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Who or what inspired you to take up conducting, and make it your career? 

When I was five I used to sit on the floor listening to my father [Manoug Parikian, leader of the Philharmonia in the 1950s, soloist, chamber musician and teacher] as he practised. So it’s safe to say that music was an integral part of my life from a very early age. And I decided that music was what I wanted to do while playing in a performance of the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion when I was seventeen (I was a percussionist before I took up conducting).

As for conducting, I genuinely can’t remember. I was aware of conductors and what they did, and knew names such as Toscanini, Furtwängler, Klemperer and Cantelli from my father talking about them. But it wasn’t until I was studying timpani and percussion at the Royal Academy of Music that I took an interest in what was or wasn’t going on at the front. And it wasn’t until my early thirties that I plucked up the stupidity to try and make it my career.

Who or what were the most important influences on your conducting? 

Oh crikey! I don’t know. I’ve had some wonderful teachers: Michael Rose, George Hurst, Ilya Musin. They all gave me enormous amounts of wisdom, a lot of which I chose to ignore at the time. But sometimes it’s something as simple as a player asking you to speak up that can make you examine what you do; and teaching others is of course the best teacher.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

I remember being so nervous before my first concert that I was unable to tie my tie. That was quite tough. Otherwise: remaining in employment.

Which performances are you most proud of?  

All of them. Some have been better than others, but any performance is something to be celebrated.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in? 

Not particularly. It helps if they have a roof.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

Sibelius 7th Symphony – but ask me again tomorrow and you’ll get a different answer.

Who are your favourite musicians? 

Too many to mention, but anyone who plays with commitment, musical intelligence and honesty.

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

I can barely remember what I did last Thursday.

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

Eek. I feel desperately unqualified to answer this, but if I have to: put the music first.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I’m off to Edinburgh at the weekend for a week-long course with the wonderful Rehearsal Orchestra (www.rehearsal-orchestra.org), a group that has an astonishing capacity to have a go at pretty much anything thrown at them. I’ll be conducting Lutosławski Concerto for Orchestra, Stravinsky Petrushka, Shostakovich’s First Symphony…….errm, lots of other things. Basically it’s a week-long orgy of hedonistic musical excess punctuated by civilised bouts of whisky-drinking.

I’m also promoting my book, Waving, Not Drowning, a light-hearted pastiche of the Maestro Memoir married to a brutal exposé of the murkier secrets of the conductor’s world. Or something. Where can you get it, you say? Oh look: www.wavingnotdrowningbook.com.

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time? 

In the land of the living.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

As I am now: answering questionnaires while in the privileged position of watching England retain the Ashes and just having had a gin and tonic.

What do you enjoy doing most? 

I like nothing more than settling down for a good satisfying [redacted].

What is your present state of mind? 

Decisive. No, hold on, indecisive. Errm…

(Interview date: 5th August 2013)

Lev Parikian’s book Waving, Not Drowning: the art of conducting explained from upbeat to cufflinks, co-authored with Barrington Orwell, is now available priced £7. To read sample text or order a copy (paperback or e-book), please go to www.wavingnotdrowningbook.com

Levon Parikian studied conducting with George Hurst and Ilya Musin. Since completing his studies, he has pursued a freelance conducting career, and is much in demand as Guest Conductor with orchestras in Britain. He currently holds Principal Conductor posts with several London-based orchestras, and is Principal Conductor of the City of Oxford Orchestra and Artistic Director of The Rehearsal Orchestra. He has worked extensively with students and youth orchestras, including the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, National Youth Strings Academy, Royal College of Music Junior Sinfonia, and Royal Holloway University of London, where he also teaches conducting. In 2012 Levon conducted the UK premiere of Armen Tigranian’s opera Anoush with London Armenian Opera.

Levon lives in South London and his hobbies include making retaliatory hoax calls to call centres, finding unexpected items in the bagging area, and wondering why he came upstairs.

Lev also blogs on topics as diverse as music, food, sport and aardvarks. To read his blog, please visit levparikian.wordpress.com

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Who or what inspired you to take up conducting and make it your career?

Ward Swingle, of Swingle Singers fame, is an old family friend, and it was he who suggested, on the evidence of my childhood piano playing, that I pursue conducting. At the time I took it as a compliment but with hindsight imagine it had more to do with the inadequacies of my pianistic technique. Put more politely, he made me realise I was more interested in music, than in playing it.

 

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

George Hurst taught me everything I like about my conducting as well as everything I don’t like. I came under his spell at a dangerously young age.

 

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Knowing when to say yes and when to say no.

 

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

I can count on the fingers of one hand the performances I remember with unequivocal pride but given that I’m hopefully not yet half way through my career, I don’t think that’s a bad proportion! One should always want to do better. I’m pleased with the Shostakovich Symphony cycle I’ve recorded, though I have to confess I’ve never listened to the CDs once they’ve been released. Perhaps I’m worried that doing so will make me less proud.

 

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

The first professional orchestra I ever conducted was in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. As such, I always feel inspired by the memories of that excitement. And despite its questionable acoustics, I smile every time I walk into the Sydney Opera House.

 

Favourite pieces to perform/conduct? Listen to?

Wagner is the pinnacle for me. His music is a constant search for the perfect equilibrium between heart, mind, and soul. Realising it is a very special feeling. His music essentially invented the need for conductors and the flexible physicality he requires is a joy to express. Listening is another matter and I tend not to listen to music I conduct. Chamber music is where I’m freer to respond without judgement, listen without an opinion, and love without experience.

 

Who are your favourite musicians?

One tends not to know individual musicians in orchestras that well, but there are many, many I admire enormously. And the singers and soloists who hear music collaboratively are the soloists I enjoy the most. Stephen Hough and John Tomlinson spring to mind as prime examples.

 

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Conducting Mahler’s sixth symphony with the Dutch National Youth Orchestra at a performance in Haarlem and hearing Simon Rattle perform Mahler’s Second Symphony with the CBSO at the Brighton Dome. You don’t need glamorous venues!

 

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

Sincerity, Respect, Confidence, Passion, Thought, Time.

Born in Sussex, England, Mark Wigglesworth studied music at Manchester University and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Whilst still a student, he formed The Premiere Ensemble, an orchestra committed to playing a new piece in every programme. A few weeks after leaving the Academy, he won the Kondrashin International Conducting Competition in The Netherlands, and since then has worked with many of the leading orchestras and opera companies of the world.

In 1992 he became Associate Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and further appointments included Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Highlights of his time with the BBCNOW included several visits to the BBC Proms, a performance of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony at the prestigious Amsterdam Mahler Festival in 1995, and a six-part television series for the BBC entitled ‘Everything To Play For’.

In addition to concerts with most of the UK’s orchestras, Mark Wigglesworth has guest conducted many of Europe’s finest ensembles, including the Berlin Philharmonic; Amsterdam Concertgebouw; La Scala Filarmonica, Milan; Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Rome; Stockholm Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Helsinki Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg Camerata and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Mark Wigglesworth’s full biography
(picture: Intermusica)

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It has long been my ambition to perform all 5 Beethoven Concertos in one evening, and it is great to be able to do this in a concert in aid of the Musicians Benevolent Fund. This charity has done so much over many decades to support musicians who have fallen into difficulties of one sort or another and provides invaluable scholarship money to talented students. The icing on the cake is that this will happen in my old Alma Mater, the RNCM in its 40th anniversary year, with an orchestra comprising many of its students past and present, with the very talented young conductor Daniel Parkinson. (Martin Roscoe)

All five piano concertos in one evening, performed by Martin Roscoe, one of the UK’s most acclaimed and versatile pianists, and conducted by Daniel Parkinson, together with an introduction by John Suchet. This promises to be a marathon feast of music, culminating in Beethoven’s Fifth ‘Emperor’ Concerto in the final concert at 9pm. By presenting all the concertos in a single day, audience members attending all three concerts will be offered a unique window on Beethoven’s creative life, and insights into the evolution of the piano concerto in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, from the youthful post-Haydn Nos. 1 and 2, through the No. 4, which marked a major turning point in the development of the concerto with the piano entering before the orchestra, to the sweeping proto-Romantic and virtuosic No, 5, the ‘Emperor’.

The concerts take place at the Royal Northern College of Music on 5th October, from 5pm, and tickets are available now. For further information, please visit the Beethoven Piano Concerto Project website: www.beethovenpianoconcertos.co.uk

I recently interviewed conductor Daniel Parkinson for my Meet the Artist series. Read his interview here.

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Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in composing and conducting? 

I think it was probably a combination of discovering that I could make my own sounds on the piano as a very young child and also hearing Beethoven’s 6th Symphony and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) on a tape recorder, which I can still remember vividly. Later I became obsessed with the Beethoven Piano Sonatas as I tried to learn how to play them, but soon became more interested in mimicking their sound in my own modest piano compositions. Beethoven has remained a great influence on my work. I was also very lucky to have the encouragement of my piano teacher and parents, who never questioned my interest in composition, but did provide very useful constructive criticism when required! As a result of this, I can’t recall ever making the decision to be a composer. This path was simply inevitable. Like many of my colleagues, I think that composing is not so much a choice or career, but really a very intense compulsion and almost a way of life.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I have just finished creating a Live Music Sculpture for St Paul’s Cathedral, which will be premiered on 12th July 2013 as part of the City of London Festival. The site-specific work will involve singers and French horns which are placed spatially throughout the cathedral in various horizontal and vertical locations, including the Whispering Gallery. It has been designed to explore the unique acoustic of Wren’s architectural masterpiece. I am also working on an original story and libretto for a new chamber opera commissioned by Size Zero Opera.

Who or what are the most important influences on your work? 

Usually I turn to literature for inspiration. In prose and poetry, the construction of phrases, form, ambiguity, the importance of context and semantics have a great deal in common with music. I have been directly influenced by the prose of James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Mann very much, and also the poetry of T.S. Elliot, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. These influences are always changing. I am not so aware of musical influences and try to avoid thinking about these too much!

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

The greatest challenge so far was probably composing a Live Music Sculpture for the very long and narrow space above the River Thames inside the walkways of Tower Bridge. The space was so long that the sound behaved in a very unusual way. There was a significant audible delay while the sound travelled from one end of the bridge to the other, which had to be built into the composition.

What are the particular challenges/excitements of working with an orchestra/ensemble/singers? 

The most exciting thing about working with an ensemble of musicians is hearing how a collection of entirely different personalities can unite for a period of time to bring to life the vision of a composer through performance. An imagined or written down piece of music exists in a different kind of intangible reality until it is actually performed. And even then, the way that music works is still wonderfully elusive. I think many composers are delighted when they can finally get out from behind the desk and hear their work materialise in rehearsal and performance. One hopes that there will always be unimagined revelations and pleasant surprises brought out by the performers, but also a confirmation that the imagined sounds of a composition are actually achievable. It is thrilling when an ensemble performs a new composition with the same expressive commitment as they would Brahms or Mozart and are able to channel all their knowledge and experience through new music.

It can sometimes be a challenge to convince an orchestra or ensemble that the virtuosic difficulties or conceptual ideas are worth all the effort, but also just as challenging as a composer to learn that the vision isn’t working, and that it needs refining in the next composition after speaking to the players or simply listening to the performance!

Do you have a favourite concert venue? 

I have been privileged to write for a great variety of venues, so it’s almost impossible to choose a favourite. I’m enjoying working with St Paul’s Cathedral very much at the moment and attempting to discover some of its architectural secrets.

Who are your favourite musicians? 

Again, there are some many it is hard to pin them down! I am a great admirer of Pierre Boulez, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and the pianist Krystian Zimerman. As well as enjoying their extraordinary compositions and performances, for me, these three different musicians epitomise what it means to have artistic conviction, as well as complete dedication and a rigorous approach to their work. I am also a big fan of Leonard Bernstein who seemed to be the most remarkably gifted all-round musician. He was very much ahead of his time as a thinker and a great educator.

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

The first time I heard Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with the CBSO as a student was a huge moment. Despite having got to know it well on record, the sheer scale of the thing was overwhelming in performance. It is extraordinary to consider how Mahler was able to control and organise form over such expansive amounts of time. I will never forget the devastating emotional gravity of the Urlicht in the fourth movement after all the preceding orchestral bombast! This must be one of the most poignant and beautiful moments in Mahler’s entire output.

What is your favourite music to listen to? 

Bach, Beethoven, Purcell, Szymanowski, Maxwell Davies, Britten, Puccini, Boulez, Mozart, Sibelius, Mahler, Schubert, early Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams and Berg.

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

I think it is very important to have conviction when composing or performing music. If you don’t believe in what you are doing, nobody else will. And more importantly, if you find that you can’t believe in your work wholeheartedly, turn that doubt into something constructive until you can believe in it. It is also important to have a very strong connection to the past, as well as a clear vision for the future when composing or performing music. However, it is easy to be seduced by both, and actually the most important place to be is in the present. We should ask ourselves: What matters now? And what can my music say about the present? And the connection between the past and future will hopefully be there instinctively, for the same themes returned to by humanity over and over again are always eternal.

What is your most treasured possession? 

I have a very beautiful 1920’s horned gramophone which plays old 78s. I often listen to fantastic 1920s/30s and 1940s popular music and jazz on it, as well as wonderful recordings of classical music. It’s fascinating to notice how the tempi were often altered to fit each movement onto one side of the record. The sheer effort involved with winding the thing up and changing the needle just to hear about 4 minutes of music, as well as the crackly sound quality, provides a wonderfully different listening experience. It turns a very short listening session into a major event as everybody gathers around the horn to listen. It’s definitely not the same as casually flicking through an ipod!

Samuel Bordoli’s new work, Live Music Sculpture 3: St Paul’s Cathedral, will be premiered as part of the City of London Festival, with five performances Friday 12 July, taking place at 11.30, 13.20, 14.20, 15.20 and 16.20 in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. 

For more information on Samuel: www.bordoli.co.uk

For more information on Live Music Sculpture: www.livemusicsculpture.com