'We're on stage to make music not money.'

As a professional violinist, the question I am asked most often by audience members is, “Do you watch the conductor?  What do they actually do?”  Like all good questions, there is no straight answer – and that’s not just because I am concerned my career might come to an abrupt end if I say the wrong thing.

One answer lies within the question - the public is evidently fascinated by conductors. As an audience member, do you watch the conductor?  The chances are you watch them quite a lot.  It’s possible you came to the concert especially because of them – because they are famous.  When the conductor walks out on stage, whether it’s the sprightly skip of Sir Charles Mackerras or the regal swagger of Sir Mark Elder, the public bristles with excitement.  On stage, we can feel it.  Well, you, the public, are one of the things that conductors do – they fill the halls.   

And we’re geared up for celebrity these days – it’s what we expect, across all areas.  In the classical music world, which admittedly has not been at the cutting-edge of marketing and PR since pop music went its separate way, we finally caught on.  Even in Scotland.  The BBC set a new tone in 2003 with their appointment of Ilan Volkov as Chief Conductor, aged 27, promoting him as a Star.   And hey presto – now all the Scottish orchestras strive to outdo each other in conductor cachet.   The RSNO replied with Deneve in 2005, and the SCO now looks set to wipe the floor with the competition after appointing Robin Ticciati.  Aficionados expound in the press about which conductor makes one orchestra more exciting than the other, and while we don’t yet have ticket touts outside the doors, those of us who look at the box office figures know what a difference this stuff makes.  Competition, as the EU continues to remind us, is A Good Thing, and that goes for orchestras too.  You have to admit beyond that, the economics of it breaks down.  A maestro’s fee will be many multiples of every musician on stage – and at the top end of the profession, fee per appearance is on the way to competing with premiership footballers.  Be under no illusions – fill every seat in the hall at classical music ticket prices, and you will still make a hefty loss.  We’re on stage to make music not money. 

But after you’ve addressed their existence from the material angle, talk about conductors gets more mystical.  Do they, you wonder, show us when to play?  Look at Gergiev, who came to Edinburgh with his Prokofiev Cycle in 2008.  Have you ever seen such an unclear ‘beat’?  It’s a wobbly circle. But the LSO love him, he commands top level fees, and has been heard on the phone to Putin in rehearsal breaks.  No, we don’t need bandmasters, to keep us ‘in time’.  We can, and often do (especially in a Chamber Orchestra) play without conductors at all.  Of course in repertoire for large forces it helps to have a visual cue to play off, because the sound that you hear from your colleagues across the other side of the stage can be misleadingly delayed – simple physics.  But look and then listen to the phenomenon of ‘playing behind the beat’; orchestras, often large ones, who play perfectly together, sometimes seconds later than the conductor puts the baton down.  How can you explain that if you think conductors show us ‘where’ to play? 

Ultimately, the best conductors are superb musicians and whether they beat out the music fractionally ahead of us playing it or not, with the slightest gesture they can shape it for us.  We, in a millisecond, can respond audibly.  We are all making the music together.   And the more inspiring a conductor is, the more influence they will have.  Of course, sometimes, players might choose to ignore what they see on the podium.  Think about the civil service department in ‘Yes Minister’, and you will get the idea – but that’s probably a subject for another article, and you know, I have my job to consider.

[A copy of this article appeared in the Herald 'Leger Lines' column, Saturday 14th November.]