been asked to describe the concert the Liverpool Phil that I did on board the QM2. It was different, in that we portrayed in words and music the history of the QM2and intertwined it with Cunard: we were after all moored opposite the last Liverpool headquarters of Cunard, the middle of the Three Graces. The concert was devised by Eric Flounders, Michael Gallagher and myself, the first two, two of the brilliant PR execs at Cunard. Cut either one of them in half and they would have Cunard written through their bodies; rather like a stick of Blackpool rock! They know more about Cunard and the shipping industry than is possible. They are just two of the passionate people that make up Cunard. Remind me to tell you the story of how I became involved with the company. It is indicative of the caring and human side of Cunard. Anyway, we opened the concert with The Queen (of course). Then a brief paragraph on the shipbuilding industry on the River Clyde where the majority of Cunard's ships (even now) have been built. The music that went with it was The Song of The Clyde in an arrangement I had done and brilliantly sung by Jon Christos. Jon really can sing everything! We then followed it with Offenbach's Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld (or as Michael called it Orpheus on the Underground) as of course QM2 was built in St. Nazaire a French shipyard. Then, music associated with the spiritual home of Cunard, Liverpool and You'll Never Walk Alone (close your ears all Everton supporters) wonderfully sung by one of my favourite sopranos Helen Williams. On to a song I suggested as I had remembered it from the QM2 Naming Ceremony: written by Horatio Nicholls it was called Queen of The Sea (Queen Mary) and was performed for the first Atlantic crossing of The original Queen Mary in 1934. I had trawled the Internet looking for a copy and eventually found the one and only one left in existence! Then it was a matter of doing another arrangement and getting Jon to sing it. It brought back a few memories for some people who knew the song but had not heard it for decades! We stuck with the words "I'm happy and gay 'cos I'm sailing away"!! Another era! On to the American connection and The Battle Hymn of The Republic followed by Happy Birthday QM2, finishing with some fun and Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory. The whole concert lasted some 50 minutes and the passengers gave us a feedback rating of 98.5% the highest ever for any entertainment on any ship.

Gianni Schicchi

I got back in time from my voyage round Britain on the QM2 to watch my 11 year old son singing the role of Giardorino in Gianni Schicchi at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Small part but huge for an 11 year old; singing alongside Sir Thomas Allen, Maria Berengtsson, Marie McLoughlin et al and conducted by Pappano. I sat there (in the expensive seats!) with my mother as he sang, acted and came on for a bow at the end with tears pouring down my cheeks. He was wonderful and so assured. His voice resonated all round The House and bang in tune. Saw Vasko (legendary concert master of the ROH orchestra) and had a quick chat with him in the interval. I reminded him that the last time I saw him was when we did the Sibelius together. He was stunning then and he's stunning now. Am going to e-mail him for lunch. We met when he used to mentor Vanessa Mae and I used to conduct her. I informed him that Vanessa and I had just worked together in the summer: she was doing her boogeying on down music (as readers of this blog will know, so can I...boogey on down I mean! I should just mention my rendition of Great Balls of Fire). The last time Vanessa and I had met prior to the summer was when she was 12 and we were recording some Mozart. Very different!