CityLife

Classical highlights: Jaap Van Zweden, Heinz Karl Gruber, William Byrd Singers

Jaap Van Zweden

February 26, 2010

Jaap Van Zweden is the most unlikely-looking figure for an orchestra conductor.

Not particularly tall but strongly built in the upper body, he might be a rugby forward . . . or a nightclub bouncer.

But Van Zweden is a musician: first a violinist, now a conductor, and a born leader. His father was a music teacher, but had a romantic sideline playing with a gypsy music troupe. “They used to rehearse in our house and I found the violin so interesting I asked my father to get me one,” he says.

That began a career which took him to New York’s Juilliard School of Music at the age of 15 – quite a wrench, but no doubt character-building.

One of his new friends was the young English violin genius Nigel Kennedy.

“We were complete opposites,” Jaap recalls with a laugh. “But I still admired him for what he was.”

He’s not a narrow classical geek himself anyway, citing jazz, Sinatra, Eric Clapton, Bon Jovi and The Eagles among his loves.

His intense dedication showed as he won competitions and dates such as playing the Brahms concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Then, aged 19, he was asked to become its leader.

“Violinistically, I was ready,” he said. “Psychologically a bit too young. But if I had failed, I would have been fired after six months.” He stayed for 16 years.

His life changed when the legendary American conductor Leonard Bernstein was taking a rehearsal in Berlin. “He said he wanted to listen to the sound in the hall, and ‘can you conduct the first movement of Mahler symphony no. 1?’

“I said: ‘I’ve never done that before …’ but you don’t say no to Leonard Bernstein. Afterwards he told me: ‘That was pretty bad – but there’s something there that you should take seriously.’”

With characteristic single-mindedness, Jaap stopped playing the violin and gave himself two-and-a-half years to learn to be a conductor.

It was a huge risk – he had married and had four children. But “the biggest risk is not to take a risk,” he declares, “both on-stage and off-stage.” He does not drink and does not smoke, and expects his players to be equally dedicated. He believes in hard work in rehearsal.

“If you are prepared really well, the more freedom you have in the concert,” he says.

“That’s what I liked so much about Lenny – but he worked orchestras really hard.”

In Manchester, on Monday, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, he’s conducting Shostakovich’s seventh symphony, the ‘Leningrad’, forged in the suffering of the Second World War.

“These war symphonies are so intense,” he muses. “He takes your heart on a roller-coaster. I have not conducted it before, and I have already begun work on it with the strings. It will be fresh then, and I can have an adventure with it during the tour.”

*****

Heinz Karl Gruber (or ‘Nali’ as he’s known to all) conducts his first full concert with the BBC Philharmonic at the Bridgewater Hall tomorrow.

It includes the UK premiere of his own Busking, a concerto for trumpet, accordion and banjo, with Håkan Hardenberger (for whom it was written) the trumpet soloist.

And the Hallé reach the fifth symphony of Mahler next Thursday, which Sir Mark Elder conducts. The world premiere in the programme is by the US composer Uri Caine.

*****

Keith Orrell, former choirmaster of the Hallé Choir, has taken charge of the William Byrd Singers, the north west choir founded and taken to great heights by Stephen Wilkinson.

They perform Bach’s B minor Mass on Sunday at the Royal Northern College of Music, with The 18th Century Orchestra.