If you think of a football team the conductor is at once a coach and a player.
You have to listen all the time to what is being played, what is being sung
but it is not enough.
You have to hear what you're listening to, the same way when we talk if you listen to
someone it's not enough, you have to hear what the person is saying and so this is
part of what a conductor does. It's an extraordinary process, at first sharing
your vision of the piece with the colleagues that you make music with,
they may be singers or they may be instrumentalists. And then discovering what visions they have
of the work if they have had experience with it. And then through the
process of rehearsals all these multiple visions somewhere have to become one,
which is shared by everyone that doesn't mean everyone will always agree with it
but it has to be so compelling that everyone wants to go in this direction together
and then that is the rehearsal process.
Then comes the performance and at that point
the conductor becomes a player.
I study them, I see what they need because it is for me to try and help them to be able to express themselves.
I also see what they feel, where they're challenged where there are
potentially dangerous parts for them so I can help get through them those
parts and in psychological terms in a way I have to be, I have to become them at
the moment when they are involved in the performance.
Everything in an interpretation has to be connected, it has to be related and it has to be
integrated. For it to happen there has to be sort of presence of certain
detachment which allows one to make sure that the pieces that are assembled,
that they do connect it sort of like a big mosaic, you cannot only do it with feeling,
so it is a harmony in a way, between intellect and the sentiment. Both are equally important if it's
only intellect it is cerebral and it will touch no one, if it is only heart
and a sentiment that means that you're the only one that will be touched
no one else will understand what's going on because it would total mess, so it is
trying to find that harmony, again part of the training, that is what we tried to do
all our lives and once in a while when we get there then we are able to share
with the audience something extraordinary.
Conductors are musicians - it's not musicians and conductors.
A conductor by definition is a musician who happens to conduct, as is a violinist who happens to play
a violin, as is the pianist who happens to play piano. So what we are brought up with, educated with as an idea is
that a work of art is given to us by composer - a score it's called - in which there
are the notes to play, there are the notes to phrase, there is a characters, there is a spirit,
there is tempo, there are lots of indications and plenty of information
the composer gives to us. Now we are also brought up with the idea of humility
in understanding that the talent of a Wagner
a Bach, a Beethoven, a Tchaikovsky is so infinitely greater than any of us can ever possess
because they are the creators.
So if you start from that point of view you accept happily
that you are at the service of those creators. That's a privilege.
It's not a chore and it's not demeaning in any way, it brings a responsibility of
hoping that you can bring to life faithfully what they imagined.