PASSAGE 4 – Questions 31-40
On Tour with the London Symphony Orchestra
‘Footballers and musicians are in the same business. They both do stressful jobs in front of critical audiences. The only difference is that football crowds are noisier.’ So says Rod Franks. And he should know. Franks started his working life with Leeds United Football Club, neatly changed direction, started playing the trumpet instead of football, and is now principal trumpeter with the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra). Franks might have made a further observation about the similarities between orchestras and football clubs: it is playing away that presents the real challenges.
London’s oldest orchestra has been playing away since it was formed almost a century ago. Nowadays, the orchestra’s trips abroad are kept to tours of a maximum of two and a half weeks. But since touring is clearly expensive and presents major organisational and technical problems, why bother to tour at all? Clive Gillinson, the managing director, says: ‘A great international orchestra needs to work with the greatest conductors and soloists. No recording company will record a conductor or soloist if he or she is only known in one territory - they need an international reputation. So for the recording side to work, you have to visit the key markets; you need to tour.’
By touring with projects or festivals, Gillinson is able to create an event, not just provide a series of concerts. It is more expensive to do, but when you leave town you are not so easily forgotten.
For Sue Mallet, the orchestra’s administrator, the difficulties of her job lie in getting a symphony orchestra and its instruments on stage, on time and in one piece. However well she plans each tour, and she does her planning with scientific accuracy, events sometimes take an upper hand. On one occasion a concert had been advertised for the wrong night, and on another the lorry carrying the instruments from the airport to the concert hall broke down and got stuck in snow.
It is a tiring and stressful business flying around the world, and yet on balance it is one of the rewards of the job. Certain moments are unforgettable. At the end of a concert in Moscow an enthusiastic audience had brought the orchestra to its feet. As one of the musicians was about to sit down, an elderly lady in the front row pressed a piece of paper into his hand. It said, in words of simple English, what lovely music the orchestra had made.
