Culture
I just wave my arms, man
by Peter Shaw
What does a conductor do, exactly? Ask Marc Taddei, one of New Zealand’s busiest and most versatile.
He comes bounding onto the stage, smiling broadly. Grasping the baton with both hands, he takes a single low bow, then turns to face the orchestra. Pause. Then up go the arms, always at the exact speed that indicates both to the players and audience something of the quality of sound that will follow. You know that you’re in good hands because there’s a professional at work.
Indeed, conductor Marc Taddei, currently in his fourth season as music director of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, has been a professional musician for 20 years. His life proceeds as a series of frantic dashes between Auckland, where he lives with his wife, violinist Justine Cormack, Wellington and Christchurch. If you want to catch him for a chat, the best way is to organise a flight that coincides with one of his. Or, better still, to wangle a dinner invitation, for he is a truly magnificent cook.
His face is very well known to people who go to orchestral concerts, because for 13 years from 1987 he was the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s highly visible principal trombonist. Then in 2000 he decided to take a year’s leave of absence to see how a conducting career might shape up.
It wasn’t an easy decision. “I’d really cherished my time at the NZSO. I loved playing the trombone. I had so many fond memories of conductors, of music we’d played. I was scared I’d miss the camara-derie among the players. Justine had left the orchestra to complete her PhD in the US. I’d actually been doing as much conducting as playing, so I thought that this was the best time to make a move and see what eventuated.” He didn’t have to wait long before engagements started to roll in.
Taddei had long nurtured the idea of becoming a conductor. “Actually, the idea had been in the back of my mind since my early years at the Juilliard School in New York. I’d played the trombone in the orchestra conducted by Roger Nierenberg, a marvellous music educator and my first inspiration. Although I majored in the trombone, it was Roger’s idea that I should be a conductor. So it was always on the cards, in a way.”
The NZSO years provided a wonderful training ground for the quietly nurtured ambition. “I watched like a hawk. Not that that’s anything unusual. Orchestral players are always interested in what’s going on at the front. Sometimes I saw things that didn’t work. For instance, I saw conductors who were too aggressive – a terrible mistake – or over-earnest. I learnt that my own approach would have to be quite different.”
It’s often said that conductors are dictators to whose every whim talented musicians must bend their individual creative will. Indeed, some of the greatest conductors of the past have been renowned for their ferocity with players. Taddei acknow-ledges this, but immediately quotes NZSO Conductor Laureate Franz-Paul Decker’s statement that, “You cannot make music against anybody, only with them.” Says Taddei, “Decker could be tough, sure, but in the end it was all about co-operation towards a common artistic goal.
“I’m always in search of the perfect rehearsal. You know, when you don’t say too much. It’s about when to interfere and when to leave things alone. Though it’s always dangerous to leave something alone in the hope of it coming right on the night, there have been occasions when a little underpreparation can produce spectacular results. Mind you, I’ve never actually seen a perfect rehearsal, though Decker could come close to it when he wanted to and so could Eduardo Mata.”
Asked about the extraordinary notion that conductors don’t make much difference, he laughs. “Conductors make no noise. It’s the musicians who do that. But we have a huge effect speaking at rehearsal and then by using physical and facial expressions to get a particular inspiration across to the players. However, in the end, I just wave my arms, man.
“But you have to be trusting of your orchestra, too. You may have a specific idea about a passage in your mind only to find that in rehearsal a player does it better. You’d be a fool not to modify your interpretation. There’s no such thing as the perfect interpretation, anyway.”
Audiences, too, have to trust a conductor. Taddei is particularly proud of what he has managed to achieve in Christchurch during his four-year tenure as music director of the CSO. “When I first went there, musical tastes were staid to say the least. I had a mandate to professionalise the orchestra, to extend its repertoire and to give audiences more exciting programmes that they would accept readily. There’s an awful tendency to treat audiences as dumb. No. They want to learn, to experience, to be moved, to be part of a sense of occasion.”
In the early months of his directorship there were nuts-and-bolts things to deal with. Players sometimes came to rehearsal underprepared. Break times were not always adhered to. The music library was not well maintained. Auditions were perceived as not being fairly run. All this needed attending to.
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