How conductors keep getting better at 90

‘It’s a bad week. I gather we’ve lost one.’ Sir Neville Marriner, himself a huge name, is talking about the death of one of the world’s top conductors. Lorin Maazel, who died at home in Virginia at the age of 84, had led orchestras including the New York Philharmonic. He was still conducting this year. Last month, the Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos died in Pamplona at the age of 80. Only a week earlier he had announced he had cancer and would have to retire. Conductors, it is no secret, enjoy long working lives — some have even passed away mid-performance. But what’s their secret?
This summer’s BBC Proms are celebrating four ‘birthday batonists’. Among them are the three knights, Sir Neville (90), Sir Roger Norrington (80) and Sir Andrew Davis (70). Each has been waving his baton — Sir Andrew just his hands since he got tennis elbow — in this country or abroad for half a century. Sir Neville, who made his name with the chamber orchestra the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, has recorded some 900 records and conducted 2,000 works and is still a guest conductor with several orchestras.

Compared with other musicians, he says, conductors are physically ‘fairly lucky’. ‘The upper half of your body is kept on the move. I still play tennis. Not very well. Only with the girls. I certainly notice it if I have two or three days away from the podium. I begin to miss it and think I ought to have some physical activity elsewhere.’ Although he is on his feet six hours a day, Sir Neville insists on standing. ‘I get a little depressed when I see a conductor beginning to sit down for rehearsals. You lose a certain amount of engagement with the players.’

Sir Roger, though, no longer stands during rehearsals, nor in certain performances — such as the St John Passion he’s conducting at the Proms.