Stéphane Denève

It's been a while since my last post and rather than give you a blow by blow account, I'll focus on one of the most fun aspects of the last couple of months - working with Stéphane Denève at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

I often find musical chemistry goes absolutely along with personal chemistry, and with Stéphane all of this seems to work rather effortlessly. It helps that I've met him a number of times since he took over the directorship of the RSNO. One thing which I greatly appreciate - he takes the job of collaborating on a concerto very seriously and gives a lot of time to meet with the soloist before rehearsing. We did two different concertos in the last month - Brahms 2 and Rachmaninov 2. For the Brahms we talked and discussed for about an hour before playing with the orchestra; understandable perhaps because this is such a complex piece to put together. But the Rachmaninov took 2 hours talking together! I've never had an experience like this, working with a conductor who puts forward his ideas as being equally important to mine (normally they defer to the soloist). I think it led to a wonderful collaboration, with both of us responding to the strengths in each other's idea of the works, and offering some solutions to the weaknesses. The Rachmaninov is particular was something of a relevation to me. I hadn't played this work for many years so was rather open to new ideas, and I really learned a lot from Stéphane's view of the piece. It's very easy with these 'war horses' to take in all the normal conventions without much thought, no matter how much one tries to think of the piece afresh, and Stéphane opened my eyes to just how radical the shape of the first movement is, one enormous arc of increasing then decreasing speed. The concert, in Manchester, was probably one of the best of my life, which was very much influenced by the musical and personal connection I felt with Stéphane. In music, as in marriage, it helps a lot if you like your partner!