Nicholas McGegan is by temperament and practice exactly the opposite of the type of conductor Hollywood likes to portray. He's genial and relaxed, and flexible in the work situation. He takes a self-evident pleasure in his work and wants it to be pleasurable for the colleagues he works with, too.
Like a lot of conductors, he came to his profession by what looks like accident. His first instrument was the flute, but he also played piano and harpsichord. At college in Cambridge he played a lot of chamber music and got involved in the organising end for some of the larger pieces. "I was kind of called in to keep the peace. It was a bit like being a cox for rowing. It's always the smallest person. So they asked me to stand in front."
When he got involved in opera and early music, the role was bit clearer."I started playing continuo, which for a lot of concerto-grosso type repetoire, means you effectively are the conductor. When you do a lot of concertp grossi and stuff like that, a conductor isn't really needed. But the keyboard player is often at the front, reading the Torah, basically nodding your head, keeping people together. It's not so far from that to real conducting."
Directing from the harpsichord, which he still does, is something he describes, with typical self-deprecation as "a little bit like rubbing one's tummy and the top of one's head in different directions at the same time. Usually one thing goes wrong pretty fast. I'm quite good at playing wrong notes on the harpsichord when I conduct, because you have to sort of dive-bomb onto the keyboard ... and sometimes, if the keyboard's on wheels, it has moved!"
Conducting is a difficult profession to break into. It's hard to get real-life practice. There's no student with an orchestra to work with at home, and managements are generally shy about taking risks with young professionals. Also, as McGegan points out: "It's a fairly long-lived profession. I think the statistic used to be that the average life of an American orchestral musician is 55, the average life of a conductor is 82. I was lucky. The first two things that I did were kind of noticeable, one was because Michel Corboz went skiing and broke his right arm. The second was when Sir Charles Mackerras lost his voice and couldn't rehearse. You wait for somebody to totter on their perch, basically."
McGegan's approach to his work has been deeply affected by the time he spent playing in rather than standing in front of orchestras. He played the flute at Sadler's Wells, and also worked under most of the period conductors active in London in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He's even archived on tape at the HΣndel Festival in G÷ttingen, where he's now the artistic director, playing a flute solo under John Eliot Gardiner in 1981.
"I really do like playing. I think if one just conducts, one can forget what it's like to be on the other side. I actually got to play organ in Messiah last year, for somebody else. It was great. This person conducted absolutely differently to how I would do it. So I had to sit down and say, 'I'm following, not leading'." He chants the words in a mechanical, forced way. "It's a very good lesson, especially when I came in wrong, once. So there you are. Usually when a conductor makes a mistake, you don't hear it!"
His experience, he says, is something which makes him especially sympathetic to orchestras and their problems. "Basically, if the musicians are having a good time, there's some hope that the performance will be enjoyable. I remember going to some concerts, by nameless conductors, where the thing had clearly been rehearsed to death. At one time, in a Haydn Seasons, I think, there's a sort of Austrian peasant love duet in it. And these two people never looked at each other once. They looked as if they were both frightened out of their wits, and they were both staring at the conductor the whole time. I thought it took some skill to make Haydn totally joyless.
"Musicians are trying to get something right that's just difficult to do. Being a little martinet maestro does not help. Because everybody really is doing their best. And some pieces are just very difficult. Having been on the other side of it all, I'm a little bit more sympathetic than some. Well, a lot more, I hope. One of the things I do work at very hard is trying to organise rehearsals so that you don't waste any time. And remembering that such and such a piece does have a triangle player in it, so that you don't keep him sitting around for three hours and then say, 'Oh we didn't quite get to your bit', because you can guess what his assessment's going to be."
When I ask about his plans for the Irish Chamber Orchestra, he turns the question on its head. "Shall I say that the orchestra has plans for me?" he says. "I think the orchestra itself wants to expand. By which I mean they would like to have a greater national and international presence. And so to have a conductor such as me (or plenty of others, of course) who works in a number of countries, is quite good. I think the orchestra would like to do more in London, do European festivals, tours of America, that kind of thing, where having a conductor can help. That's a way of both raising money and giving a particular profile. The Irish-American connection never hurts, let it be said. I have a Mac in my name. The family was originally from Westmeath, was in Dublin by the 18th century, and then they jumped ship to Edinburgh. I was actually born in England. My father was the last Scottish one."
When he talks about his role as musical director, he brings in a lot more than directly musical concerns. He instances a concert he's due to give with the Philadelphia Orchestra as an opportunity for the ICO.
"I can wear my Irish Chamber Orchestra T-shirt for a couple of days, as it were, and say to John Kelly, the orchestra's chief executive: 'OK. Write a letter to every single Irishman you know in Philadelphia who could give money to the Irish Chamber Orchestra. We'll get them tickets, and we'll have a big party afterwards. And then, maybe there's enough of a support base there for the Irish Chamber Orchestra to come and do a concert'." Above and beyond the role of musical ambassador, he sees a function in quality assurance, making sure that the guest conductors are well chosen, and as musical director, he also sees himself having a responsibility "for the direct guarantee of playing standards".
He's greatly looking forward to doing the modern, non period-instruments repertoire, as well as taking the period-instruments repertoire to a modern chamber orchestra, "particularly a modern chamber orchestra that's flexible enough to enjoy it. Also, as a flute player and a keyboard player, it's great to work with a string orchestra. Not being a violinist is fantastic. You're not sitting there saying, 'Well, I bow it like this'. I can say, 'Well, this is the musical effect I would like. How it's achieved, we can talk about'."
One of the things that fires him up about the ICO is the fact that "I think the organisation is very well run. John Kelly is amazing. I don't think he can sleep more than a couple of hours a night. When you've got that kind of energy in the management, it makes the musical possibilities much greater. You can go to certain orchestras and know that they are an unutterably miserable group of people. And it doesn't matter who's conducting them, they are a miserable bunch. I really enjoy working with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. It's not a question of youth. As you get older, of course, orchestras get younger. There is a very positive energy flying around at rehearsals. I think that makes them enjoyable to conduct."
For McGegan, "An ideal chamber orchestra should be able to play at least the majority of Haydn symphonies and the majority of Mozart piano concertos. That is to say, using maybe one flute, two oboes, a bassoon and a couple of horns, who are not necessarily in every concert, but at some time during the year they come in. Because that is a very flexible repertoire. If you've got 50 Haydn symphonies that you can play, and 16 Mozart piano concertos or violin concertos, horn concertos, even, it does expand your repertoire. And then there are the 20th-century, Dumbarton Oaks type pieces, which also go with that kind of repertoire." So the expansion of the ICO from its current 19 strings to a group with readily available wind players is something that he'll be working towards.
By the end of this year's Killaloe Festival, McGegan will have conducted just four programmes with the ICO, with just a single piece from the 19th century (a Mendelssohn string symphony), surrounded by works by earlier and later composers - Corelli, Geminiani, Locatelli, Purcell, Mozart and HΣndel at one end, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Britten, Tippett, Vaughan Williams and Maw at the other.
There's great interest surrounding the first Irish performance of the virtuosic HΣndel Gloria for soprano and strings, to which McGegan gave its official modern premiΦre in G÷ttingen last month. "Well, it's not Messiah. It's not like finding Parsifal under your bed. It's not a major masterpiece. It's a major work, but it's not the crowning achievement of his career. But it's a very, very good piece. It's about 12 minutes long. It's quite difficult. Lots of semiquavers, a virtuoso vehicle for one singer. It's a kind of baroque version of Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate. It's the exact equivalent of that kind of piece, except that, instead of a blazing 'Alleluia' at the end, it's got a very virtuoso 'Amen'. It's going to have a very popular shelf life. I think every soprano in the universe is going to sing this, instead of 'Rejoice' at their auditions from now on."
The Debis AirFinance Killaloe Music Festival runs from Wednesday, July 18th, to Sunday, July 22nd. Nicholas McGegan conducts the ICO in Corelli, Schnittke, Locatelli, Stravinsky and Avison on Wednesday 18th. Mary Nelson is the soloist in the HΣndel Gloria on Sunday 22nd, when the programme also includes works by Tippett, Britten and Purcell
