BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you’re looking for a gig to make you feel warm and fuzzy, check out this Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra father-and-son event.
Renowned pianist Howard Shelley and celebrated conductor Alexander Shelley will perform the Rachmaninov piano concertos this July in the Federation Concert Hall.
In this exclusive interview, we chat with Dad (Howard), and son (Alexander) to learn how they feel about their overlapping lives, and to listen to the special advice they have for each other.
Get to know the Shelleys in a new light before they take on this challenging performance. (And we’ll let you in on a little secret: the musicians hadn’t seen each other’s answers – so we’re sharing this one together.)
Greetings, Shelleys! When and why did you first decide to share the stage?
A: I have always been keen to perform with my father, as I am probably his biggest fan. But he always felt that it was important for me to establish myself in my own right before we went down that particular path.
After I renewed my contract following my first four years as chief conductor in Nuremberg, he relented! We have now performed Rachmaninov there twice together, but this cycle in Tasmania is the high-point thus far.
H: We first worked together about 10 years into Alexander’s career, by which time he had established himself in his own right. He won the Leeds Conducting Competition back in 2005 and that started his career with a real bang. In the years that followed, the Opera North Orchestra – which he had conducted at the competition, and with whom I have worked a great deal over the years – kept encouraging us to work with them together in concert. So eventually, we did, just two or three years ago years ago.
Since then, we have also given concerts in Nuremberg where Alexander has been chief conductor for eight years. However, these concerts in Hobart are very special, because Tasmania is like a second home to me; and Alexander has the same special feelings about the place, having visited with me first when he was a child, then again as a young man, and most recently to conduct the orchestra himself.
Your careers are equally impressive when looking at your different stages of musical life. But when you perform together, what do you learn from each other?
A: My father has, in my opinion, a wonderfully natural, organic, unaffected way of making music that never ceases to impress and influence me. He allows the language of music to speak, and has the ability to seemingly get out of the way. This is, ironically, one of the most difficult things to do!
H: When I listen to Alexander’s performances, I am very impressed by the beauty of sound, the taut ensemble and feeling of structure that he manages to produce with whatever orchestra he happens to be conducting. He is very disciplined, both in his learning from memory huge numbers of scores, and in his life-style. He eats sensibly, is careful about alcohol intake, and runs to keep himself in peak condition for a life which finds him flying about the world and changing time-zones practically every week. I’m afraid that I am much more indulgent, particularly in the food and drink department, and I couldn’t run even if my life depended on it!
Alexander, what was the biggest lesson you learnt from your father as a conductor; and Howard, what have you most wanted your son to take away from your knowledge of music?
A: My father is a fun and dynamic man, but he is also deeply reverential of music and very humble. This reverence and humility – that the composer and score must be served, that we have an obligation to them and that we must always strive to fulfil that obligation – are the greatest lessons I have learnt from observing him. There are, of course, countless details of phrasing and general musicianship that I have been lucky enough to pick up, as well!
H: I don’t think I have ever really sat down and taught Alexander from a musical point of view, though he might have absorbed subconsciously some of my approach to interpretation as a child, given that his bedroom was just below the studio in which I thundered away for hour after hour on these Rachmaninov concertos and much other repertoire.
What I did always feel was important – partly because I didn’t feel I achieved it myself when I was young – was a degree of self-confidence which would help and strengthen him in both good times and bad, whether he succeeded or failed in his objectives. Not an arrogance, but a quiet belief in what you have to offer as an individual. You need this in the madness of a performing life, especially if you are a conductor.
What does it feel like to work together outside the family, and in professional life in this way?
A: To me, it feels no different. We have always made music together and this is just an extension of family.
H: It is a lovely experience, of course, when audiences and orchestras speak highly to me about Alexander. And you get the impression that audiences who know us separately, then see us performing together, get a little extra zing from the fact that we are so closely related. It is a great blessing that we can share performances of such fabulous music together and discuss it on equal terms. Alexander is also very supportive and is very responsive to a soloist’s needs in concerto performances – he’s also very sensitive to his Dad’s potential neuroses!
How does your deep understanding of each other, and the personal connection only you share, affect the way you play together?
A: As far as I am concerned, we are cut from the same cloth. As a baby, indeed even before I was born, I heard my parents playing the piano almost non-stop. Their personalities are reflected in their musicianship, and our friendship and closeness can’t help but bring our musical approach into some kind of alignment.
If you could give one piece of advice to each other about life in music – father to son, son to father – what would it be?
A: Remain the musician and the person you are!
H: I said to Alexander, while he was still a student in Germany, that I felt his generation needed to find a new way forward in the presentation of classical music for modern audiences. And I think he has responded to that and talks persuasively to young and old, as well as programming very interesting multi-media works which draw all ages in.
How are you looking forward to performing with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra together?
A: Ever since the idea was suggested of performing the four Rachmaninov concertos with my father and the TSO, it has been a week that I have been greatly looking forward to. And I’m sure it will be a project that will remain with me for a long time!
H: Alexander and I have been looking forward to this exciting and challenging event ever since, a couple of years ago, Simon Rogers, the artistic planner of the TSO, told us he had found a time in all our diaries that would work for a concert he was keen to program with the two of us. We are so grateful to him and the orchestra for agreeing to make the occasion even a bit more special by programming all the Rachmaninov piano concertos in two concerts – something I have never done before, and may never do again! It is a huge undertaking, not just for me, but the orchestra also who have to be on top of two large programs in a period when they would normally do only one.
What do the Rachmaninov piano concertos mean to you?
A: These are some of the first pieces I ever heard. As a baby, my father was recording the cycle and was performing them extremely regularly. My parents were also performing Rachmaninov’s piano music all over the world. It is like a musical background ether for me.
H: Rachmaninov’s four concertos for piano, the instrument that he played to a level of perfection arguably unequalled to this day, are some of the greatest romantic works ever written at a time when the soloist became the heroic figure pitted against the forces of huge orchestras (the individual trying to make his voice heard against the masses, if you like).
I adore them because they speak of every emotion, from the most tragic to the most ecstatic, and they harness the power of the piano in a very unique way, demanding what is almost impossible in terms of the number and complexity of the notes, but always pulling on the heartstrings with the fabulous tunes and harmonic turns that are so unique to this composer. Rachmaninov never wrote one note when a hundred would suffice! This puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum from Mozart, who created similarly wondrous music in the classical tradition with single note melodic lines. But within his many-layered textures, Rachmaninov develops each line with beauty and incredible mastery and there is a feeling that every note comes from his soul.
See the Shelleys perform in Rachmaninov Piano Concertos 1 and 2 on July 13, 3 and 4 on July 15, and In Conversation led by ABC personality Christopher Lawrence on July 14 at the Federation Concert Hall. Tickets almost sold out – grab yours if you can via tso.com.au.
An excerpt of this story featured in Warp Magazine, July 2017.
Images supplied. Alexander captured by Thomas Dagg.
