When did that become a professional commitment?
The JRNCM gave me a wonderfully supportive space to experiment. I wanted to set up an orchestra, and they let me! But at eighteen I still thought it might be time to enter the “real world” and I accepted a university place to read politics and economics.
During the summer before I was due to start though, something didn’t feel right and eventually, I emailed to say I would decline the place . I stayed another year at JRNCM and decided to audition for conducting schools. If it didn’t work, I could do something else—but I needed to try.
There was never one grand moment when I decided to become a conductor. It was a series of things that felt right, or that I enjoyed, and you really do have to enjoy this profession. All those hours alone with a score, all the travelling: you cannot make yourself do it unless you love it. I started because I thought it was great fun, and I still think it is.
How do you develop the confidence to stand in front of an orchestra without slipping into arrogance?
Experience helps. At first, standing on a podium was terrifying, there could be upto one hundred people watching everything you do, every movement and every word. Gradually, you accept that being watched is part of the job.
But confidence and arrogance are very different, and orchestras can tell the difference. As a young conductor, you want to lead, but finding that balance is difficult. What you eventually learn is that authority and respect come from the music: from being prepared, knowing what you want and having well-reasoned ideas.
If I’m nervous, I try to think only about the music, rather than what my hands are doing. Things can still go wrong, but musicians are remarkably willing to forgive mistakes if they see a genuine musical intention.
I used to be so self-conscious that I was afraid to take risks in case the orchestra disliked them. But one hundred musicians will have one hundred opinions. The point is not universal agreement; it is to communicate your interpretation honestly so that you can work together productively.
A competition adds a jury and a severe time limit. How do you avoid rehearsing for the jury rather than responding to the orchestra?
If you’re not careful, you can start playing mind games with yourself: you think the jury wants to hear specific things, something about bowing, something about intonation, something about phrasing. It is possible to approach a competition this way, and it can work for some people. For me though, I find that the healthiest approach is to work as I would if there was no jury present. Limited rehearsal time is not unique to competitions; it happens in professional life too.
Nerves can be tricky in competitions, and conducting in general! Usually, if I’m nervous, the worst thing I can do is think, “Now I need to find a problem to solve.” That only makes me more tense. If I treat it as a normal rehearsal and respond to what is actually happening, I can relax. And the more relaxed I am, the easier it becomes to connect with the orchestra.
What distinguished your experience in Trondheim?
The orchestra’s musical responsiveness. That means more than just following a tempo: they could follow an emotional intention, a colour, a character. In Trondheim, they were very willing to come with me in that sense, often through gesture rather than explanation.
The repertoire also demanded very different things from us: Beethoven and Stravinsky, a concerto and a contemporary piece, then Brahms and Mozart in the final. It was rewarding to explore the contrasting repertoire with the same group of musicians.
I find the Viennese Classical repertoire particularly difficult to conduct because so much of it doesn’t actually need conducting, in the conventional sense of the word. You can very easily make it worse! You have to offer something beyond beating time, because the musicians don’t really need that.
The whole week also felt unusually relaxed and intimate. Competitions can make you feel caught up in a huge machine but the TSO managed to create an environment in which you could feel safe and be yourself.
