The star-studded SOI Spring 2025 Season fittingly culminates with one of Britain’s most acclaimed conductors, Sir Mark Elder, on the podium. In an interview with ON Stage, the musical luminary talks about the importance of character and flexibility in an orchestra, the responsibility of an artiste and the programme he has chosen for his India debut.  

By Beverly Pereira

At the forefront of British conducting for several decades, Sir Mark Elder is respected for his rich experience in making an orchestra shine. His explorations of the tapestry of music are a vital part of his remarkable career. After 24 long years as Music Director of one of Britain’s oldest symphony orchestras, the Hallé in Manchester, Elder, 77, now holds the position of Conductor Emeritus and continues to work in the most prominent opera houses of the world.

Much loved at the BBC Proms, Elder has conducted several over the decades. His associations with some of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and BBC Symphony Orchestra, remain cherished. Elder’s recordings with the Hallé’s label, founded by him in 2003, have won accolades, and the conductor himself— the CBE at the 1989 Queen’s Birthday Honours—has a long list of prizes and awards to his name. It all began at the age of eight when Elder became a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. Looking back, he calls it a real education—to be singing music from the 18th and 19th centuries. The education continued when he went to Australia as a prolific young conductor. All these influences were to play a role in the maestro’s illustrious career.

Excerpts from the interview:

ON Stage: What drew you to conducting?

Sir Mark Elder: When I was a teenager, I had an enormous amount of experience playing chamber music and the symphonic repertoire on the bassoon. As my 21st birthday approached, I remember thinking that I needed to focus on how I would organise my life in music. As a student I had sung, acted and played a lot, and it occurred to me to think about conducting as a natural amalgam of all these different activities. And so, I started to conduct, hesitantly, but feeling that it was where I belonged.

When I joined the music staff at the Royal Opera House, I met Edward Downes, who soon offered me the chance to live and work in Australia where he had recently become the music director of The Australian Opera. This was a very exciting time for the company because it was the period at the beginning of the 1970s when the Sydney Opera House was going to be completed, and the company could have a new home. In the two years that I lived and worked in Australia, I conducted 160 performances—a figure that would be unthinkable in any comparable European situation. It was an extraordinary opportunity, and it set me up for the rest of my life. Ted Downes was a very supportive and generous colleague, and he gave me responsibilities that were way beyond my experience, but through those responsibilities, I grew as a conductor very quickly

OS: Your tenure as Music Director of the Hallé was a cherished association. What were some of the aspects of music-making and of helming an ensemble that helped shape it?

ME: After a few years of conducting the Hallé, I felt that the orchestra wasn’t in a very good place. Working with them then was quite a challenge, but at the beginning of this century, I started a completely different relationship with them. They have been quite marvellous with me and together we came out of a period when the orchestra’s finances were perilously difficult. We have performed in these last 25 years so many different sorts of music, and if they lacked emotional commitment when we first started together, they soon opened up and became the most wonderful colleagues.

I’m a great believer in an orchestra having character and you need characters in the orchestra to make that possible. We have made lots of recordings together which is valuable for two reasons: it encourages us to set the bar for our achievements higher and higher, and it allows the outside world to see what we’re up to. The range of our music-making has brought us closer together, and I will always treasure so many of the concerts we have given—not just in Manchester but all over the world.

OS: You have always emphasised clarity in musicmaking. What is the advice you would like to share when it comes to interpreting music?

ME: Each period of music produces a different sound from an orchestra. The discovery of style has always interested me. It’s important for an orchestra to be flexible in its ability to portray the qualities of different styles. This is something that has changed enormously over the years with the Hallé. An orchestra can change its sound quickly if everybody is engaged in the same way—and the sound that we make for Haydn or Beethoven is very different to the sound we must make for Stravinsky or Rachmaninoff.

Sir Mark Elder conducting the Hallé, an orchestra that he led for 24 years as Music Director

OS: In your long innings at the English National Opera and the Hallé, you used public fora to address larger issues like government support to the arts, keeping ticket prices accessible and airline baggage rules for instruments. What, in your opinion, is the responsibility of an artiste?

ME: All the different forms of creative work need championing. They need this because there’s always a financial shortfall. There is never enough funding for the arts to be well supported. Each part of the artistic world, whether it’s theatre or painting, music or dance, needs its champions—its figureheads—the people who are going to speak up on behalf of the art, increase the public’s awareness of their importance and hopefully inspire succeeding governments not to forget about us.

All musicians have a responsibility of defending and championing the future of music. I mean this in relation to concert-giving, of course, and to increasing audiences all over the country. We, at the Hallé, have had a great deal of success in this, but I’m also thinking of composers and the need to encourage new works, to show the public the different trends and possibilities of music that will be written tomorrow.

This aspect of contemporary music has, in my view, opened out a lot during my lifetime. There are many more styles and types of contemporary music, which is lovely because there’s something for everyone to enjoy, and it’s wonderful to feel that the public is as excited for new pieces as they are by ones that were written 200 years ago.

OS: You are known to help young aspirants develop their musical careers. Could you please tell us more about this commitment to the educational aspect of music?

ME: To me, there are two separate aspects about our educational work: the first is how to bring music to more and more people, and that involves developing a good relationship with the public for performances. It also means having an imaginative plan for bringing young people into musical knowledge. The Hallé’s educational work has grown in leaps and bounds and I regard this as being central to an orchestra’s future. There is another aspect of teaching that is crucial for an orchestra in the UK, and that is working with young conductors. In many countries in Europe, particularly Austria and Germany, there are many such opportunities but that is not the case in the British Isles. One of the things that I instituted when I became the music director was that we should always have a young assistant conductor and that we should hold auditions to get the finest. Over the years, the list of young musicians who have been with the Hallé as my assistants makes for wonderful reading now. My first-ever assistant was Ed Gardner, who is now the Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Another aspect of this work, over the last 25 years, has been the development of singing. Before, there was only the Hallé Choir, but now we have a whole pyramid of about six different choirs starting with very young children and going right through to adults, and we are lucky to have the support of some remarkable choir trainers. Singing is an immensely enriching part of a city’s musical life, and it’s important for the orchestra to accompany a choir in some of the greatest pieces written for the concert hall, and this is something that we have done with great enjoyment.

ON: Does this new chapter of your conducting career allow you to travel more? How did India come to feature on your calendar?

ME: Since my first experiences as a conductor were in a country 10,000 miles away, the idea of travelling in order to further my career was always there and I have always been ready to travel to many different countries. For instance, before I come to Mumbai, I shall conduct in San Francisco and Pittsburgh as well as in Helsinki and Bergen. At this time in my life, I am hoping for a few close relationships with a few orchestras rather than always be on the lookout to go to new places—and I have, in the past, enjoyed enormously the weeks I’ve spent in Bergen, where I am the principal guest conductor. I had heard about the Symphony Orchestra of India from some of my colleagues. I’ve always wanted to visit India, and the possibility of finding a gap in my schedule was something that I wanted to grab hold of. My wife and I are going together so that after the concert we can spend a week getting to know some of India and hear some live Indian music.

ON: Please share with us your thoughts behind the programme at the NCPA—from Beethoven’s Eroica and Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, to Weber’s Overture to Oberon.

ME: I am excited to do this programme with the SOI as a way for us to get to know each other. The Eroica symphony is a very great work and the first symphony to be written with an overriding idea. Beethoven was struck by what Napoleon stood for, and the energy and heroism in much of the music springs from his respect for Napoleon. That passionate support soon dwindled, however, the moment that Napoleon entitled himself Emperor. Beethoven is said to have obliterated the original dedication to Napoleon on the front of his manuscript, so furious was he. It is a technically challenging work for an orchestra, as so much of Beethoven is, but the rewards for the performers and the listeners are, of course, enormous. Beethoven’s musical imagination at this time of his life was red-hot, and he stretched the idea of what a symphony could be into a whole new genre with this work.

The other two works on the programme belong, if you like, in the same stable but have very different atmospheres. Weber was an immensely theatrical composer, and it was tragic that his life was cut short so early. Interestingly, he was working on the first performance of his Oberon at Covent Garden when he succumbed to pleurisy. But this overture is one of my favourite pieces; it has a magical opening and a brilliant and spirited main section full of tunes that reappear in this opera. The story may be incoherent and unbelievable, but the music is irresistible. Finally, Schumann’s ‘almost-a-symphony’ is a lovely work, lacking only a profound slow movement to give it the full title of a symphony. It’s not so often played but it is mature and characteristic of his special genius. I’m sure that these three works will make a very satisfying programme for an evening’s music.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2025 issue of ON Stage.