Q&A; : ‘We Literally Live by What We Play’

Question: Do I address you as Sir Neville?

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Answer. I respond to almost anything. If you wanted to be incredibly formal, it is Sir plus the Christian name. But Hey, you! is quite enough.

Q. The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world, having made more than 1,000 recordings. Last year, the orchestra earned the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement. Was that an honorary award, or were there precise criteria?

A. The precise criteria were simply that you come in the Top 10 of export achievements. Perhaps the most surprising part of our export drive for (the evaluating committee) was our gramophone records and the fact that the money earned stood up so well against industrial and commercial enterprises.

Q. What are the drawbacks to being the most recorded chamber ensemble in the world?

A. The most forbidding aspect is playing in some of these extraordinary foreign places, where the acoustics are abysmal, conditions are awful, and the orchestra has been traveling all day, and you go on stage, and the audience has only heard you on the gramophone where acoustics are good and (the performance) flawless, and your challenge is not to disappoint them. To keep up that standard under the most awful conditions is our biggest challenge.

Q. What toll do you feel the studio takes on performance?

A. If you get into the habit of playing to four walls and a red light, it can (result in) the most tedious performance. One of the qualities we look for in our players is spontaneity, and vitality, and this is something you have to be able to turn on every time the red light goes on. We do many recordings as if it’s a (live) performance, and we take it warts and all.

Jascha Heifitz made recordings in London years ago, and the recording director stayed up the whole night correcting all the little mistakes. Heifitz immediately ordered him to put (the mistakes) back in--and in so doing made many musicians very happy. I think the days of perfect edited performances are dead and gone. I don’t think the public wants them any more.

Q. It would seem that being so involved with recordings, always having one eye, or ear, as it were, on posterity, might even threaten to drain spontaneity from your live performances.

A. I just hope not. For a long time, because we made so many recordings, it was assumed we spent most of our lives in the studio. The Academy in fact does 150 to 180 concerts a year . . . so by far the largest part of our lives is still on stage, in public. One reason we make so many records is that we don’t have any government support. The orchestra lives by its wits; we literally live by what we play, so we depend very much on recordings (for our livelihood).

Q. And concerts, of course.

A. Even if we sell out every seat (for a performance in London), we lose 20,000 pounds. We take in 25,000 pounds at the gate in ticket money, but each program, including three or four rehearsals and one performance, costs about 40,000 to 50,000 pounds to put on. So you’re up against a deficit every time you give a concert.

We do one week of recording to three weeks of touring. The Academy could tour every week of the year if it accepted all the invitations. But the average age of our players is 32 to 35, and many have young families. If we want to keep the best ones, they can’t always be away.

Q. As it is, it sounds pretty grueling.

A. It’s a pretty heavy schedule. But none of the players has contracts. They’re under no obligation to accept everything, and we’re under no obligation to keep them if they don’t. We’ll pay them well, but we cannot offer any security. Most orchestras prefer the security of a contract. (The Academy) is fairly unique, certainly in London, where there are so many alternative opportunities, chamber and otherwise, for the players.

But this sort of exposure is exciting for them. Perhaps later in life, the fiddler will want a concertmaster position, there will be house payments, and children to support. . . .

Q. You recently celebrated your 70th birthday. If there were to be a retrospective of your life on your 90th birthday, for what aspect of your music-making would you like to be remembered?

A. Yes, I’m the geriatric one, the exception to the rule of Academy youthfulness.

My general philosophy is that I’m very much interested in the structure, the bones, of the work, and that it doesn’t get obscured by sloppy playing or indecisive balances within the orchestra. I like a certain amount of clarity. Rhythmically I prefer music with vitality.

Q. Many listeners find a certain elegance in your style of music-making. What do you find?

A. You’re always so disappointed in all the things you fail to achieve (that) it’s very difficult to think positive in retrospect. You always hope tonight’s performance is the best you’ve ever done. You always come away with some anxiety. You know that occasionally you can hit the spot, but it’s always in the most unlikely places, in Timbuktu, where nobody cares. . . . Then you’ll be in Carnegie Hall, and it’s televised, and you’ll probably fall flat on the face.

Q. What are your passions apart from music?

A. (My wife and I) have a house in Devon, down in the country, which I’ve become increasingly obsessive about. You start in your poverty-stricken days as a young musician, you buy a 16th-Century cottage, the best you could afford, with just a few acres around it. The years go by, now there are 30 or 40 acres around it, you restore it as a grand affair (and) pretend that you are a landowner. When we can, we escape down there. The English countryside being what it is, they don’t have the foggiest notion what I do for a living. This makes me very comfortable.

Q. What’s the state of the Academy?

A. We have a small ensemble of about eight players that spends a lot of time roaming around Europe playing chamber music. We have another group the size of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, directed from the concertmaster seat by Iona Brown, and a similar group doing more contemporary music directed by Kenneth Sillito. Any less than 40 players, if they’re good, they can do without a conductor. I suppose I’ll conduct anywhere from 40 to 100 players.

We’d recorded pretty well everything from the earlier Baroque to the mid-19th Century, at least once, (as of) about 10 years ago. The only place we could go was forward, and to do that (we had) to become a Romantic-sized orchestra. The bigger symphonic writers is where we are at the moment. We’ve also added opera. At least once a year we record an opera, and every four or five years we take part in a production.

Our players don’t want to be buried in an opera pit. They’re extroverts, they want to be seen as well as heard.

Q. Is there any repertory left that you’d like to explore?

A. There is a lot of opera to do of course, and in fact, here in Japan the Academy is playing the Brahms symphonies for the first time. But we’re not rushing into the studio--there are 192 Brahms cycles already on record. For the sake of our education, we do these things. We will probably play Mozart and Beethoven cycles forever, but Brahms, Shostakovich, Sibelius, we just do the occasional one.

Q. Is there repertory that you don’t feel particularly well suited for?

A. Personally, I’m not sure I’d be a very good Mahlerian or Brucknerian. I’ve tried this, and I always feel my arms aren’t long enough. There’s a sort of spaciousness and a tongue-in-cheek sentiment about that music I find quite hard to achieve.

Q. What size Academy is coming to Cerritos?

A. I believe we’re bringing 78 players, a sort of symphony orchestra without passengers. Normally speaking, you think of 92 players. When I (conducted) the Gewandhaus (Orchestra of Leipzig), they had 160. Because we don’t have contracts, we don’t have to carry quite so many.

Q. Will 78 players suffice for Tchaikovsky?

A. Yes they will. We’ll make quite sure they do, even if they lose weight doing it.

* The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performs works by Mozart, Elgar and Tchaikovsky Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets, $25-$50. Phone (310) 916-8500.