CONDUCTORS have never emerged in Ireland at the same rate as pianists or singers.
Fergus Sheil, left, who conducts the RTECO at the NCH next Tuesday lunchtime, is one of the few in recent years to get to public concert level with one of the RTE orchestras while still in his 20s.
The engagement follows his taking first prize at the British Reserve Insurance International Conducting Competition in Bristol late last year. Other acknowledgments of the success were concerts with Newcastle's Northern Sinfonia and the Orchestra of St Cecilia in Dublin. In all, at the age of 25, he's conducted around 40 concerts, mainly with amateur or student players.
He decided early - at the age of 14 - that he wanted to be a conductor. "I played youth orchestras, and didn't always agree with what the conductors were doing. With youthful arrogance, I imagined somehow I knew better."
He studies privately with the 95 year old Leon Barzin, who in his youth worked under the great conductors of the time, among them, Toscanini, Furtwangler and Mengelberg. As a teacher, Barzin is as formidable as some of the maestros he played under, "tough, even brutal," says Fergus Sheil, "yet ultimately encouraging".
Sheil, who was appointed chorus master of DGOS Opera Ireland earlier this year and will be working as stage musical director at the 1996 Wexford Opera Festival, parries with a "too early to say" response when asked where he might be headed. But he expresses great admiration for the work of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who has established a unique reputation by straddling the worlds of the symphony orchestra and the period performance group. This gives a good idea of the general direction he might like to take.
"Harnoncourt brings an unusual freshness to what he does," Sheil says. "He doesn't accept the standard ways of going about things. That's what I admire most in him. His work has an element of daring I'd like to be able to achieve."
