Introducing Pablo González
As we welcome Pablo González to the Maestro Arts roster, we ask him about his approach to conducting and find out how it has developed throughout his career, and been influenced by his love of the theatre
What is the most fundamental thing you have learnt about conducting?
Of course you must have talent, technique and all the qualities that make a conductor, but you must also believe in your ideas and share your enthusiasm in a way that makes people want to go with you. For any leader, it’s important to have a vision that makes people want to share the journey.
For me, this belief comes out of two things: love for what I do, which is my motivation, and, of course, hard work. If you love a particular piece of music, you want to work on it and make the most beautiful version in the world. There are so many versions already, but you go back to the score and try to get in touch with what you think the composer wanted to convey. You become a vehicle. But it’s the utmost admiration and respect for the composer that makes you want to do something special, and if you achieve it, you bring people with you.
How do you communicate this enthusiasm to the orchestra?
Enthusiasm is a powerful energy, but without control it becomes meaningless. We have to find a way to channel it to make sure it gets to people in the best, most effective way. At the start of my career, my enthusiasm worked with some orchestras, and not with others, and over the last 20 years, I have worked to refine it. With experience, I am able to ‘be’ the energy, rather than just to receive it and send it away.
It’s in everything you do: your body language, the way you rehearse. But it also has something to do with being true to yourself. Conducting is complicated. You have to convey an idea to an orchestra using your body, and you have to use words, too, but sometimes the words get in the way. As years go by and you become more experienced, you develop a deeper trust in what lies inside you as a musician. The more you connect with that, the less effort you have to make to communicate that idea to an orchestra.
As a young conductor, I was obsessed about the idea of the music, and – I must admit – my idea of the music. As time went by, my approach shifted to the music being something I wanted to share, to make together with a group of people. So at the beginning of my career, my main preoccupation was the abstract idea of music, and now it is about sharing the idea. More and more, I see my job as bringing energies together, rather than having an idea and making people do it.
My concept of a piece of music might be pretty good, and I hope I can inspire the group, but let’s see what the group brings. The ideas I have before rehearsal often change and develop through rehearsals, and I love that. You may have a clear idea of Brahms’s Second Symphony when you begin rehearsals, but then you listen to the clarinet solo, or to a particular sound in the orchestra, and you realise it could go another way.
How does that approach play out in concerts?
The concert becomes more like a meditation, a mindful experience. Mindfulness is a fashionable and dangerous word to use, but it’s a good one here, because if you’re doing well in a concert, and the musicians are focused, you exist in the present moment. You know where you are going, but you don’t need to think about the future, because you already have it internalised. Everyone knows where we are going, but we don’t need to be in the future: we can be focused on what is happening right now. Then the magic can happen.
How do you build audiences in your programming?
It depends where you are. It’s very important to bear in mind the background of the audience. In places where programming has been conservative, and you want to change that, you have to go step by step, because people are paying money for a ticket and they have their preferences. You need to be daring and bold, but also aware of whom you are addressing. It’s important to find ways to make programmes interesting, while keeping in mind the cultural background of the place.
You often speak from the stage to introduce works. What have you learnt about that?
I write four or five-minute presentations for many of the pieces I conduct, trying to say something interesting. I choose pieces where I feel people will benefit from knowing the background: Shostakovich 7th or 10th symphonies, Ein Heldenleben, Beethoven’s Eroica, for example. I enjoy speaking to the audience and I think they appreciate the conductor interacting – it brings them closer to the musicians.
I try to find an honest way of communicating. You have to tell a story and the rhythm should be agile – people haven’t come to a conference. I always prepare, because you can say a lot in a couple of minutes, but you can’t just pick up a microphone and say whatever comes to your mind. I don’t do it for every piece – I have to be convinced that the music will benefit from some introduction. I work hard on preparing a text that conveys as much interesting information in as little time as possible.
How has your repertoire developed over your career?
We live in a time where it’s very important to have a label. I find that difficult, because I have a very broad repertoire. I love working with chamber orchestras on Schumann, Beethoven or Brahms, and I have a great love for Mahler. However, some years ago, I was going through my diary and realised that nearly half of the pieces I conducted were Russian. I think that’s because emotion is so important in Russian music. There is form as well, and many other important aspects, but the intensity of emotions is something that I connect with very strongly, so Russian repertoire is a home for me.
I also love conducting modern repertoire, although new pieces need a lot more time than old ones to rehearse, because the language may be totally unfamiliar. I like to treat a new piece like a potential masterpiece and take it very seriously. It’s important to normalise new music. It should be part of any orchestra’s programming. Some people are pessimistic that audiences are conservative these days, but I don’t think so. It’s very much accepted that you have new music in a programme, and people are a lot more open than 20 or 30 years ago.
I suffer a little bit from being labelled as a symphonic conductor, but deep inside, genetically, I am an opera conductor. I like theatre very much and enjoy acting myself, so I feel very comfortable in the theatrical medium.
What acting experience have you had?
I took the first year of formal training to be an actor at the Academy Drama School in Whitechapel, but didn’t have time to carry on, as my conducting career took off. I have done other drama courses and some theatre, as well as short films with my brother, who is a digital creator and has won prizes at film festivals. I do whatever I can in his projects, as a hobby, and it has really enriched my work as a conductor.
What can classical musicians learn from actors?
The main point is to think more of the audience. On one of my drama courses, we were acting on stage, and were shown how if a character is feeling an emotion and reacts with their body, an inexperienced actor will do this too quickly for the audience to realise. You need to take the time to feel the emotion before making the movement, and then the movement will be very clear and meaningful. If something didn’t work, or you said something that wasn’t clear, the teacher would say, ‘Hey, the guy in row 14 is going to go home!’ When I was a flute player, nobody ever spoke to me like this. We always talked about music: more pianissimo here, the phrasing goes here, intonation. Music teachers hardly ever mentioned the audience.
When I work with an orchestra, I might get a decent subito piano, say, but I always think, ‘What about the guy in row 14? Has he enjoyed our subito piano?’ And the answer is usually, ‘No, he hasn’t,’ so we need to do something with nuances, dynamics and articulation that really reaches the back of the hall. This is not often in the mind of the musicians, but I always remember it from my drama classes.
You conduct youth orchestras regularly: what do you get out of the experience?
It’s a reconnection to the primal love that made me become a musician in the first place. Young people have a very honest love for music, which is so important. It’s easy to become too professional, without even realising. We have to be careful. If you become too professional, you get rid of the most important thing, which is the will to communicate your great love for music. You love this piece so much that you can’t stop performing it and shouting to the world, ‘Listen to this – this is a miracle!’ This is something that youngsters just do. They give 250 per cent. That’s why I need to work with youth orchestras at least once a year. A lot of my training as an orchestral musician came from playing in the National Youth Orchestra of Spain for four years, so I keep going back there to support the project, because it’s a beautiful one.
What are the responsibilities and obligations of professional musicians?
We have to bear in mind that we are privileged people. We get paid to do something we love. We must avoid staying in our artistic bubble. Artists are idealists: we think about our beautiful concert tonight, but we have to remember that we are part of a community. Orchestras should be accessible to all and we need to think of our whole society when we programme, not only concertgoers who can afford to come to concert halls. We need to find projects and ways of involving more communities. This is one of the main responsibilities as musicians – that we give something to our society. This should be at the core of our work, not because somebody told us that we should do it. It should be meaningful for us.
What are your hopes and fears for classical music?
Classical music will always be here and with the challenge of artificial intelligence I have a feeling that in 10 or 15 years, what we do will be even more necessary, essential even. Even if many jobs may be compromised, ours will never be. People won’t want to listen to an orchestra made of machines. Going to a concert hall to listen to a Brahms symphony may become a more important need as society keeps speeding up, the same way people are more and more drawn to retreats, spas or going for a walk in a forest. What we do as musicians is part of the same path and will become even more meaningful and valuable as time goes on. So, I’m optimistic about the future of classical music.
