'At Least One Australian Orchestra Should Be Led by an Australian Conductor.' Simone Young

4 SPECTRUM AUGUST 6-7, 2011 The Sydney Morning Herald INTERVIEW ‘At least one Australian orchestra should be led by an Australian conductor.’ Simone Young By HARRIET CUNNINGHAM imone Young is about to go really going to catch the imagina- on holiday. On a cruise. She’s tion of a lot of people. tickled pink by the idea. She ‘‘The idea of the cultural dia- will join the MS Europa at spora, the musical diaspora coming SHamburg, then cruise around Bri- home, is really exciting.’’ tain, via the Orkney Isles, and back She speaks with experience across the Baltic to Hamburg. because she is very much part of Of course, it will not be all rest and that diaspora. Because although relaxation. Young will be there to she is perhaps best known in Aus- judge the Stella Maris International tralia for her three years at the helm Vocal Competition, an exclusive of Opera Australia, it was no more sing-off between eight people selec- than a brief interlude in a career ted from the young artist programs that has kept her away from home from the world’s top six opera since the mid-1980s. houses. During the two-week cruise, ‘‘There is no place on Earth I she will jump ship for two days, fly- would rather live than Sydney,’’ ing to London to conduct concerts at YoungsaysonthephonefromHam- CULTURE St Paul’s Cathedral, before rejoining burg, where she holds the dual pos- the cruise in Edinburgh. For some- itions of chief executive and artistic one who is renowned for working director of Hamburg’s symphony insane hours, it is a holiday, of sorts. orchestra and opera company. Withherbusyschedule,itisonlya ‘‘It’s where I was born, it’s the fortuitous cancellation that allows most extraordinarily beautiful city. her to make a flying visit to Sydney ‘‘Thatsaid,beingabletocombine this month for an intriguing concert. living there with international-level She will conduct the first perform- music-making is almost an ance of the Australian World Orches- impossible dream. People who grow tra, a sort of Wallabies of classical up in Britain or grow up in Germany music, made of the pick of Australi- or grow up in America can’t do it in an musicians working here and their own countries. They just have internationally.It is the creation of the advantage that travelling to Australian conductor Alexander other countries is so much shorter. Briger and his sister, Gabrielle That’s really the only difference. We Thompson, who have spent the are musicians by nature and gypsies past two years assembling the by necessity.’’ musicians and finding the Before Hamburg, before Opera money for their dream team. Australia, Young did the hard yards, The four-concert series is working as assistant to James Con- dedicated to Briger’s uncle, lon at Cologne Opera, then as assist- the legendary Sir Charles ant to the great pianist-turned- Mackerras, who was conductor Daniel Barenboim, at planning to conduct Paris and Bayreuth. She soon one of the concerts earned enough of a reputation to before his death secure engagements with high- last year. profile orchestras in Berlin, Lon- ‘‘At first, I genu- don, New York, Paris and beyond. inely thought it Itreadsliketheclassiccareerpath would be an of a successful young conductor but impossible it is hard to imagine how tough it task,’’ Young must have been. Not least because says. ‘‘I’m so during this period she and her hus- impressed band, Greg Condon, were bringing that up a family. Young’s eldest daughter, they’ve Yvann, is now 23, a graduate of got it hap- Oxford University, recently married, pening living and working in Britain. Her and I think younger daughter, Lucy, is 14 and, it’s some- according to Young, a ‘‘mad-keen thing that’s musician’’, playing harp, piano and 1 violin. Young was 7 ⁄2 months preg- nant with Lucy when she conducted the legendary Vienna Philharmon- ic, a notoriously conservative band that had, up until then, resolutely declined to hire women musicians (with the exception of the harp- ist). Young is now one of its regu- lar guest conductors. ‘‘There were times when exhaustion took over,’’ she says of the early years. ‘‘It usually happened when you arrived in a new city and there’d be trouble with the flights and the nanny hadn’t got there. You pick up the keys, go to the apartment and it’s on The Sydney Morning Herald AUGUST 6-7, 2011 SPECTRUM 5 the fifth floor and the elevator is out of order. And you’ve got three suit- Australian World cases, a stroller and an 18-month- Richard Glover old who’s crying and hungry and Orchestra tired. And you end up sitting on the second floor landing crying and THE Australian World Orchestra hungry and tired yourself! They were gives its first concerts in Sydney gruelling years but if I hadn’t put this month. The four-day festival myself through that I simply would brings together Australian players not be where I am today.’’ from Vancouver, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Which is where? As the head of one Vienna and New York, all the state All ironed out and chuffed to boot: of the leading opera houses in orchestras and four members of Europe and in demand to conduct the Australian Youth Orchestra. top-ranking orchestras across the At the Opera House, Simone confessions of a reformed grot US, Europe and Asia, she is in a com- Young conducts the first concert on manding position. She was named August 26, featuring the Prelude uddenly the slovenly are It’s easy to agree that ironing is conductor of the year by German and Venusberg Music from ruling the world. People boast the more healthy response. A magazine Opernwelt in 2006 and Wagner’s opera Tannhauser, S about how little housework good episode of The Renovators was a judge on the 2008 BBC series Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and they do. Admit that you have just plus a particularly tricky ruched Maestro.Herlatestartisticconquest Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry,with spent an enjoyable Sunday collar and a man finds himself in Hamburg is the ultimate operatic didgeridoo soloist William Barton. afternoon doing the ironing and fully occupied. nerd fest, an acclaimed staging of Composer and former violist people stare at you as if you are Ironing also supplies a sense of Wagner’s Ring cycle. with the Berlin Philharmonic, Brett one hanger short of a full wardrobe. Illustration: Simon Letch achievement hard to experience Ahigh-profilemusiccommentat- Dean, conducts his own ‘‘No one irons any more,’’ they elsewhere. With an hour’s effort, or and author of The Maestro Myth, composition for orchestra and say. ‘‘Are you mad?’’ chaos becomes order. Towels are Norman Lebrecht, describes her as choir, Vexations and Devotions,on They make this comment while stacked and socks collated. The one of the leaders in her field and a August 27. looking as if they have been iron removes all blemishes. Shirts contender for the next big music dir- Barton gives didgeridoo dragged through a hedge are lined up on hangers like a ector vacancy – he tosses around demonstrations and Alexander backwards. Their shirt is so creased department store display. The names such as Berlin, Covent Briger leads a singalong version of they look like a newborn shar pei. second law of thermodynamics is Garden and the Met. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at a family On the bus, some mornings it momentarily held at bay. One thing, however, is certain: matinee on August 28. appears people have also been Where else can an hour’s wherever she goes when her con- Finally, the orchestra teams up taking short-cuts in the showering effort bring such simply tract expires in 2015, it will not be with 75 students for a children’s department. What do they think achieved transformations? Australia. Not while the issues that concert at Parramatta’s Riverside this is? England? Throw a tablet of Increasingly, these delights are precipitated her departure from on August 29. soap into the 386 down Parramatta being ignored. A study just Opera Australia remain. See australianworldorchestra Road and you could cause a riot. published by the University of When Young took up the role of .com.au. Perhaps I am equipped to broker South Australia says ‘‘there is a artistic director, her brief was widely acompromise.Ihavebeenslovenly lowering of domestic standards’’ publicised: she was to improve and I have been neat — and being I don’t iron the as people try to cram more into musical standards and build an going to be over here in the northern neat is better. T-shirts, the jeans or their lives. orchestra capable of exploring a hemisphere. Which means that half In my first year of university I Iunderstandthedilemmabut more ambitious, challenging reper- of our life will be, too.’’ lived in a friend’s garage. I remain the undies, although I wonder if the time savings are real. toire. However, a perfect storm of But should there be more oppor- uncertain as to the floor covering, When the ironing is not done, every politics, financial troubles and the tunities for home-grown conductors since this was invisible beneath a hear that others do. morning begins with an world-shattering events of Septem- such as, say, Alexander Briger? wall-to-wall covering of empty pizza exasperating, curse-ridden hunt ber 11, 2001, left the company with- She laughs drily. boxes and clothing dropped at the indeed, they would fall free from through four washing baskets for out the resources or the resolve to ‘‘I think there should be at least point at which it had been removed.

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