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Who or what inspired you to take up conducting and pursue a career in music?

The decision to become a musician was a gradual one; my first post – as organist at Brixton prison when I was 16 – showed that it was possible to be paid for doing what I enjoyed – and my first paid conducting performance (Messiah, when I was 17) further convinced me that this was a congenial way to make a living. It was Adrian Boult, however, who wholly changed my focus of ambition. I went to a concert of his in Oxford during my post-graduate year and suddenly became aware of what a conductor could achieve. I pushed a note under his door in the Randolph Hotel asking if he would take me as a student. Characteristically, he replied the next day inviting me to audition for his advanced course at the RCM and that began a learning process that continued almost until he died. He was unquestionably the most significant influence on my musical life.

What, for you, is the most challenging part of being a conductor? And the most fulfilling aspect?

The most challenging part of being a conductor in this country is that you’re almost always trying to work with a short amount of rehearsal time, so you tend to depend more than you should have to on your musicians being prepared to fill in the gaps for you. That is not the case in the United States and in Europe, where you are given more rehearsal time with professional musicians; the more relevant challenge there is developing the sense of urgency you need for a rehearsal without being over-demanding.

The most fulfilling aspect is the sense of making music with a number of other people, some of whom you’ve known for many years, and still deriving the same intense pleasure from doing so – in some 30 years after our first collaboration. Whether the players feel the same, of course, I cannot say!

As a conductor, how do you communicate your ideas about a work to the orchestra?

I believe the conductor’s job is to communicate as much as possible by gesture; too much talking is a well-known conductors’ disease. That said, offering an orchestra/choir what you hope are helpful images to clarify the sound or character that you are trying for can be beneficial if you can find the right metaphors.

How exactly do you see your role? Inspiring the players/singers? Conveying the vision of the composer?

A conductor needs to be both a manager and a bit of a visionary. Helping musicians to feel that what they do is important and worthwhile – and valued by the conductor – is important, but clearly the composer should be the fundamental reference point for all performers.

Is there one work which you would love to conduct?

There are several works I would like to conduct, which have so far eluded me: Walton’s First Symphony and Cello Concerto, Mahler’s Second Symphony and Morning Heroes by Bliss. More pressingly, there are works I would love to conduct more often – particularly Beethoven’s Glorreiche Augenblick, The Kingdom or the symphonies by Elgar and such neglected masterworks as the Holst Choral Symphony, and the marvellous tone poems by Bax.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

I love both the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the Symphony Hall in Birmingham, though I also love Dalhalla in Sweden, which is an open-air venue – constructed out of a gravel pit – with a fantastic atmosphere and acoustic. The only drawback is that the conductor has to be rowed to the venue and I can’t swim.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

My favourite composers are always the ones I’m currently working on. When you’re preparing something for performance, it occupies the whole of the forefront of your mind and that means you are very closely entwined in what you hope to be the intentions of that particular composer at that particular time.

It is very difficult to identify favourite musicians; almost all of my colleagues are helpful and collaborative. You soon discover the handful who are not, and as far as possible you give them a wide berth. One of my absolute favourites, though, is the marvellous South African baritone, Njabulo Madlala. Brought up in Durban he has made his way to the forefront of the classical music scene purely on merit and a determination which never prevents him from being entirely charming and delightful.

We performed Elijah together four years ago in Leicester. He sang it wonderfully, and I’m thrilled to be able to do it again with him in the Barbican Centre on 13th February. Elijah is one of those works that has drifted slightly out of fashion – a real mistake, as it is full of inspired melody and dramatic invention. And, of course, it brings together professional orchestral players and soloists with one of our leading amateur choirs. A combination which often leads to the best result possible: professional expertise with amateur commitment and enthusiasm.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

Being the best possible conduit between the composer and the audience. If the audience leaves the concert saying what a wonderful piece they have heard, I think we’ve done the best we can.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Fidelity to the composers’ intentions. We live in a time of absurdly elevated personality cults; the job of the performer is to focus the audience on the composer’s personality and not his or her own.

Hilary Davan Wetton conducts the City of London Choir and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ at the Barbican Centre on Tuesday 13th February at 7.30pm. Soloists are Rachel Nicholls, Diana Moore, Daniel Norman and Njabulo Madlala as Elijah. More information and tickets

 

Hilary Davan Wetton has been Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the City of London Choir since 1989. One of the country’s most distinguished choral conductors, he was founder/conductor of the Holst Singers, and is Conductor Emeritus of the Guildford Choral Society and Artistic Director of Leicester Philharmonic Choir. He is also Associate Conductor of the London Mozart Players and Conductor Emeritus of the Milton Keynes City Orchestra.

Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford and the Royal College of Music, Hilary studied conducting with Sir Adrian Boult and was awarded the Ricordi conducting prize in 1967. Over a career spanning 50 years, he is particularly admired for his interpretations of 20th century British music, conducting many first performances for British composers as well as neglected works by Gardner, Parry, Holst, Dyson, Bridge, Sterndale Bennett and Samuel Wesley.

His extensive discography includes recordings for Hyperion with both the Holst Singers and Guildford Choral Society, a series of acclaimed recordings for Collins Classics with the LPO, including Holst’s Planets, Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, and discs for Naxos and EM Records with the City of London Choir. He received the Diapason d’Or for Holst’s Choral Symphony (Hyperion, 1994). In Terra Pax: A Christmas Anthology (Naxos, 2009) reached number two in the Gramophone classical chart and enjoyed wide critical success. Beethoven’s Der Glorreiche Augenblick (Naxos, 2012) has also been much admired, receiving a five star review in BBC Music Magazine; and Flowers of the Field (Naxos, 2014) with the City of London Choir, London Mozart Players, Roderick Williams and Jeremy Irons went quickly to number one in the Specialist Classical Chart.

Hilary has broadcast frequently for the BBC and Classic FM. For six years, he was presenter/conductor for Classic FM’s Masterclass, and he was Jo Brand’s organ teacher for the BBC 1 series, Play it Again. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the Open University and De Montfort University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Birmingham Conservatoire.

www.hilarydavanwetton.co.uk

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I was delighted to take part in Jon Jacob’s Thoroughly Good Podcast project with composer Thomas Hewitt Jones (who happens to be one of the first people to feature in my Meet the Artist series). We met in the crypt bar at St John’s Smith Square (one of my favourite music venues in London) to talk about blogging, composing, concert going and more…..

Listen here

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Bela Bartók – Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos
Paul Constantinescu – Cântec
Paul Constantinescu – Dobrogean dance: Toccata
Franz Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No 5 in E minor
Franz Liszt – Mephisto – Waltz No 1

Florian Mitrea, piano

Tuesday 30th January 2018

St Martin’s in the Fields, an elegant neoclassical church in the heart of London, resonated to the colourful, earthy sounds and rhythms of Eastern Europe in Florian Mitrea’s lunchtime concert. In an interesting and contrasting programme he offered a “taster” of his debut disc ‘Following the River’ with works by Bela Bartok, Paul Constantinescu and Franz Liszt

Fresh from winning fourth prize in the inaugural International Music Competition in Harbin, China, Florian betrayed no sign of lingering jet lag (he flew back to London from China on Sunday) in an energetic and committed performance book-ended by dances by Bartok and Liszt. The vibrant sounds and asymmetrical rhythms of Bartok’s Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm were despatched with muscular verve and nimble articulation. Hearing Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz in the same programme as the Bulgarian Dances reminded us of Liszt’s eastern European heritage, and here this work was less a devilishly tricky crowd-pleasing virtuosic romp and more a fitting companion piece to Bartok’s dances which opened the concert. Equally, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 5 was given a noble grandeur, imbued with a sweeping romanticism but also deeply connected to the composer’s heritage.

The middle of the programme was occupied by two works by Romanian composer Paul Constantinescu (1909-63). Cântec, a set of variations on a Romanian folksong, was infused with a bittersweet nostalgia, while Dobrogean dance: Toccata recalled the off-beat folk rhythms of Bartok in a work which combined glittering virtuosity with poignant lyricism. Both works were beautifully paced, sensitively shaped, and highly evocative.

These two works appear on Florian’s debut disc, Following the River, inspired by childhood memories of “hot summer nights spent on a boat in the middle of a channel, deep in the heart of the Danube Delta” (FM). The Danube, the longest river within today’s European union, flows through 10 countries and four capital cities – Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade – and carries with it stories, folklore, memories and more. In Following the River we find quite a different version of the river from “An der schönen blauen Donau”, by the Austrian Johann Strauss II, which celebrates the great river in Vienna; this is a far more personal evocation. The selection of pieces by Bartok, Schubert and Liszt and Romanian composers Sigismund Toduta, Paul Constantinescu and Radu Paladi all call on the folk heritage and music of eastern Europe in works of rich textures, dynamic rhythms, piquant harmonies and simple yet haunting melodies. Schubert’s Hungarian Melody is given a more earthy treatment, with a strong focus on its offbeat rhythms which turns in from a salon piece into a true folk melody. The disc introduces listeners to the varied and intriguing piano music of lesser-known composers Toduta, Constantinescu and Paladi, complemented by well-known works by Liszt. This is a very personal and meaningful selection of music, elegantly presented and masterfully played, with a deep appreciation of and affinity with the folk heritage which lies at the heart of all this music.

Highly recommended

Following the river: Music along the Danube

Bela Bartok, Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos Sz. 107
Sigismund Toduţă, Twelve Variations on a Romanian Christmas Carol
Franz Schubert, Hungarian Melody D 817
Paul Constantinescu, Variations on a Romanian Folksong
Paul Constantinescu, Joc Dobrogean. Toccata (Dobrogean dance)
Franz Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 ‘Héroïde-élégiaque’ in E minor
Sigismund Toduţă, Suite of Romanian Songs and Dances
Radu Paludi, Rondo a capriccio
Sigismund Toduţă, Chorale on ‘God, have mercy’ and Toccata

© and ℗ 2017 ACOUSENCE records (ACO-CD 13317) www.acousence.de

Meet the Artist – Florian Mitrea

 

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There is a growing trend amongst concert hosts and performers to introduce the music to be performed ahead of the concert, and on radio for presenters to describe the music in some detail immediately before it is broadcast. Such presentations can offer the audience a different perspective on what they are about to hear from the programme notes and may reveal special or personal insights into the music. I think audiences have a great fascination for the “behind the scenes” work of musicians, especially soloists such as concert pianists, and a performer’s own introduction to his or her programme provides a more personal view on the music, allowing the performer to discuss why they chose this repertoire, what makes it special for them and, particularly in the case of modern or new music, give the audience some “listening notes” to help them find their way through the music.

Such introductions may also create a more intimate link between performer and audience, breaking down the “us and them” atmosphere which can sometimes pervade the concert hall (especially in venues such as the Wigmore Hall where the musicians are separated from the audience by a rail across the front of the stage). A good introduction will encourage engaged and empathetic listening from audience and a sense of mutual communication and cooperation between performer and listeners.

It can be frustrating, therefore, when presenter or performer tries to tell the audience “how to listen”. There is a certain Radio Three presenter (usually on the weekend Breakfast show slot) who prefaces a work with gushing purple prose, telling us that this music is “beautiful”, “absolutely gorgeous”, “fiery”, “dramatic” etc. Listening to music, whether in a live concert, on disc or on the radio is a highly personal and subjective experience, one which taps into one’s emotions to create an individual response. My version of “beautiful” or “dramatic” music will not be the same as yours, and to influence the listener by describing music in this way or telling us how to listen may deprive us of the uniqueness of the listening experience. Equally, audiences and listeners are not daft and do not need to be ‘helped’ through the music or given obvious musical ‘signposts’ to listen out for before we’ve even heard a note. And a long verbal introduction to a piece can make one impatient to hear the actual music.

Sometimes in pre-concert presentations, extracts from the music in the programme are played to introduce the music or illustrate a point or to ‘help’ the audience. Such extracts can be enlightening and informative, but equally they can feel strangely disconnected when taken out of the context of the entire work or the programme as a whole.

I actually enjoying hearing a piece of music “cold”, so to speak, without any introduction, allowing the sounds to seep into my aural landscape and my consciousness. Sometimes we need to surprised, delighted, shocked or enraptured, and at other times it can be satisfying to “work” at listening (and I have never regarded listening as an entirely passive activity: some engagement is required, whatever the genre of music). We can take pleasure in our personal discoveries, our unique responses to what we’re hearing, the thrill of the unknown or the unfamiliar.

The excitement of hearing a new piece for the first time is that it is new and one doesn’t know where it will go– Mariko Brown, pianist

Music comes out of silence and through it we can escape from the noise of everyday life, the unending onslaught of images, messages, videos, memes…..