The Birmingham Post ran an extended interview with Kenneth Woods by senior music critic Christopher Morley in their September 26 issue.

You can read the published version on the Post website here.

As the item was cut slightly for space, we’ve been given permission by the author to reproduce here the complete and uncut original version of the article.

 

 

Tomorrow (Friday) evening the English Symphony Orchestra launches a major subscription series at ChristChurch, in its home base of Malvern.

And conducting on the podium will be the orchestra’s new artistic director, American-born Kenneth Woods, now based in Cardiff, who tells me how this collaboration came about.

“I think it originated with a few little threads of people who knew me and knew the orchestra, doing a little bit of matchmaking. They knew my work from SOMM-recordings, the Orchestra of the Swan, and Cardiff, so I did a little bit of research.

“And it seemed a good moment for the orchestra to do something new. Everything clicked, and here we are. It’s very exciting.”

But we go back in time, investigating Ken’s involvement with Stratford’s Orchestra of the Swan.

“Well, it’s a bit of a labyrinthine process, actually,” he admits. “I was briefly conducting an amateur orchestra in Hereford, and the horn player in that group was also the horn player in David Curtis’ Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra. He introduced us, and I did a couple of rehearsals with Cheltenham.

“He started hearing good things, and again it was a little bit of matchmaking and word-of-mouth. We met. we hit it off, we had similar ideas about how orchestras might evolve. Then I did a guest slot at the Stratford Summer Proms, including Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, which went fantastically well.”

Kenneth himself is an accomplished cellist, playing in the renowned Ensemble Epomeo string trio (named after the huge extinct volcano which dominates the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples).  Does that help in conducting?

“Yes, not just as a a string-player, but also as a chamber-musician. Both David (ex-viola with the Coull Quartet) and I have a lot of experience playing string quartets and trios, and this is so special with the Orchestra of the Swan doing so much, playing in small ensembles, just on a practical nuts and bolts level I think I have a very intimate understanding of how string players breathe together, how they match bow-strokes, the time-pressure, so the more adept you can be, the better.

“I also think my outlook as a conductor is very shaped by my experience as a chamber-musician. I think I probably learned as much about conducting from members of quartets I’ve studied with than from any particular conducting teacher. Ensemble-playing, how you tune chords, how you balance things, and how you get people listening to each other, that all comes from chamber-music, whether it’s a string quartet or a Mahler symphony.

“It’s very much a collaboration, and the last thing you want in an orchestra is any kind of passivity. So for me as a conductor, yes, I have very strong ideas about what I want to happen musically, but what I want most of all is for the players to really engage, both with their guts and with their ears.”

Kenneth Woods has been fascinated by conducting since his childhood, and took up cello almost as a second option.

“When I was old enough to start taking string lessons through the school music programme I wanted to play double-bass, and they said I was too short, so I could start with the cello and when I was tall enough I could switch.

“By the time I got to High School I was checking out all the books I could find in the library about conducting. I taught myself all the beat-patterns, and was gradually building up scores and stuff. By my last couple of years, if the music teacher was off sick, I would conduct the orchestra rehearsals.

“I used to get to conduct some great pieces, such as Sibelius Two. It was an absolute blast for a sixteen year-old.”

Ken moved to this country only as recently as 2003. “It was a bit of a gradual transition, with a lot of back and forth to Oregon, where I was conducting the Symphony Orchestra, until 2009.”

And he has a healthily realistic view of young conductors trying to get their feet on the bottom rungs of the ladder to success.

“Paavo Jarvi said something in an interview a few years ago, and he was uniquely well-placed to say it, because he had a lot of early success in his career. He said there’s no such thing as a great young conductor, and I think it’s true.

“However gifted you are, you can’t have a deep enough understanding of the complexities of working with an orchestra as a young man, to do, for example, what Walter Weller does with an orchestra, it’s not possible.”

So now Ken moves to the English Symphony Orchestra, founded by William Boughton, conducted by such greats as Michael Tippett and Yehudi Menuhin, and, most recently, by the much-revered, late Vernon Handley. What plans does he have for the orchestra?

“I think the plan is to make the ESO everything that it can and should be. In the short term this means making this series in Malvern, the first subscription series the orchestra has done in a long time, a financial and artistic success.

“Starting with a narrow focus from there we can really broaden. There’s a real hunger in the orchestra to do the repertoire; there’s a great core of musicians who at one time were doing 100 gigs a year with the orchestra: very, very fine brass-players, percussion team, and a lot of them have been waiting to do more.

“It’s a real hunger to do the Elgar symphonies, the Shostakovich, Mahler, all that kind of stuff.”

*Kenneth Woods conducts the ESO at Christ Church, Malvern, on September 27 (7.30pm). Details on 01386 791044.