Sian Edwards studied at the RNCM and with Professor A.I. Musin at the Leningrad Conservatoire. [More about Musin in box farther down on this webpage.]  In September 2013 she took up the role of Head of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music. She has worked with many of the world’s leading orchestras including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland, Orchestre de Paris, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Berlin Symphony, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, MDR Leipzig, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Royal Flanders Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, the Hallé, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.   She has a close relationship with Ensemble Modern in Germany. She made her operatic debut in 1986 conducting Weill’s Mahagonny for Scottish Opera and her ROH debut in 1988 with Tippett’s The Knot Garden.  From 1993 to 1995 she was Music Director of ENO (succeeding Mark Elder) for whom her repertoire included Khovanshchina, Jenůfa, Queen of Spades and Blond Eckbert (also recorded on Collins).  For the Glyndebourne Festival she has conducted La Traviata and the Ravel Double Bill, and for Glyndebourne Touring Opera Katya Kabanova and Tippett’s New Year.  She conducted the world premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Greek at the Munich Biennale in 1988, and other engagements have included the world premiere of Hans Gefors’ Clara for the Opéra Comique in Paris, Così fan tutte in Aspen, her return to ENO for Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni in Copenhagen, Damnation de Faust in Helsinki, Peter Grimes and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades in Frankfurt; Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at the Theater an der Wien,  A Night at the Chinese Opera for Scottish Opera, Jenůfa for Welsh National Opera, Hansel and Gretel for the Royal Academy of Music and Aquarius by Karel Goeyvaerts for Flanders Opera. Sian Edwards’ recordings include Peter and the Wolf, Britten’s Young Person’s Guide, and Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, all with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert with English National Opera. Recent and future concert engagements include performances with Ensemble Modern, Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich, SWR Sinfonieorchester Freiburg, Kuopio Symphony, Turku Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, musikfabrik, Landesjugendorchester Berlin, Deutscher Musikrat, Milton Keynes City Orchestra, Palestinian Youth Orchestra, Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, BBC National Orchestra of Wales as well as performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal College of Music and a tour of the UK with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in honour of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee .  Recent and future operatic engagements include The Rape of Lucretia and La traviata for the Theater an der Wien, Orlando, a new ballet, for the Staatstheater Stuttgart, The Rake’s Progress for Scottish Opera, Ades’ The Tempest for Oper Frankfurt, and a concert performance of Tippett’s King Priam at the Brighton Festival.   She has recently contributed to a new film by Tony Palmer on Holst. --  Biography from Ingpen & Williams website (with slight additions)   --  Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.  BD

but of course that’s a lot of work.  But there is the other side, which is money, and I’m sure most music directors in this country and in the UK will say that they spend a lot of time being present promoting the orchestra or the group, doing the fundraising, doing the interviews.  It’s very nice to do one with you, but a lot of them take up an awful lot of energy, and people do find they spread themselves very thin.

BD:    If you could write your own ticket completely, would you just conduct and that’s all?

SE:    Having had this experience at English National Opera, I can say that eventually I would love actually to work again with an ensemble or a company long-term, but it would be very important to me that I mainly did the conducting and some of the planning, but not everything else that was happening.  I’m very happy to be around and take part in various events, but not to the extent of having to work on reshaping the whole working mode of the company, which is what ENO was going through a few years ago.  That really does get too much.

BD:    When you come in to do guest conducting like you are here in Milwaukee this week, is there much that you can do, or can you just simply prepare these pieces and not worry about the actual sound of the orchestra?

SE:    When you come as a guest, especially the first time, you’re just very interested to know how the orchestra’s playing and what they have to offer.  I had heard about this orchestra, and in fact one or two American friends said to me that Milwaukee is a very well-kept secret because it’s an excellent orchestra, and indeed that is absolutely the case.  It’s been a real pleasure to work with the group this week.  Not only are they very good, but also very nice and very relaxed.  I felt very much that we could work in collaboration with each other, and that was very, very nice.  So the first thing is to find out what is there, and really just to try to offer to the group some ideas of sound and interpretation without expecting that they’re going to take, or want to take on everything because they work in certain ways, and you sense whether where the boundaries are.  But if you’re the Music Director, the reason an orchestra takes you on is I’m sure there are things that they want to tackle that you can do with them, and take them further.  They like that excitement and, I hope as well that every time I visit an orchestra I bring new things, and an orchestra feels that’s interesting.  Good collaborations always bring that sort of thing out, but when you’re a guest, it is firstly a short-term thing, and that’s rather nice actually.  You just have these three concerts to do, and that means you can absolutely focus on what you’re doing with the music.  You’re not having to think that next time I’d like to do this different. 

BD:    But I assume the concert tonight will get better from the previous concert?

SE:    Yes, it can do.  I’m sure they’ll all be different, but it’s very important to take each one as it comes.  If there are slips or something in one concert you really work hard not to let that happen again, and indeed all the players do as well.

BD:    So that’s just a technical thing?

SE:    Yes, but above that, I hope that each one will open up more of the expressive possibilities in what we’re doing.

BD:    Is all your work done at rehearsal or do you leave some special spark for that night for performance?

SE:    Well, I really hope I’ve left a spark.  I must say that the rehearsal process interests me very much.  Conductors do often fall into one of two categories.  You’re either a very good rehearser but not always the sparkiest performer, or you’re a hopeless rehearser but everything happens in the concert, and if it does, it does and that’s great.  I find rehearsing a tremendous challenge.  That’s the area where most conductors are really stretched to be able to think very quickly and to diagnose what’s happening.  You’re right on top of the sound, and you sometimes don’t really get a good idea of what it sounding like.  Things can be deceptive.

BD:    I think you’d be almost in the poorest place to listen.

SE:    Absolutely, yes.  Sometimes you don’t hear the timpani or you don’t hear the brass very clearly, so there you are waiving at them to give more and people at the back of the hall are saying it is so loud.  It’s going right over your head.  So yes, things like that one has to be wary of.  Because I come from Britain, where we’re used to having very limited rehearsal time, I’m used to working to a very tight schedule and definitely leaving quite a lot up to the performance.  British performers are used to that, and in America, too, there’s a sense of ‘we will be all right on the night’.  We just get the basic things right and explore what’s there and all the rest of it.  But I get a real sense with this orchestra that they are revving up when we start off in the concerts.

BD:    If you had more rehearsal time, would it be possible to get something over-rehearsed?

SE:    Oh yes, definitely.  It’s a very great skill to actually rehearse, first of all, an interesting orchestra for many hours.  I saw a tape not long ago of Sergiu Celibidache.  He recently died in Munich, so there were all sorts of programs about him, and very interesting tape of him in the 1960s rehearsing an orchestra in Stuttgart.  He was incredibly flamboyant.  The whole thing was this massive showmanship and act in front of the orchestra, which kept them occupied for hours and hours, as well as brilliant musicianship of course.  He was rehearsing everything from memory, every detail, not to see if it is correct or not.  That didn’t really interest them.  It was the character and the expression of every moment, and really enthusing the musicians.  But you have to be a very, very great person to be able to keep that up for hours and hours.

BD:    I just wonder if his style would have lasted into the 1990s.

SE:    It’s interesting you should say that because there was a time when he came to London actually, with the London Symphony Orchestra, and certainly in the beginning they were absolutely enthralled by him.  But after he visited five or six times, I think they couldn’t really keep up that sort of attention.  But certainly in Munich, where they’re more used to working in that style anyway, he still did great things right to the very end of his life.

BD:    But when we look at tapes of the conductors of the previous generations, such as Toscanini and Furtwängler, those kinds of antics and ideas may or may not be acceptable today.

SE:    Absolutely.  A lot of them are not acceptable, and in fact a lot of them are now simply not allowed.

BD:    But they were absolutely necessary then?

SE:    I don’t know if it was necessary to fire people if you didn’t like the way they played, which is what those people could do then.  Obviously that’s completely changed now.  In fact the only person who can get fired is the conductor actually!  [Laughs]  Probably quite right too!  I always remember that marvelous story of Toscanini going into Vienna and rehearsing.  It may have been the beginning of Otello, and the Intendant knew that he wasn’t going to like what he heard, and he knew that he would have a fit and try and leave the hall.  So he locked every single door in the hall, and of course the inevitable happened.  There was a big blow-up on the podium, and Toscanini marches off and couldn’t get out.  Then he tries the next door and that’s locked as well.  So he went around screaming and shouting and trying to leave...  [Both laugh]  But yes, it’s very different these days.

BD:    Let me turn this around.  Do you ever feel trapped by the music or the musicians?

SE:    It’s a very interesting question, and the answer is yes, it can happen.  Of course one hopes that an experience with an orchestra is always going to be very positive and very collaborative, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.  The chemistry isn’t right, or you’ve done something stupid, or the mood in the orchestra is wrong. Whatever it is, something doesn’t work and it can be the worst thing in the world if the mood goes down.  It’s very hard then to actually get it to go up again.  Some people are very clever, having the bon mot at the right moment, and everyone laughs and suddenly the atmosphere is broken.  But I find that quite hard actually to do.

BD:    I assume then you just turn down future contracts with that orchestra?

SE:    Well, they never invite you again!  So it’s all right.  [Much laughter]

BD:    Without mentioning names, are there sometimes offers that you are surprised have come in?

SE:    Oh yes, absolutely.  I am pleased because it’s very nice when something you thought would never happen suddenly does.

BD:    When you accept an engagement you bring your ideas with you.  Do you ever incorporate new ideas that you get on the spot during rehearsals?

SE:    Yes, I do.  I’ve often felt that there’s a percentage which you can allow yourself in terms of spontaneity.  Particularly in the short amount of time you have to rehearse, there are certain things you simply have got to get right.  It’s got to work out, got to sort out with the musicians, and they don’t appreciate it very much if you’re messing about and changing your mind, because time trickles by and it’s not that interesting for them if you’re asking them to do one thing and they write it in their parts very carefully, and then you say, no, no, no, and they have to rub it out.  But certainly, going back to what you were asking me earlier, when an orchestra offers you things that you haven’t thought of before, it’s marvelous to actually then be able to say,

BD:    From the huge array of orchestral literature and operatic literature, how do you decide which pieces you will learn and conduct, and which pieces you’ll set aside?

SE:    [Laughs]  That’s a very good question!  There are certain things for me that are fairly straightforward.  I’m not at all

kind of attitude.  I’ve had some experiences where at the time I didn’t think anything of it, but later I thought back and wondered if maybe that person was actually saying underneath that the problem was probably more the fact that I am in a woman, and the next thing is how does a woman actually show authority?  How does a woman behave in a situation where you’re expected to have a certain sort of authority in front of a group of people?  I don’t mean that in a way where you are stamping around on people’s heads.  It’s a question of how you put across ideas in a way that people feel they’re going to be strong and valid.  That is an issue for women in all walks of life, actually, when they’re in any kind of position of leadership.

BD:    Are we getting better at that?

SE:    I think so.  The simple fact that more women are more visible in the public life is showing that.  But I have to say that in my own profession, there are still very, very few women.

BD:    In England the only other one I know is Jane Glover.

SE:    That’s right.  She is actually marvelous and really doing tremendously well, but there are women coming through.  There are three or four on the professional circuit now who are really doing very well, but it’s still  a very minority thing, and it’s still a minority enough for people to comment, or orchestra say, “Oh, you know, we’ve got a woman this week!”  They feel that it’s different.

BD:    In Chicago we’ve always been used to it as Margaret Hillis has been here and she’s always been known and has never been any problem.

SE:    Exactly.  I’m hoping that it’ll gradually gather pace like that because I know in America you’ve got several highly successful women...

BD:    ... such as JoAnn Falletta and Catherine Comet.  They’re just the ones that come to mind.  Are your forming a little ‘coterie’ of women conductors?

SE:    [Laughs]  Well, you know, conductors are hopeless really.  They’re really like ships that pass in the night.  We very rarely have a chance to meet, but I do have one or two friends.  In fact Jane was one of them in London.  We’d call each other up and talk and exchange funny stories!  That would generally boost the moral because it is great to hear that you are not the only one who couldn’t find a woman’s toilet anywhere in the premises!  Jane has some marvelous stories about that.

BD:    Sure!  But now there are more women in the orchestras so it’s changing.

SE:    Absolutely.  The whole balance is changing, and it’s also very interesting to deal with this authority thing.  In the late twentieth century, people do have a different attitude, going back to what we were saying about Toscanini.  Conductors no longer behave in that sort of extremely autocratic way, and musicians should expect better treatment.  So it is a very different feel.  The whole process of music-making in any case should be a collaborative one, and it’s a question of how that evolves.

BD:    So you’re just expected to stand up there and get on with it?

SE:    Absolutely, yes.

BD:    Then we really have made progress?

SE:    I think so.  Just the fact that from those days, when musicians were very poorly treated and had a very difficult time, the unionization of orchestras has meant that they have now much stronger and clearer idea of how they want to work. They largely arrange things in collaboration with their managements so that the thing runs well and humanely, and also that they have the conductors that they like.  Very few orchestras will have conductors imposed on them whom they don’t like working with.  There’s a period of trial, and then they’ll say, “We thought she was okay,

BD:    When someone presents you with a brand new score, perhaps a world premiere, what do you look for to say you would like to champion this work, or no, it’s a piece of trash?

SE:    This is my eleventh professional season, but earlier on when I first started working, I more or less took on everything that was offered because for me it was a great trial period.  A lot of the time you have an instinct about certain composers, but other pieces you really don’t know whether you’re going to do them well or like them until you’ve done them.  So I’ve had a long period of doing a lot of things, and it’s only now that I’m beginning to draw back a little bit and say that we don’t get on with that sort of thing, or know that I can do this quite well.  I’ve done some pieces which are rhythmically incredibly complicated and ended up being something where you don’t hear or feel a rhythm, and when you’re listening to it it’s a complex web of sound.  I find those pieces very difficult to do, and pretty stressful as well.  So I suppose I’m gradually beginning to see that I don’t do those so well.  But on the other hand, I did a couple of pieces by Swiss composers recently at a Lucerne Festival, and they were obviously straight away pieces I could tackle.  One was quite lyrical and more Debussy-like in its color, and the other one was very rhythmic and more minimalist, and which was fun as well.  Both were with choirs, and I enjoyed that a lot.

BD:    Do you find it encouraging that new symphonic works are often becoming more accessible?

SE:    Yes, I do.  As a performer, it’s just great to know that you’re going to do a piece that you feel is actually going to make it across the footlights, and that some people are going to really engage with.  Actually that’s one real fun thing about this violin concerto we’re going to do here in Milwaukee by William Bolcom, played by this wonderful violinist, Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg.  She is such a live wire and such a giver when she’s playing.  The piece itself has a number of styles in it, and the shape of it in terms of its phrasing and color, and also the material itself is very, very communicating straight away.  I found when I was learning it that I could take it in very quickly.  I wasn’t having to spend hours and hours trying to work out exactly what was there.  It was clear, it was on the page jumping out at you, and I really do feel that we’re going to be able to project something.  I hope people will like it.

BD:    If it jumps off the page at you into your eye, does it also jump off the sound into people’s ears?

SE:    I think so, yes.  The sense of form and rhythm straight away can make an impact.

BD:    What advice do you have for composers who want to write symphonic music, or even an opera?

SE:    I don’t know if I could really presume to say anything, other than the more a composer can be linked with the performers who are going to be playing the piece, the more he or she can actually get to know you personally.  Then you can find out what the people are like and how they handle music, and when you’re working in a opera house, what the singers can do and what kind of people they are.  The more you can write for people that you know, the closer you’re going to get to a real collaboration and a great performance.  That also helps an understanding of what you’re trying to do.  When composers write things that are completely... I hate to say the word ‘ivory tower’ because I don’t really mean that, but completely away from the live people who are going to do it, sometimes one gets caught up in a situation where the music is either so complex technically that it’s very difficult to do justice to it in the amount of time you have to rehearse it, or it really needs special pleading as far as the audience is concerned.  You only find this out at the last minute when you’re finally doing the rehearsals.  You suddenly realize you should have had three workshops on this for the performers and for the audience to introduce them to this piece.  So it’s finding the right channels to launch the ship, as it were.  We found it constructive in the UK

Ilya Aleksandrovich Musin (Russian: Илья́ Алекса́ндрович Му́син; 6 January 1904 [O.S. 24 December 1903] – 6 June 1999) was a Russian conductor, a prominent teacher and a theorist of conducting. Musin first studied conducting under Nikolai Malko and Aleksandr Gauk. He became assistant to Fritz Stiedry with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1934. The Soviet government later sent him to lead the State Belarusian Orchestra, but then curtailed his conducting career because he never joined the Soviet Communist Party. He turned to teaching, creating a school of conducting that is still referred to as the "Leningrad school of conducting". He spent 1941–45 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where most Russian intellectuals were kept safe during the war. There he continued conducting and teaching. On June 22, 1942, the anniversary of the Nazi invasion, he conducted the second performance of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. In 1932 Musin was invited to teach conducting at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, then known as the Leningrad Conservatory. He developed a comprehensive theoretical system to enable the student to communicate with the orchestra with the hands, requiring minimal verbal instruction. No one had previously formulated such a detailed and clear system of conducting gestures. Apparently, his own early experiences as a student had prompted him to study the intricacies of manual technique. When Musin tried to enter Malko's conducting class at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1926, he had been denied entrance because of poor manual technique. He pleaded with Malko to be accepted provisionally, and eventually became an authority on manual technique, describing his system in his book The Technique of Conducting. Musin described the main principle of his method in these words: "A conductor must make music visible to his musicians with his hands. There are two components to conducting, expressiveness and exactness. These two components are in dialectical opposition to each other; in fact, they cancel each other out. A conductor must find the way to bring the two together." Over a teaching career spanning 60 years, his students included Rudolf Barshai, Semyon Bychkov, Tugan Sokhiev, Sabrie Bekirova, Oleg Caetani, Vassily Sinaisky, Konstantin Simeonov, Odysseas Dimitriadis, Vladislav Chernushenko, Victor Fedotov, Leonid Shulman, Arnold Katz, Andrey Tchistyakov, Sian Edwards, Martyn Brabbins, Kim Ji Hoon, Peter Jermihov, Alexander Walker, John Landor, Yuri Temirkanov, Valery Gergiev, Ennio Nicotra, Leonid Korchmar and Oleg Proskurnya (who assisted Musin with the International Conducting Workshop and founded the International Academy of Advanced Conducting after Ilya Musin).

BD:    Let me ask the big question.  What’s the purpose of music?

SE:    Good God!  [Huge laugh]  That is a big one...  It’s there!  Music is around us in every context, especially nowadays.  You go in any shop or any restaurant, there is music.  It is in the airports and on airplanes, they play you music when you take off to calm you down.  If music can communicate any kind of feelings, emotions, a sense of a different world, a different landscape of emotional experience perhaps, involve people at all in a way that touches them in an area that their usual lives don’t move in, then it’s done its job, whatever kind of music it is.  There’s music in shopping malls to calm us down, and perhaps that’s okay because we need calming down.  I sometimes find that all too much actually, I must say.  I’m not a great ‘Muzak’ fan.

BD:    In the shopping malls they try to get you hyped-up a little bit to buy more.

SE:    Maybe they do.  It certainly works on me.  I remember the most money I ever spent in a shop was when Tina Turner was on.  I think she’s great, and I just spent absolutely loads of money on some white linen suit I had no need for at all.  So it certainly worked in that context.  But if music can touch in any way and also bring us together as people, then it’s doing a great job.

BD:    You are still very young and at the beginning of your career.  Are you at the point that you want to be at this age?

SE:    Yes, I think I am.  I had this rather strange career in a way, compared to colleagues of mine that I see, in that I never had a program for what I thought I ought to do at a certain time.  I know some people have been clear about each step in their career, and knew what they wanted to do.  Each step of the way for me has been a question of an invitation coming and thinking yes, that’s a nice to do, or talking to somebody and gradually moving in one direction or another.  But I never said by the time I’m 35 I will have done X, Y or Z, so therefore I feel pretty happy with what I’m doing at the moment.  I’m working with very nice orchestras and groups of people doing music that I love.  What could be better?   Eventually, yes, I would like to have a position somewhere and develop the more long-term thinking with a group of people.  It’s interesting to work with people more than just a few times; to be able to redevelop a relationship; to develop a certain trust; to feel that you don’t have to explain yourself anymore; that the musical language is working between you.  I’d love to be able to get to that stage with people and also to be able to plan repertoire with a group, and plan my own repertoire and see cycles of work developing because when you’re freelance the one thing you can’t really do is plan.  You can plan in a vague way in terms of my own repertoire.  That already gives you an idea of how I’m thinking.  But when an orchestra calls, they have certain things they want, or they will have engaged this soloist and they’re definitely going to do this concerto which I wasn’t really thinking I’d learn that this year.  I had an experience last year when I was invited to do Saint-Saëns’ Fourth Piano Concerto.

BD:    Is that the ‘Egyptian’, or is that Number Five?

SE:    No, the ‘Egyptian’ is Five, and in the same concert tour there, another orchestra wanted to do the Fifth Concerto.  I said I was already going to do the Fourth, so couldn’t we do the Fourth there also?  But no, their pianist definitely had to do the Fifth.  So that was an enormous extra amount of learning, but I was very glad to do both, actually.  They’re hugely different pieces, but you’re taking on things slightly against your better judgment because of the time-factoring, in terms of learning.

BD:    Is there a trade-off?  Since they imposed the concerto on you, then do you get more flexibility in booking the symphony after the intermission?

SE:    Yes, absolutely.  They you say,

two world premieres and two pieces that were written four or five years ago.  As with a lot of new music it involved an enormous amount of percussion, and we only knew as we started to rehearse it that the concert was going to be a complete nightmare for the percussionists because every piece required a different set-up!  [Both laugh]  Not only for the four percussionists, but they had they had to have four scene shifters to rush on between each piece and do major removal exercise. 

BD:    So it wasn’t just the music, it was also the logistics?

SE:    It was the logistics with musical interludes!  [More laughter]  And we only knew that when we started rehearsing.  We couldn’t have judged it beforehand.

BD:    Have you made some recordings?

SE:    Yes, I have.  I did them a little while ago now actually.  The first one was Tchaikovsky program with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.  [Photo above]  The main piece was Francesca da Rimini, which is a piece I like very much, and which I learned actually in Russia in a very special way.  So I felt that was a great piece to do, and to bring that special thing in there.  It’s coupled with Romeo and Juliet.  It’s on EMI Eminence.  Then I did another one with them.  We did Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which is an old pot-boiler, but a wonderful one, actually, and again I felt that coming from Leningrad School I really had something to offer.  So that was great.  I also did a program of quasi-children’s pieces

© 1996 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded at her hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September 19, 1996.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB 1999.  This transcription was made in 2015, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.