Simon Rattle | What Does A Conductor Actually Do? | Classic FM

I have a show every Sunday night on Classic FM called everything you've ever wanted to know about classical music which does not pretend to be encyclopedic because I don't know everything by any means it's more a little sort of dig into the the interesting by ways sometimes musical sometimes technical sometimes biographical or emotional to how the great music that we love is created and a lot of ideas for programs are suggested by listeners and one of the most perennial questions over the six years the show has been running is what does a conductor actually do so I'm going to ask you with the cheek of the devil Sir Simon Rattle what do you do well on the face of it it's one of the great fake professions because it'll there are all these musicians ah and there is this hopefully a silent person in in front of them what is he doing what is he or she doing please ah it's very interesting where as a student in the Academy Nora smiles had ten of us in the conducting class altogether and one day he said now what you're going to do is go in front of the orchestra all ten of you are going to play the opening bars of the same piece you're not going to say anything you're just going to stand there and conduct it this was a student Orchestra and with very inexperienced student conductors and the first thing that we all noticed is the orchestra sounded entirely different with every person in front of them now how does one explain that what is that I mean we know I do know I know that if I if I play on this piano it will sound like a little collection of skeletons bones rubbing against each other if a man or ax comes and sits on it the first chord will sound like somebody put kind of silk through a gold ring it'll go wash how does this happen we know it happens with instruments we know every singer has a different voice but every conductor makes a difference even to the basic sound at Orchestra makes of course happy all music aspires to be if it's not singing it's a spice to be chamber music a string quartet is almost the ideal form of concerted music but the ideal Orchestra is just a gigantic overblown string quartet where everybody is listening to each other but with the best will in the world there is almost never time for an orchestra to make an agree their own interpretation of everything and if they do it it's such an unwieldy group of people that you are basically stuck with whatever you decide and the most exciting thing about conducting an orchestra playing Orchestra is that every night is completely different you know you have the same things to pack into the suitcase but they go in different orders they go in different ways and people can have ideas not only the conductor the players can have ideas which can come in and then everybody has to find a way of making it work in a way I mean that I mean I would love to be your band clop but just with hand gestures but if he could if he could do what he's doing to that team I'd actually do it on the spur of the moment with his hands you would have an idea of what our job is because it's very clear what an extraordinary difference he made so that group of people of my god must there be some ego management in there but it's done with and thoughts and care and intelligence and she would be oh he would be a model to any of us who are trying to organize last things I'm wishing I wish a few politicians on all sides were just going to take a master class for me but in a way we are doing the same job we are trying to inspire these extraordinary people to do their very very best because at the end of it all they are playing it oh no you can't I can't pretend that I am playing it I can make it I can make it better or worse but actually they they are playing and it's my job to enable and it's my job to try and translate what the composer is saying to the orchestra and then the audience in some ways it's almost like an adapter plug in the wall there with it it should go through you and one of the things I'm most miss about my beloved friend and colleague Marisa Anson's who died recently is that you go to his concerts and he would almost disappear in it you just think oh yes this is just exactly how I wanted to hear this music but he he would disappear into the music enough that you heard the music I mean it's a very long way around of saying what it is what it is we do but I'm already fantasizing about a regular television series or radio series instead of match of the day concert of the day with with pundits you know it would be some I mean thank God thank God we don't have to say thank God we don't we don't have to score goals every time I read there whether we could live with that kind of pressure I don't know into the third movement now and they've got it all to do but it is to do it I be an orchestra thank goodness a football team isn't 100 people but is everybody does depend on each other and you see what this is and as a conductor of course you know I can get to know profound things about people without even necessarily knowing their names that there is something about the connection that you make when making music that goes beyond any normal social interaction well in the best possible way music that there's nowhere to hide when you're really expressing music and you should be telling the truth and the music the music insists on you know if I open up a Beethoven symphony we were about to do the Beethoven Ninth Symphony surely it would look the score looks up at you and says are you ready for this are you really going to do this to be okay yeah can you cope with this and will you be as devastatingly honest as the composer is and won't let your way with anything less hour so it sounds like suits corner from private eye but it is true and the music still speaks to you through these pages it's come it's a it's a strange thing because people forget that you can go to an art gallery and you can get van Gogh home Mark Rothko direct but the music most people can't look at a score and have the music's because we we are actually forced to interpret verses yeah and we we better be honest two more questions what do you do in downtime as it's now called do you listen to music or do you avoid it and do you sometimes find when you're listening to a new piece that you you go into work mode when you should perhaps be in relaxed mode yeah I mean that this is a problem for musicians because you aren't doing it all or all the time I mean I have three I have three young children so the concept the concept of downtime is something in science fiction that you you could imagine I mean the listening to music I like a lot of musicians tend to listen to jazz to relax rather than our are our own music and I you know I get an awful lot of kind of rap and house music from from my kids and you drive every now and then I can that's interesting oh but why do they now just done it a thousand times the same thing but still you get a bit you get a bit of that but there is a danger that if you listen to something you you start thinking about it and start analyzing it is but is heed but it's easier for me for instance to go and hear a string quartet that if I see a conductor I'm immediately watching it if it's a great performance then I will forget I will forget that but look but this is one of the things on the other hand we get to deal with this extraordinary kind of volcano of intelligence and emotion every day and it's the the emotional payback it gives you is enormous but there is the problem that maybe it's not relaxing in that in that same way or don't we will do other things yes but are you my little me yeah yeah I'm more relaxed watching football than going to a concert okay one last question last week saw the launch here I believe of the LSO st. Luke's I'm not quite sure whether venue was but it saw the launch of your new recording of the Elgar cello concerto with shekhu Kenny Mason I mean this is look this is really interesting because everybody thinks of young musicians in terms of the kind of extraordinary extraversion and energy or whatever does echo effect that's yeah but but again for fact of all the cellists I've played this piece with and they've been of they've been a few he is the most in wood and it seems to me to be a very appropriate look at this piece which is happied it was really the last great piece Elgar wrote and of course it's after the first world war but of course it's also the death of his wife it's also his feeling of do I belong in the world and of course at all there are extraordinary forthright things in it but a lot of it is very inward and you only have to look at pictures of Elgar even when he is kind of dressed himself up as a great English gentleman he never felt quite at home and you only have to look at the Haunted eyes to realize how easily damaged this person was I mean that out of course he was able to write Land of Hope and Glory the pomp and circumstances Marsh but the true Elgar was this rather desperate damaged person probably if he had been middle European he would have been Marla he would have been a full-blown neurotic he was very British so it was within and the Haunted eyes of what we all felt shekhu really got and this is this is what happened nobody is pretending that this will be the last word on this concerto or even his last words and we don't hopefully he'll be playing it for the next 16 though it's so exciting about the performance it's he's 20 this is how he feels about it now and it captures a moment in his life as well as but but that the inner sense of stillness and the conscience concentration and the poetry and humility of shekhu is really in there I mean we were just all mightily impressed and I suspect well this is an orchestra that's not easily impressed generous as though they are but also it was all it was done in a day as these recordings are and certain things he had to do again and again and again and again as house one does and there was never a moment's from him this was always positive concentrated and and for the music and to see his entire family sitting up there listening was also really touching because you realized what a support system is that and how wonderful to have a family like that all musicians know a great I would doubt where that was and it was an honor to do and Varick wonderfully will in next season I'll do the big birthday anniversary concert with the CBS O of my own old orchestra in Birmingham and will play the first concert but the orchestra played which was conducted by Elder and among it was the cello concerto which was then of course a very new piece this was 1920 and Scheck who will play and so that will be a very touching meeting of families you know my god I started as a conductor of the CBS so so long before he was born let's not even go there yeah but I'm getting the impression Simon Rattle that you have a the highest boredom threshold of just about anyone I've met I mean it you continue to be absolutely consumed by this great music and we'll go on discovering I mean let's all remain curious and what a privilege to be in this work been doing what we love that much simple as that you

Channel: Classic FM

Views: 44,486

Keywords: Classical Music, Music, Classic FM, classic fm radio, classic fm smooth classics, music 2019, classic radio shows, classic fm at the movies, classic fm tv, classic fm radio live, classic fm live, Simon Rattle, simon rattle rehearsal, simon rattle interview, Simon Rattle classic fm, Simon Rattle interview 2020, Simon Rattle classic fm interview, simon rattle conducting, What Does A Conductor do, conducting, conductors, classical music interview, catherine bott, orchestra

Id: q7PPMr7TXmM

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020