Welcome And Meet Simon Halsey

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the choir director podcast, the essential resource for choir directors, conductors, and vocal leaders who want to build stronger choirs, run better rehearsals, and create outstanding musical experiences. Welcome back to the choir director podcast with me, Russell Scott. This is episode 35. And on today's show, I'm delighted to welcome Simon Halsey CBE, one of Britain's leading choral conductors and a central figure in the work of ensembles, including the Rundfenchorps Berlin, the CBSO Choruses, and the London Symphony Chorus. Simon is now artistic advisor and choral director of the Oslo Philharmonic and has spent decades connecting professional, youth, and community singing with the orchestral world. In this episode, we'll explore how to build a responsive symphonic chorus, rehearse across cultures and experience levels, and make high standards work alongside genuine participation. We also talk about the preparation needed and the understanding of making great music. Please welcome Simon Halsey. Simon, what a pleasure it is to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us all the way from Warwick.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It's absolutely lovely to be here, and I'm very much enjoying the privilege of the view out of my window. My house looks directly onto the historic Warwick Castle.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Wow, how extraordinary.

Early Musical Roots And Chorister Life

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Now you started your journey at Oxford, but presumably you were involved in music far, far earlier in your in your childhood. Tell us a little bit about how you got into music, particularly into singing and conducting.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Well, my dad was a very famous choir conductor, and indeed at 98 he's still alive. He was the one of the two leading chamber choir conductors of the 1950s, 60s, 70s. He acted as chorus master for Stravinsky, did a lot of work with Benjamin Britton, commissioned 250 new works. He still has a file full of postcards from Vaughan Williams and Britton and Walson and so on. And I was just part of that. Indeed, at a very early age, I put all my teddy bears in a row and took a choir attendance register and worked out whether they were sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses. And this was at the age of five or so. I was very lucky in that my primary school, so this is in the early 1960s, was still part of that post-war thing where every school, every state school still had the possibility that every child would learn an instrument free of charge, that we all sang every day with a very inspiring music teacher, and the school owned a complete set of instruments. And then I was sent away to be uh, as it were, what's called a cathedral chorister when I was eight years old to New College, Oxford, um, and uh did it every day. But also before then I'd been in Kingston-upon-Tames Parish Church choir with the most inspiring conductor, and I can clearly remember age seven singing There Is No Rose by John Jubert in an epiphany carol service and watching as this conductor, a man called David Neald, who was a very uh fine man who went on to found the National Youth Music Theatre, and he was weeping copiously as he conducted. And I remember at age seven thinking, well, there must be something in this.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So have you been would you say you've been inspired by English music primarily? Having grown up with a with core English music.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Well, to start off with, to start off with, I think in my later life, very much the most of my work has been outside the United Kingdom. But you grow up with what um with with what is available to you. So New College choir in the late 60s, early 70s, um, specialized in bird and purcell. We often did evensong with a consort of vials. Um, we did all the verse anthems. One of the choral scholars in the choir was James Bowman, who was at the time the greatest counter tenor in the world. Um, while he was still a student, sometimes Sir David Lumsden, our director of music, would say, Mr. Mr. Bowman isn't here today because he's singing at Covent Garden. And he'd be singing Oberon on the main stage at the uh in in London, and then he'd be back the next day to sing This Is the Record of John by Orlando Gibbons. Um and through that education, I then went on to a secondary school that did a lot of music, and then to King's College, Cambridge. But it was there at King's College, Cambridge, as a very bad counter-tenor, but a very keen member of the choir, that it began to open up a bit because the choir in those days, we had a man called Philip Ledger as our director of music. He was primarily a pianist, um, but uh a man who had very wide abilities and was good with a symphony orchestra. And we sang a very wide range of music and toured internationally a lot. So I went to Australia, to America, um, every year, to the Flanders Festival, to France, to Germany, and we recorded with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskow and Janet Baker, and we did a lot of Bach. Um, and I began to get a slightly broader idea of uh uh of what was possible before going on to spend a year studying conducting at the Royal College of Music.

Conductor Training And Learning On The Job

SPEAKER_00 6:05

And because I'm now 68, and because the world has changed so much, I was literally the first student to study can postgraduate conducting at the Royal College of Music. They invented the course in 1979. I mean, can you imagine? The Germans, the Americans had been doing it for a hundred years. I was literally the first person to study conducting. Um, and uh of course we still have relatively few truth uh training programs, particularly for choral conductors, but two of those, the one at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the unfortunately now defunct, absolutely marvellous course we had at Birmingham University, I founded two out of the four courses that we have um or had in the UK. Um and conductor training remains extremely close to my heart because I've worked um so much abroad where everybody is properly trained.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

It's interesting, isn't it? I was talking to Mambinda Rattan actually about conductor training uh just a week or two ago, who we had on the show, and it is a fascinating thing because one uh needs that springboard, uh certainly as a young conductor, they need the springboard to get from where they are to where they want to be. Obviously, there's always, you know, client directors are hugely ambitious people. Um but the training is one side of it. It's a very you know, the the more intellectual side of it, the more the the learning, the training, the understanding, the connection with the music, but then they have to go out and do it. And the springboard is in the education, but how do they how do they get to being on that that big big stage, on that international stage?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Well, there is no there is no career ladder, but I think uh I think that professional training can put a few rungs in place. And of course, the most important uh choral directors are those who are working in primary schools, those who are working in churches, those who are working with youth choirs. Um, and it may be that there's a very different training that you need for that, um, which may be to do with confidence and the use of your voice, um uh enthusing small people and understanding them, which may be rather different from training the London Symphony Chorus. However, the mixture of technical know-how and personality is, of course, at base the same. And when I had for 15 years this wonderful course at Birmingham University, which was for postgraduate, a master's course for postgraduates for a year, um we chose people who were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rather than necessarily. We didn't say there were any requirements. No one had to show great proficiency at the keyboard. We didn't do ear tests, we didn't do anything. We met people. If we liked them, we put them in front of a choir, and we decided there and then. Um and uh nearly all ours have gone on to extraordinary success because we chose personality in the first place, and the personality and the enthusiasm obviously was often the springboard. Now, if you've done a course in a major institution, you then can call on your teachers for references, and that has undoubtedly been helpful. But you see, when I started, I studied orchestral conducting for a year at the Royal College of Music and learnt a very great deal. But the only reason I got started at all was that um there was a vacancy to lead education at Scottish Opera in Glasgow. There was no one anyone could think of in Scotland, um, but the director of the Royal Conservatoire in Scotland knew me. Um he'd been my choirmaster when I was eight years old. And he simply said to Scottish Opera, I believe that there's someone I know who will be graduating soon as a conductor in London. So I took the train up to Glasgow and basically didn't take the train back down to London. Um and started doing opera in schools and in community halls without any background in opera, without any background in schools, and without any background in community work. Um and simply learnt on the job. And um that has been the most important thing that ever happened to me. Um that uh that it worked. And oh, I remain so grateful to Scottish opera to this day.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

I don't think I don't think you can beat experience. I think that's the thing. I think many of us learn as we're going along on the job because we can't learn everything from textbook. You learn about performance, you know, you have to have that charisma, as as you mentioned, you have to be able to stand on and command the stage and to lead and inspire people, which is which is vastly important.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

That's true, but I do think you can teach people how to learn a score. I think you can teach people

Score Study That Creates Authority

SPEAKER_00 12:02

how to communicate that learning. And I wouldn't say that I mean, I used to say to my postgraduate students, what we're doing here would not pass muster in the analysis class in this amazing university that the undergraduates are doing. All I'm doing is taking a short, you know, four pages of an octavo and saying, bring your imagination to to um uh to look at this score. Um, think about it, analyze it. What's the text? Why is the text chosen? What does it mean? What does it look like as a poem before the composer got hold of it? Did the composer set the whole text? If he or she did, which words did they repeat? Is it strophic? Does each verse have the same 24 bars? Um, obviously not. Which words repeat? I mean, uh no one needs to know this piece. There is a piece called My Soul There is a Country by uh Parry. My soul, there is a country far beyond the stars where stands a winged sentry, all skilful in the wars. But what um uh I would say to my students is look, he goes, My soul, my soul. And the first three or four bars are a repetition of my soul, which is clearly he's thinking for himself and looking inwards, then quite quickly. There is a there is a um uh there is a there is a oh heavens above, uh, there the the words then go by very quickly. There is a country far beyond the stars where stands a winged sentry. What's a winged sentry? Um a sentry repeated, all skillful in the wars, what wars, and so on and so on and so on. So that how many bars is that? What key is it in? Um uh and uh uh so that then you can come to a rehearsal with real authority, with a real vision, a real understanding of what the composer was trying to do, of what the poet the poet was trying to say, of what you think about it, and then you can look and see: does it say andante, does it say crotchet quarter note equals 76, or whatever it is, is that good for my circumstances? And then you have a little bit of authority, and then you can try things, and it works or it doesn't work. And if you're a good conductor, you'll discover your first idea doesn't work, and you can try it differently without without saying anything. Um and you will have thought about what's happening harmonically, um, where the unisons, the octaves are, who's got the third in every chord. This does matter. Um, is there a chord where the altos have the third very low in their voices and the tenors the fifth very high in their voices? Listen to a recording later on, you'll hear there's far too much tenor and not nearly enough alto. Can you do something about it by imagination in advance? Um, if you're really good, you'll be able to show it by encouraging the altos with one hand and showing the tenors to shut up with the other. But you may need to say something about it. But you can have practiced all this in front of the mirror in your downstairs bathroom and be able to show things and minimize the speech. And if you're going to use words, know exactly why you're doing it. And I think it's so important with all choirs to explain. Altos, I need more B in that chord because you're low in your voice, and therefore focus the sound. Everybody goes nya. Everyone goes nyah and laughs, but the altos have found the sound. Tenors, shut up. Let's just sing that chord, listen, and you can probably do what um all the great Swedish conductors do. Just hold your ear and they all listen. Um, sing that chord um with your eyes closed. It's completely transformed. So that the whole rehearsal is an endless thing of little ideas, nothing done for too long, stimulating people, keeping everyone involved, teaching, uh, treating everyone as equals. The most marvellous thing happened with my choir in Oslo last week. I had taught them, I must say, Marla too pretty damn well. Um, and the great conductor Semyon Byshkoff came to conduct it, and he ran through and he told them that he'd like this bit a bit quieter and this bit would go faster. But then that the whole rehearsal was over in 15 minutes. So he sat down at the piano and then he just began to play chords to them and said, just imagine basses, how wonderful it is to sing the seventh in that chord, and to change the whole meaning of that word. And I said to them when he went after 35 minutes at the end, ladies and gentlemen, you're an amateur choir, but one of the world's greatest conductors has simply come into the room and treated you as equals and colleagues and talked about music to you. And you have the complete vision of how to do this. Um, and you are true professional musicians, except for the one thing that you're not paid. Um, and uh this is what it's all about.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Wow. Wow, you you've answered so many questions I was gonna ask you. So that's fantastic. And wow, I just I could have sat there and just listened for another half an hour. Um it's interesting. We we we first I had the pleasure of uh first time working uh under your direction uh probably 30 years ago, actually. And the things uh and and I've also worked worked with you uh at Netherlands Radio Choir where I where I was sang as a professional, and um nothing changes, but it's interesting you mentioned about amateur and professional choirs. You you treat everybody the same, and I and I've I've learned to do that as a result of of the work that you do. Um but there there are things that have always stood out about Simon Halsey. One is your understanding of the music. I don't think I've ever met anyone that that when they approach a rehearsal, they really truly deeply understand and connect with the music. And that must be quite difficult. Um because I'm sure you don't love every single piece you do, but you always approach the music.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

But let me interrupt you Yeah, but let me interrupt. Uh doing working with a radio choir, so this is a professional choir. I had one in the Netherlands and one in Germany. Um, these choirs are told what to do, often by their orchestras. And the whole point of something like the BBC or German or Dutch radio is that your orchestras and choirs do don't do Beethoven cycles, that they do do contemporary music, that they do dig up things that no one else does. That's the whole justification for them, for the proms. You know, what are the most important things left in British life? I mean, honestly, it's Radio Three, it's Radio Four, it's the BBC Orchestras and choirs and the proms. I, you know, I would I would die on the cross to save this, um, uh as simply being the most important things left in our culture. Um uh and uh uh you know, you learn to love music if you're if if you work hard enough at it. You know, I had to teach people fantastically difficult Hans Werner Hense and uh Saria Ho and Bulles and so on. And also sometimes, you know, um Karl Orf's Karmina Burana. I don't particularly enjoy rehearsing that, and I'm not a great fan of um uh of uh uh of the sort of um uh uh of the sort of Offenbachs and uh uh Puccinis and so on. But I've done complete cycles of the Puccini operas and loved them while I was doing them. Um you just have to you just have to get into it and understand it. Uh here's an example. Um about 20 years ago, I started through the conductors I was working with, having to do Wagner opera, which I just put on a shelf and assumed that was something I'd never do. I'm now uh a passionate Wagner fan and advocate, because if you've done Parsifal and Gutter Demerung and the Flying Dutchman and so on, I mean it's just so bloody marvellous.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah. And I actually I remember doing one of those, there was that amazing prom all those years ago with Rattle uh conducting, who also you had an amazing affiliation with. Um we had just about every professional singer in London doing it. Um and uh was it I think it was Flying Dutchman, wasn't it? Was it Flying Dutchman?

SPEAKER_00 21:05

No, it was Parsifar. Was it Parsify? With the two great choirs of men, which required us to have 48 professional men, absolutely. Um what an extraordinary experience that was.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

I did Flying Dutchman with him as well, that's why I couldn't remember the title. But it's um yeah, I mean it was an extraordinary experience because we had every singer on that stage possible. It must have cost an absolute fortune.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Indeed, and there won't be so many opportunities like that in the future. Now, coming back to the thing that you mentioned about treating everyone the same, now um let's just

Amateur And Professional Problems Match

SPEAKER_00 21:40

take a piece like like the foray requiem, which probably everyone can imagine. Um, so of course I can teach it much quicker to the Berlin Radio choir than I can to the CBSO chorus, and I can teach it much quicker to the CBSO chorus than I can to um uh to uh to uh uh to a group of village choirs coming together uh to sing it together once a year in Cumbria. But the problems are all the same. Getting the sopranos to sing a beautiful unison, that um the high E's and F's in that wrong part of the voice for all the sopranos sound beautiful and sweet, that the phrases go to the end. It's exactly the same. I can probably achieve it in 20 minutes in Berlin, in 40 minutes. In Birmingham and in an hour in with the village choirs in Cumbria. The tenors, okay. In Berlin I'll have 17 professional tenors, it'll be pretty straightforward. But all amateur choirs, there will be an element of compromise on how you're going to get the tenor line to sound. The very first page where everyone goes required, that quaver will be late. There are two D's, there are two Fs, there are two A's. You need more of the lower triad and less of the higher triad. The tr thirds have got to be tuned the same. You have to do the work identically with everybody. But in the end, you can learn only through experience that if you know the music off by heart, you can just look at the altos and they all go, oh no, what is it? Oh, wait a minute, yes, I know what to do. Um uh and you may not need to discuss it for very long. Um, but you've got to have a million things in your back pocket, and every professional choir or orchestra is going to have bad days. Days when it's pouring with rain outside, days when someone's uh or a close colleague's wife is very ill or whatever it is, days when everyone's tired because you did Parsifal yesterday and somehow you're still in the rehearsal room at ten o'clock the next morning. Um, it's exactly the same. You just have to teach ever to treat everybody as people. Read the room.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

That's that's great advice. That's really great advice. There are two two other elements that sort of go hand in hand. Um aside from diction, which which

Tuning And Colour Through Imagination

SPEAKER_01 24:16

again, uh you're an expert on I'm a suckler for Dita when it comes to diction. There's there's nothing but addiction that's more important as far as I'm concerned. If an audience can't understand uh what's going on on stage, you can't communicate it, you're not gonna feel anything. But your your expertise in tuning and colour, I find extraordinary. How do you deal with brightening up, particularly when you're working with amateur choirs or your village choirs in Cumbria? Um, how do you deal with being able to tune them? Because uh you know, when you turn around to an amateur singer and you say, Right, we need to colour it, we need to think brighter, we need to feel the smiley inside, we need to try and you know get the sound just just tuned higher, more in in tune with the with the thirds and with the other voices. But how you can only go so far. How how do you approach it?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

A million different ways. So one of the most important things is however many plans you have, how many ever however many books full of information you could write, you've got to be working in the minute in that particular day with those particular people. Now, the uh you may need so I do treat uh treat choirs to a very simple scale of what it is I'm talking about. So I will in in the warm-up exercises do a lot of work with um la la la la la la la la la la la. Let's see how high we can make that fifth. Imagine it higher. Though an interesting thing my mother used to say to me is don't assume that anyone thinks la la la la la la is higher. People may see that as yellower or windier or um or tastier. Um it's only, you know, it it's only you and me who think it's higher. Um so you can use all sorts of words. I mean, rattle is simply brilliant with um choirs of all sorts. You'll say, ladies and gentlemen, we need uh a fraction more lemon juice in the sound here. Um imagine that you're going to have another espresso and then rethink the intonation. And these things, um, along with colours. I mean, I often learnt this in in Germany. Um, let's have a colour that is a red velvet. Could I just have a sound which is hellblau, which is light blue at this point? And people with a singing technique will know what you mean. And it's better than les verbraso, more verbrasso. Because the moment you say to a really qualified singer, les vibrasso, they'll sing, but they'll think, but my voice vibrates. So what is it you want? Anyone can make any colour and help you in any way at all, as long as you talk to them in an imaginative way which invites their collaboration rather than telling them what to do. Because certainly those professional singers sing much better than I could possibly sing, and will have seven years training. They'll be the equivalent of a brain surgeon. Um, and and they will sing for 40 years, being told what to do every day in a group. You've somehow got to free all those people to be collaborating with you, to be trusting them, to be inviting them. Now that's different with an amateur choir, um, except that the London Symphony Chorus, the Oslo Philharmonic Choir, the CBSO chorus, um, by the time you've had them long enough and you've worked with them enough, you can treat them in exactly the same professional way. So, scales. I do, I get people to do chromatic scales, whole tone scales, minor scales, major scales. I talk quite a lot of music grammar because I think people pick it up as you go along. They may not know in the first week what on earth you're talking about by the fifth or a dotted crotchet. By the second week they do. Um, I think also you endlessly place your expectation an inch higher than everybody's eyeline, so that people are endlessly thinking forward about how they can do it better. And your choir will be full of brain surgeons, priests, um, university lecturers, um, people with their own fantastic businesses. Um, these people will be more intelligent, better educated than you. So don't treat them as just not very good musicians. Um, recently I've learned through my work abroad, precision in the UK, and very good it is, um, is often about consonants. So I'm terribly good, like you are, and many other people are about saying, ah me, and the N is exactly together on the second beat. This is incredibly important. And it doesn't really matter very much to most other countries. Um, so the German choirs always want to know what colour. Um uh and that is the work on vowels and placing the sound in your head or in your body or wherever it is. And that is often something that Brits aren't very good at because professional training in Britain grows out of our cathedral choirs, where we have to turn round even song every single day, often with the boys or the young girls getting an hour's rehearsal, but the altos, tenors, and basses coming in for 20 minutes, um, excellent sight reading and so on. There's nothing wrong with our, please don't misunderstand me, there's nothing wrong with our glorious tradition. Um I'm so glad I have it. Um, and I I love it every day. But there's no time to think about what the words mean, about why um uh someone has done something twice, about why they've set it in a particular place in your voice, about how what sort of colour you're going to give to our viverum corpus, why is it low? Why is the music high when when Jesus is hanging on the cross? Um, and so on and so on. And this takes hours of rehearsal. And what's interesting abroad is that um professional choirs will have an entire week and sometimes a fortnight on every single project, and they will expect to get the notes right on Monday of the first week. And they will expect Tuesday through Friday of the first week to be all about doing it really exquisitely well, with hours of thought about things, um, which I had to learn in a great hurry. Let me tell you a story. I went went when I was very young, I was invited to guest conduct the Chicago

The Chicago Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Symphony Chorus. They were looking for a new director. Um and I went out to do Fidelio with Christoph Eschenbach, and they had only just recorded it with Sir George Schulte. And I'd heard the recording, and it was completely fantastic. The choir was 200 strong, a hundred professionals and a hundred amateurs, all auditioned every other year. Um, and Margaret Hillis, their legendary founding conductor, was retiring, and she was sitting in the room. And 200 people were singing Beethoven, and I took them through it at the first rehearsal, and as far as I could tell, it was perfect. And I was 20 minutes into one of six three-hour rehearsals, and I remember thinking quite distinctly, unless I get my act together now, that's the end of me. Um, so I better start finding fault. And then I began to listen in a way that I'd never learnt before. And I began to find that the balance wasn't great, the blend wasn't great, that um that the closed vowels weren't uniformly closed, that thank goodness some of the consonants weren't together. I knew about those, that they weren't quite together. I knew about this. But I began to discover a million things I could do. Um, that piano was not quiet enough, that mezzo forte was uninteresting, and all these things. That got me to the end of rehearsal too, by digging deep in what I knew. And by the third rehearsal, I was having to discover things that I knew nothing about. Listening and watching, mouth shapes, to uh the amount of uh vibrato and the sound, the colour of vowels, the focus of the voices, and so on. By the end of the week, I really had, I think, done a good job. I was invited back to do something else, it went well. Um, but uh without learning on an instrument of that quality, um, like half my education took place in one week in Chicago in June 1980.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Do you know it's funny because I think if any if any of my own choir listen to this show, they're gonna know where my inspiration has come from over years and years of singing under Simon Halsey.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, but that's but that's fine. I mean, uh the the the my the great inspirations for me was so I sang at the Royal College of Music under David Wilcox, and it was fantastic. Um it was an amazing mixture of know-how, twinkle, and enthusiasm. These are things that other countries aren't very good at, um, and it gets British conductors and American conductors and Australian conductors a very long way. Um then um uh I sang under Richard Hickox, um, who had a this enormous love of music, and I learned that so strongly from him that everybody wanted to sing and play for him. Um, so I learned that from him. I worked as assistant to John Elliott Gardner, and he was completely terrifying, um, and was able to think about music in a completely different way from everyone else. Um, he would look at a score and come up with his own version of it, which was nothing to do with what anyone else was doing at the time, and the sheer respect for for the way um he drove everybody, that he he had this vision. I learned a lot from that. Then I did think with Simon Rattle that we needed outside influences in Birmingham. So we had Robert Shaw come from America, and Robert Shaw had a system, and everyone can now see it. So um uh go and look him up on the internet. You can see all his rehearsals and visit his scores and copy down what he did, how he re-scored things, how count singing get everyone to go one and two and three and four, and so the ands were exactly together to measure crescendos together by count singing and so on and so on. I've never come across, by the time we'd had him for a week, Simon Rattle and I both had hundreds of books full of notes of how we could improve our choirs. And every single one of those techniques worked. But completely differently. One year later, we had Eric Eriksson come from uh Sweden, and we gave him the Verdi Requiem, and the choir knew it well, and he simply conducted with very small gestures, looked at the choir, did this, in other words, we listened, looked vaguely disappointed, um, and they sang like gods for him. Um and at the end of five days with him, Simon and I had not a single note in our books, because the presence of Eric Ericsson in the rehearsal room, not even giving them any technical advice, but just guiding the music and being faintly disappointed in everybody, um, was something that you couldn't learn a single thing from beyond the fact that Eric Erickson was much better than we were. Um, do you see what I mean? So you can pick things up left, right, and center. Um so we should all go and visit each other's rehearsals. Um a lot of young conductors now um ring me up and say, can they have a session? And I mean, I do it with such joy because these are often people with good burgeoning careers. And I will settle them down and look at the music they're doing and help them, but I will often say, bring me Locasiste by Brick Bruckner, or a little part song, Are they verum by Byrd? And they'll be very surprised. And I'll say, I'm going to spend two hours on this, because a man called Richard Marlowe, who ran the choir at Trinity College, Cambridge, before Stephen Leighton, and before Stephen Leighton made it very famous, but it was already wonderful under Richard Marlowe. And Richard Marlowe taught me at Cambridge. And I remember he did a whole one-hour lecture on the Kirier of the three-part mass by Byrd, which I'm going to sing to you quickly. That's it. And he managed to make an hour on it, absolutely riveting. So that at the end of it you thought, I don't know anything about these nine bars. Wait a minute, I need years more study before I'm ready to know it better. It was such an inspiration. It was such an inspiration. Um and I've seen the scores. I've been lucky enough to work as assistant to Daniel Barenboim. And his scores are incredible. So he would be doing the Brahms Requiem, and every single chord is figured, like in a Bach karate. So it'll the the first note will see, say, say, you know, F major, then F major six, then F major six four. He'll know where the dissonances are, he'll know how many thirds there are in every chord, he'll know who has the leading note in a chord and where it's going. You know, absolutely extraordinary. In addition to the total understanding of absolutely everything else in it, plus speaking seven languages fluently, and then being able to mould it with his fingers. Um, now that is what we should all be aspiring to. And even if you only conduct for one hour a week, you can study and be better.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

I think what's extraordinary is is uh when you uh I I don't think you can beat watching and listening. Um, and particularly as a singer. Um, you know, I I trained as a singer, and I as as you know, over 30 years I've been singing. Not so much these days, I'm I'm conducting more than ever now, but but I learned I learned so much just from working with these amazing conductors, with these amazing inspirational people, that the more the more that they are down to earth and can connect with you as a singer, that that that engagement, that that uh communication, the bond between you and a and a choir director or or a major conductor is enormous. Just watching people, watching concerts, being part of those concerts and watching how people rehearse. I don't think there's any education that can beat learning, listening, and watching a major conductor or or aspiring choir director. And you you must uh be compared to True.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Um I think No, go ahead, one of the things that the the one

Hearing What Is Wrong In Real Time

SPEAKER_00 40:12

of the things you do have to do is learn for yourself how to hear what's going on, and that's really difficult. So, my wonderful postgraduate conductors in Birmingham, we had a guinea pig choir, and they s they had hours of podium time each week, which made it very different from most conducting courses. And we would do a lot of very simple music, and they would be conducting and they would stop and they would go back and say, Well, let's go back to the beginning. And I would say, No, Lauren, what's actually wrong? And I'd do it in a you know a nice enough way, and then I'd say, tenors, what's wrong? And they'd say, We got bar 13 wrong. And I'd say to Lauren, the tenors would like you to correct bar 13, because there's actually nothing really wrong with bars one to twelve. So I would like you to be able to do bars one to fourteen and say, tenors, let's fix bar 13. Then everyone goes, she can hear what's going on. Um, and how would you do that? Well, it may be I learnt to do it by singing every part myself. I'm a very bad pianist, but when you've got things like horns in F or clarinets in B flat, playing it on the piano, however bad it is, and I am not ashamed to say that to this day, I still will write down that the horns in E flat, that's an A flat, the concert note that they're playing. In case someone says to me, Simon, what octave should I be in here? Is that really an A flat? And I can say, yes, it is a concert A flat, because I've done the most ridiculous amount of humble work because of my sheer fear of being found wanting. The same with languages. Those of us who are first language English speakers are usually terrible linguists. Um you go and work, you'll remember, if you work in the Netherlands, they speak better English than us. They will speak fluent German, fluent Dutch, and probably French and all sorts of other things. Um and they will be very, very surprised if you really, you know, if you don't get the vowel sounds right, if you don't know that something is short before a double consonant and so on. And it's absolutely terrifying, and we do have to learn.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Do you think you're you you've done a huge amount of travelling? We spoke about this right right at the before we came on air, but you've done a huge amount of travelling and still do. You've you've cut back a lot now as you as you say, but it is uh um it is an amazing um experience working

Working Across Choir Cultures Abroad

SPEAKER_01 42:47

with choirs and singers from around the world, not just in England, because uh they do things in very different ways sometimes, different cultures, different societies, different communities. They sing vowels in a different way, or their expression is different. And you were talking about the the diction, especially, and how they would end that amen, for example. Have you found have you found a lot of challenges working with choirs abroad?

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Uh yes, but they're ones you have to learn to do something about. I very recently, at the age of 67, became principal conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic choir. You'd think not so very different. So uh I know symphonic choirs. Um, you can hear my dog barking in the background. My dog has been a very big part of the pandemic uh broadcasts we did. Um uh, and so I said to the everybody at the Oslo Phil, I am going to listen for a year. And then, of course, I'm going to take rehearsals, of course I'm going to make rehearsal schedules and tell you we need the Bear and Writer edition of this. But I'm going to spend the whole of the first year just listening. Partly because all the Christmas repertoire is different. Um, they obviously sing an awful lot of Marler and Beehoven and we're just doing El Gardrium of Garantias. But um uh but nevertheless, the sound is very different because Scandinavians come at singing in a in a in a in a in a different way. Um uh so to learn and to understand before starting to make differences. We will have to have reauditions, but re auditions now they trust me and know me. And I've been able to tell them these are not re auditions to get rid of anybody, but to see how you sing and. And you know, we're now going to have uh singing teachers associated with the choir, and you can have four half hours a year just simply to improve your technique. Um, that I'm going to know better whether you should be a first or a second, and I may move you and so on. Um, I'll know you by name, I'll know what you sound like, what your legato's like, and all these sort of things. Now, um, it is surprising that um you know that that they're very easy to blend and they sing naturally in tune because of their background. But it's quite quite hard to get very strong and passionate um uh strong singing of uh romantic music, a very colourful singing. My German choirs teach me that if you sing Brahms and it says espressivo, that doesn't mean expressive. It means you sing with a certain colour. Similarly, Dolce is a colour. It doesn't mean sweet, whatever sweet is. Um, how do you colour every phrase, every every note? Now, for 10 years I was principal conductor of Orfeo Catalan in Barcelona, which I will say is probably today the very greatest. I I really mean this, the greatest amateur symphonic choir in the world. Um, this is because of investment. They all get a 45-minute singing lesson each week, and they have youth choirs, and they begin there at the age of six, and they go through the whole youth program, and at the age of 25 they join the amateur symphonic choir, having already had 19 years of uh singing lessons, um, uh, having already sung in youth choirs to the highest possible standard. Now, their sound is completely glorious, their reading isn't as good as in Norway or in London. So I used to often do joint concerts between the London Symphony Chorus and Orfeo Kessler, where we would be doing the same piece at the same time. In London, they would honestly get the piece more or less right in the first rehearsal, and I would spend seven very rewarding rehearsals with them, colouring it and finding how to express it and making marvellous sounds with a choir that didn't have much regular singing tuition. Though we had brought people on board and we were doing a lot of work on that. The Spanish singers would really be able physically to sing the whole thing from the beginning, but their reading wasn't so good, so I would spend a lot of time teaching them the notes, and if it was in German, probably doing more work on the German than I needed to do it, do in London. But we came on a two totally different journeys and arrived at exactly the same place. But the but you couldn't, but you couldn't, but you couldn't take the same rehearsal on Tuesday in Barcelona as you did in London on Thursday, two days later. It had to be a completely different rehearsal because the traditions, the people, the abilities, and what they could do was entirely different.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Wow, that uh that's and that is amazing, and because you had to approach it in two completely different ways. And I wonder I wonder how many conductors, choir leaders, think about that when they're working with different groups working on the same piece of music, how they need to approach it in in different ways. Do you ever do you ever see yourself slowing down? I mean, I we we spoke briefly about this, but I but I but I I

Slowing Down Without Losing The Fire

SPEAKER_01 48:17

know you are incredibly passionate and obviously insanely talented and and experienced and never seem to not thrive. I mean, you you you do amazing work wherever you go. And could you imagine yourself ever slowing down? Do you love it that much? You just can be.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I am slowing down. Um I uh I got to 67 and had to retire from the University of Birmingham, which was the some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. Um I decided recently that 45 years at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was probably long enough for them, if not for me. Um I think you have to be extremely careful. The CBSO chorus and its youth choruses are absolutely glorious. But there is a real danger that you will allow a choir to grow old with you. That hasn't entirely happened because of the connection to the university and the conservatoire and its own youth program. But I do think it's time for someone of a younger generation and a different tradition to give a different energy there. Um, my job was to turn around the London Symphony Chorus and Orpho Catalan, both of which I did with enormous uh joy, um, but both were extremely demanding, um, with a great deal of travel. I never lived either in London or in Barcelona. It meant I was flying all the time. And in both cases, after over a decade, I simply thought that um I could do at this point in my life with less travel. So my new life in my late 60s is um with a choir that rehearses once a week and only for eight months a year, and only does six concerts a year in Oslo, with one of the world's greatest orchestras, very well funded in a city that is building a new concert hall, and the whole thing is the most fantastic new adventure, um, but requires of me um uh uh 50%, not a hundred percent, just because it's 51 days of rehearsal a year and six concerts a year. It's less. Um uh and I go with great joy to Australia, and I go to Australia because we go to Tasmania, to the most beautiful place on earth. And the the the people in Oslo will say, excuse me, that's Norway. Um but uh but I but I actually think Tasmania can beat it. Um uh and Tasman, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with only 400,000 people in the whole state to draw on, make music with such joy, such an enthusiasm, that this feeds my soul at this point in my life. Um, in a place where there, you know, if a if a second violin goes sick, there is no one to come in. They're they're they're hours from anybody else. You just have to get on with it. Um the symphony chorus has 70 members because there isn't anybody else. Um, and uh you just have to do it with what's there. And the things they achieve are so fabulous that um it's now time for me to allow uh Oslo and Tasmania uh to feed my soul um and for me not to do quite so much work.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Wow. I I it's been amazing talking with you. It really has. I I can't thank you enough for not just sparing the time, but sharing

Final Advice And How To Support

SPEAKER_01 52:01

such amazing stories and tips and help and support to the other choir directors that we have so many listening now that I'm sure they will be inspired themselves by by what you've said today. Thank you so much, Simon Halsey. It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

You're very welcome, and thank you. And to everybody out there, share. Don't be jealous of your own patch, but see what you can learn and what you can share.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Fine advice from a fine gentleman indeed, the wonderfully talented Simon Halsey CBE. Such a pleasure to have him on the show today. Thank you so much for listening to the Choir Director Podcast. It's been wonderful having you here today. And if you found today's conversation valuable, please take a moment to leave us a rating and review. It genuinely helps us reach more choir directors and grow this community together. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you know a fellow director who'd benefit from today's conversation or any of the amazing guests we've had on the show, please share it with them. It means the world to us and it could make a huge difference to them. To stay connected between episodes so you never miss a thing and receive exclusive content, do join our mailing list. The link is in the show notes. And if you have a question about today's topic or any of the topics that we're covering, perhaps a question to our guest or something you'd love us to explore on a future episode, you can email the studio or leave us a voicemail. Both links are waiting for you in the show notes. Well, thanks again for being part of the Choir Director Podcast. I'm Russell Scott, and until next time, goodbye.