Any British conductor who picked up their daily paper and saw the acres of newsprint devoted to the appointment of an Italian to manage England’s football team would have had good reason to choke on their cornflakes. The systematic selection of non-Brits to direct our symphony orchestras has been endemic for years and, as we start 2008, the prospects for a young British conductor have never been so bleak.
Let’s examine the facts. When I started playing concerts in the early seventies we had Colin Davis at the BBC Symphony, Bryden Thomson at the BBC Northern, Christopher Seaman at the BBC Scottish, James Loughran at the Hallé, Charles Groves at the Liverpool Philharmonic, Alexander Gibson at the Scottish National and Meredith Davies at the helm of the late lamented BBC Training Orchestra. Today Mark Elder – universally acknowledged to be doing a great job at the Hallé – is the sole surviving British principal conductor of a British symphony orchestra.
At the risk of stating the obvious, any aspiring conductor needs chances to conduct. It is no coincidence that Simon Rattle – the most conspicuously successful British conductor of his generation – was enabled to develop his craft by winning a long – defunct competition which resulted in a three year position with the Bournemouth Symphony and Sinfonietta orchestras. No such opportunity for a lengthy apprenticeship exists today.
Not that anyone would pretend it has ever been easy for ambitious British maestros. In the past such internationally renowned British conductors as Neville Marriner, John Eliot Gardiner and Richard Hickox were able to make headway by creating their very own orchestras. In today’s economic and cultural climate this would be well-nigh impossible (Hickox’s City of London Sinfonia has just had its well-earned funding axed by the Arts Council).
There is no question that we have the talent but at present many of the younger generation of British conductors such as Daniel Harding at the Swedish Radio Orchestra and Mark Wigglesworth at La Monnaie opera in Brussels are earning their crust elsewhere. Surely, at a time when fostering links within the local community is part of a Music Director’s job description, we should be finding new ways of supporting and nurturing our home grown conductors?
I wonder what the three B’s of British conducting – Barbirolli, Beecham and Boult – would have made of the internet site YouTube. This great British trio are all to be seen conducting on this extraordinarily wonderful 21st century phenomenon as are Toscanini, Furtwangler, Walter et al, and the roll call of instrumentalists is similarly impressive. In fact there is so much rare footage of great musicians of every genre on YouTube that everyone will find something to enthral them. The joy of the site lies in discovering films you never believed you would set eyes on again. I had long since abandoned all hope of ever seeing a magnificent performance given on TV in the sixties by Maurice Gendron of Debussy’s Cello Sonata. Yet there it is in its entirety.
Doubtless copyright issues abound – some clips are removed almost as soon as they are posted – but, if you love great music conducted or played by great musicians, I urge you to investigate.
2008 is already promising to deliver perhaps the greatest gift of all to music lovers – silence! Last year I advocated a massive hike in the charge levied by the Performing Rights Society to hotels, pubs, shops, etc., that insist on playing piped muzak. This aural scourge is as offensive to many as cigarette smoke and from January 1st shops that continue to inflict it on us are going to have to pay “inflation busting rises” to the PRS which is also “reviewing the tariffs charged to other places like offices, pubs and restaurants”. Hallelujah!
