Interview 2024

Romanian Contemporanul Journal interview in connection with November performance at the Atheneum in Bucharest.

Sorana Mănailescu 

 

1. Maestro Paul Goodwin, versatile, pheomenally gifted, exhilarating, stirring are very few from among the epithets used by music critics in connection with your personality. How does one become a conductor in the superlative? 

 

To me , conducting is a continuation of my musical journey from boy chorister to oboist to conductor and educator. I am someone who does projects that interest and stimulate me, rather than have any consideration of how I am perceived. I like to keep people guessing as to what I will do next !

 

2. Was your early study of the oboe helpful and is perfect command of an instrument a condition in the shaping of a great conductor?

 

When I was starting out, the route in the UK to being a conductor was either to be rich and start your own orchestra, to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge University, to have won a competition, to be well connected or to be a respected instrumental soloist. I started off conducting at university and straight away conducted operas, contemporary music, wind bands, brass bands and youth orchestras , but realised my route was better served by concentrating on being the best in one field, the oboe, and then to move back to conducting. The world of early music appealed to me because of the combination of academic and practical considerations and the need for a wind player who could play to the highest standards on a period instrument. I therefore gave up my conducting aspirations for a number of years until I had become a prominent oboist and could be invited back to conduct , bringing with me all the knowledge and understanding of the history of music I had absorbed in my years as a period oboist , researching the music from Purcell to Mahler on period instruments and adding my love of contemporary music to the mix. I also brought the experience of being in-bedded in an orchestra and being one of the main solo voices to bear when I moved to conducting. The oboe section is still my “home” in every orchestra. Through this overall musical education, I felt I could conduct, really knowing what I wanted to say with every bar of music. 

 

3.     The list of orchestras you have conducted so far is very impressive –almost all the major orchestras of the world, but also less reputed local orchestras. To what extent can a director be an artisan capable of moulding any player into perfection?

 

I would never present myself as the sort of conductor who would wish to “mould a player into perfection”.  

I am a conductor of “collaboration” , someone who likes to listen to what the orchestra and players say and what their individual personality is and find a way together to make beautiful performances. Of course there will always be an element of persuading the players to understand and move towards your own musical ideals, especially when mine are so strong with regard to style, phrasing and sound. But I am a great lover of instrumental individuality and seek to encourage players to more express themselves rather than to streamline them into one musical direction. To me the glue that hold this individuality together is: respect for the score and unified phrasing. 

 

 

4.     You’ve been nominated for the Grammy and Gramophone awards. Which of your past concerts comes close to your own idea of perfection?

 

I think I would re-phrase that question as to: what few notes or phrases in past concerts do I remember with pleasure!  It is very difficult to judge your past performances as, firstly, I don’t tend to listen to my past performances because I am always looking to the future and new projects, and the little things I might hear that mean something to me, are totally different to the moments other people might like in my music making. 

My wife loves the interplay with oboe and voice ( Nancy Argenta) in my recording of the first movement of Bach’s Wedding Cantata 202- I tend to agree, as I love the collaboration.

I am still very happy with my recording of Elgar’s  “Sospiri” with the English Chamber orchestra  and many things on that album. It was so nice to work with a group of musicians and orchestra so imbued in the history of English music, all moving together. 

 

 

5.     Few conductors are remarked for the way they program concerts. You are one of them. You have planned, for instance, an upcoming ”program of the elements” in the company with the Warsaw Orchestra, including  Mendelssohn's concert overture, ”Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” and Eric Whitacre’s neo-impressionistic Cloud Burst. Is the choice of common theme supposed to throw into relief the change in musical discourse? How important is the historicizing approach to music for which you are so much admired? Why have you chosen it over the other option of making it all sound contemporary?

 

Programming is very important to me, taking the audience on a journey that brings pieces they know into relief with pieces they might not know , or setting up themes so that I can put together unusual combinations. I always say that I am not a “meat and vegetables” conductor ! - In which I mean, I try to avoid the classic “Overture, concerto, Symphony” format and would rather mix things up. I spend a lot of time with programs fitting things in and out like a jigsaw.

I am lucky in that I have the widest of repertoires to consider when programming and I am therefore able to program , for instance, contemporary music with baroque music, played by a modern symphony orchestra with confidence. If I get the Polish audience to participate in Cloud Burst  in the middle of our concert, I hope they might all the more appreciate the sea effects in Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea. 

I find that I am being asked to program unusual combinations more and more, which makes me very happy, because so many fine modern principal conductors start with the main romantic repertoire and then try to program something earlier with their orchestras, having heard early music versions on YouTube. I am lucky, because of my musical journey, to go in the other direction and can articulate each musical style from the 1500’s to today, from personal research and experience. 

 

 

6.     ”Beethoven explored” rather than performed was Malcom Miller’s summing up phrase in a review of your ”way of opening new ideas and interpretative approches” to the practices of composition and performance in Beethoven’s time.  He referred to Betthoven’s 8th. Does Beethoven’s 5th for piano, included in your 28-29 November concert at the Atheneum pose similar questions of recovering the character of early 9th century music?

 

Every piece I approach I do from a historical perspective and the 5th piano concerto is no exception. I will always have the sounds of natural trumpets and gut strings in my mind when approaching my interpretation with a modern orchestra. The contrast of the improvisatory piano with the military winds in the first movement, the subdued strings with beautiful phrased lines in the slow movement and the dance rhythms in the last movement. I will endeavour to bring out as much colour and contrast as possible, while moulding to the wishes of our soloist.

 

7.     You are a returning conductor of ”Vox Maris”. What is it you appreciate most about this composition of Enescu’s?

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Where do I start?! - This is such an incredible composition, which though in Romania is considered one of Enescu’s greatest,  is not nearly appreciated enough in the rest of the world.

I have conducted a lot of Elgar, and particularly love his oratorios. Vox Maris reminds me of these late Elgar works in that there is a wonderful breadth of architecture and yet enormous detail within. I think in terms of an over-engineered building, but where every detail matters and is needed for the building to stand up and look beautiful.

The orchestration and dynamic subtleties of Vox Maris are amazing and contribute to Enescu’s many layered sound-scape, while the whole piece takes us on this emotional and dramatic journey.  I consider it to be a great honour to be asked to conduct it in Romania. 

 

Romanian Contemporanul Journal interview in connection with November performance at the Atheneum in Bucharest.

Sorana Mănailescu