Mark Elder and Nigel Kennedy lock horns

In August the Graun ran an interview with Nigel Kennedy, in which the "bad boy" violinist apparently said, "I think conductors are completely over-rated . . .  because if you love music, why not play it?  Why wave around and get off on some ego shit?  I don't think the audience give a shit about the conductor . . . no one normal understands what the conductor does.  No one knows what they do!  They just wave their arms out of time."

Fast forward to October, when the paper printed a short Q & A with Sir Mark Elder, in which the Halle's MD was quoted as saying, "(Kennedy) and I have given wonderful performances together, and yet there he was saying we're all a load of wankers, and that nobody knows what we're there for".

The notion that no-one knows what the conductor does is widespread. Conductors don't after all make any sound during performances (apart from a little grunting from time to time), and it must seem to the general public like a rather inexplicable profession. But conductors do do something. Several things. Here are some of them.

In an orchestra someone needs to take a broad view of the tempo and shape of a work, and in rehearsal it's useful to have someone involved but not playing to identify problems that need to be fixed. Conductors control the speed of the music (otherwise which of the players would decide?), and with their hands help provide information about dynamics, articulation, balance and phrasing. Anyone who thinks that what conductors do with their hands makes no difference has not tried it. Von Karajan used to say that by varying his upbeat he could make the strings, or woodwind, or brass, play early in a tutti chord, and although I probably couldn't do that I have enough experience to be pretty sure that it's true. The players often say they don't watch (and certainly listening is just as important), but it's funny how you can get them to play the same passage differently by beating in a different way.  

So conductors are useful in performances and vital in rehearsal. But are they "a load of wankers" just the same? Well quite possibly. This is where I disagree with Elder.  It's quite possible to conduct great performances and be a plonker at the same time. It's not only possible, but likely that plonkers are going to be over-represented in the stick-waving business, given that it tends to attract people who like standing on a box, talking down to others, making their own separate entrance and getting an extra round of applause from the audience. I should know.

Next, Kennedy will be telling us that policemen are more than averagely likely to enjoy hitting people with sticks, or that footballers quite like playing football. Who knew?

I actually think that orchestral players expect the conductor to be a bit of a divvy. Inevitably some of them are. It's tempting to play up to this expectation actually, because often one's own real personality is just not adequate to the task of rehearsing an orchestra for three hours at a stretch. One becomes larger than life. I once had a piece performed by a conductor who wore an embroidered waistcoat. In the rehearsals. I actually didn't think he was a plonker. He was just doing what the players expected him to do.

But Kennedy is also wrong if he imagines that only conductors can be idiots, and in this regard he betrays a lack of self-awareness which is fatal to his argument. It's quite possible for a soloist to be a plonker as well.

You may well think that only someone with a very narrow set of interests could possibly be sufficiently driven to acquire the technical skill to make an international career as, for example, a violin soloist. You might find a person like that adopting a succession of eccentric hair styles and outfits in an attempt to make themselves seem more interesting. Such a person might be tempted to adopt a "mockney" accent to disguise their middle-class background, and try a foray into other musical styles for which they had only a modest aptitude; jazz for example.

I leave it to you to decide whether this photograph depicts such a person.