Conduct becoming | 31 May 2008

That’s a lot of violins, I thought. Then I realised they were violas. The violins were to the left, smaller. Always smaller than I expect, violins — maybe because I wrestled with one as a child and it beat me: Tiny, pretty little things they are, with all the fleeting glamour and tyranny of a whole crowd of Hollywood starlets. Those always come up small, too.

The cellos were in their nest to the right of the violas. I don’t think there’s an instrument more beautiful to look at than the cello, all balancing curves and arches, setting off the perfect parallels and perpendiculars of the strings. The more I think about cellos, the more I want one. I’ve been meaning to get one for a while and suddenly there were a dozen at my fingertips.

Receding beyond the cellos in a tall, proud line were my people, the double basses. It’s the engine room, the bass department. I glanced over in that direction and two of them winked at me. That was encouraging. My brothers. Whatever I don’t know, which is a subject that is getting bigger all the time, I do know how to bang a bass. It used to be my job, playing the bass, in a rock’n’roll band. I never met a bass player I didn’t like either, and I allowed my gaze to rest with the basses for a moment trying to remember that I know something.

The simple geography of the string instruments, getting larger from left to right, was less confusing than I’d expected. There was a lot to take on board, though. It was hard to distinguish instantly the order in the ranks of the aerophones, the blown instruments. There was a glimpse of a bassoon poking out above a music stand. Oh, and there was the harp, and those curly ones, French horns, I think, and the percussionists holding the back line, where they muck around pulling faces at each other, if they’re any good.

There must have been 80 people in front of me and at my command — the BBC Concert Orchestra, one of the most versatile groups of players in the world, and now I was to conduct them playing one of my favourite pieces of music. I couldn’t have written this scenario any better. Only trouble was that I’d had about two hours of coaching, which isn’t really enough.

‘Carmen, the Overture, ladies and gentlemen. Please.’ I said. All eyes were on me now. I picked up the baton, had a quick glance back at the basses. It was very quiet. I took a deep breath. I tried to contain my fear. There was a lot of that. The most terrifying thing in music is actually a blank page, I’d been telling myself. Nothing is as scary as that. It wasn’t a particularly terrifying thought at that moment though, somehow. From the podium, a blank piece of paper was fairly innocuous. I never expected anything like this to happen.

I learnt bass by copying Joy Division records and joining in with people who could play better than me. Now I’d been given a chance to conduct one of the great works of a genius in the hands of its masters. I wasn’t ready for Bizet at school, but now there’s nothing I’d rather listen to or think about.

It was like doing a bungee jump. There were moments when I was sure I would die and moments of utter exhilaration. When it felt good, it felt better than standing on a stage in front of a hundred thousand people, good beyond comparison. The power that is wielded in the tip of a conductor’s baton is enough to send a man insane. The ecstasy of music that you feel sometimes when you’re dancing, I found there on the podium, but it’s amplified. The entire orchestra, if it’s any good, responds to every signal coming from the conductor’s body, reading his movements, his eyes, his posture, the way the baton is being held, really playing along to his dance.

That’s the closest I’ve ever got to holding a magic wand. When it was good I was completely and utterly in the music, my whole mind absorbed. There was nothing else. It’s the closest thing to heaven you can get, music. Harmony and melody are the work of God. She sure knows what she’s doing. As soon as it was over I wanted to do it again. I’m learning how to dance and, even now, just thinking about it, my heart is racing.