The Magic Wand

My musical education has meant encountering all sorts of conductors. Some were inspirational, musical. Some had a gargantuan intellect and gravitas. Some were only just competent. The rest were wankers. “That’s a bit harsh isn’t it?” I hear you say. Well, possibly, but believe me I have seen far too many of them to be convinced otherwise.

Conducting is a tricky skill to navigate; it’s based on an unwritten contract between the musicians and the musical director and will only work if everyone understands and agrees with this concept. The skills required therefore are almost entirely intangible and the musical director must enhance the performance. If this relationship breaks down (or is never established in the first place) then you end up with a cacophonous mess, bad feeling, a shit performance or worse. The tricky part - if you are the conductor - is having to believe that your vision is worth the effort, that you are serving the composer faithfully, that you really will end up with something better after rehearsals than before, and - joy of joys - the musicians might even be uplifted after the performance. Ego from the conductor needs to be managed, otherwise it is the devil.

Consider some examples of this mephistophelean behaviour; I have seen violence. Oh yes. I have seen a conductor throwing his baton - one which stuck in an oboist's hand. This idiot would routinely throw things, lose his temper to the point that he had lost control of his faculties, sweating, shouting his head off and humiliating the musicians in whatever way occurred to him at the time. I have seen conductors regularly reduce the musicians to tears, and in one case I rather regret not walking away from a job. I had been asked to coach the percussion section of a (very good) youth orchestra and within the first fifteen minutes of a rehearsal had been shouted at outrageously and unreasonably, along with the students themselves. Something in me told me that I would be letting them, my colleagues and perhaps myself down if I had left. But I wish I had walked. Staying was tacitly condoning - and worse, demonstrating to the kids - that such behaviour was all part of the ‘conducting temperament.’ What an appalling lesson.

The lesser, but no less embarrassing examples of ego are conductors pretending to be cleverer than they are, talking way too much, making a mistake and then shouting at a section in an attempt to cover it up, sounding like a pompous twat generally, and in one well known example a British conductor talking with a foreign accent for the whole of his career - presumably in order to sound exotic and musical. This is unnecessary, cringeworthy, and believe me the musicians can smell the bullshit a mile off.

Below this maelstrom of plain stupid behaviour there have been the incompetents; one wavers between irritation with this group and actually feeling sorry for them. I have lost count of the amount of directors who had terrible ears - couldn’t even hear the difference between between a major and minor chord, had dreadful time management, didn’t get through the repertoire before the gig, bored the pants off people by spending for ever on tuning, and couldn’t exert appropriate discipline and concentration. These are cringeworthy examples of people who shouldn’t have been at the front, and somebody should have told them.

Times are pleasingly changing and - apart from much tighter child protections, we now have a growing and more diverse group of aspiring conductors. I have been asked why I started taking conducting seriously relatively late, and the answer - apart from a total lack of focus on my part - is written above. Don’t get me wrong; nobody actually told me I couldn’t do it; I in fact enjoyed and did well at the conducting assessments at college. But I could not imagine being one of the people described; I was not clever, not male, not tall and (hopefully) not a complete wanker. I have made many mistakes - my goodness have I; casual throw-away lines without thinking, physical errors, ill-preparedness, a lack of tact, the list goes on. But the trick is to try and learn from it and try try to remain humble to the task in hand.

Finally, a word for our wonderful audiences - without whom most of us wouldn’t bother to get out of bed in the morning (and let’s face it this year probably haven’t). I have always tried to be respectful to them and their needs. Take programming seriously; it is not appropriate to pick a long and challenging set list if your audience are mainly elderly and having to sit in a freezing cold church. Nor is it appropriate to talk to them as if they are stupid; be polite - they are probably paying your wages and may know more than you think. Be kind, be modest and keep trying to serve the music.

And now I must go and look at that enormous pile of scores staring at me from the other side of the room. There hasn’t been much motivation to do this recently. But when we do finally get back to performing I must beware of the devil of ego and the stink of bullshit.

Uplifting music of the day: ‘Catching of Quails’ from ‘Danceries’ by Kenneth Hesketh. A lovely wassail-type romp for wind orchestra. The whole suite is quality, but this movement crackles with electricity and is very much ‘of these islands.’

Contemplative music of the day: ‘Adagio’ from Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ for thirteen instruments. Not much can be added to the list of superlatives already written about this beautiful writing for winds and double bass. If you haven’t heard it, then listen and be captivated.