Get to know Andrew Manze

This is the first time you’ve worked with the Philharmonia. How do you form a connection with a new orchestra very quickly when you’ve only got a short amount of rehearsal time?

First of all, I’m really excited to meet the Philharmonia. Being an ex-violinist myself, I know what it’s like to sit in an orchestra, so I understand and appreciate everyone’s various roles. Having said that, it’s impossible to predict how the chemistry will be with a new conductor. British orchestras are always time-poor yet talent-rich, and they work unbelievably quickly, (they have to!) so I know we will all get straight into the nitty gritty of the music and work out together what it’s about. That’s the challenge – but it’s a fun one.

Have you and Lise de la Salle ever performed together before?

I haven’t met Lise de la Salle before so, when preparing to work with new soloists, I listen to them online – and Lise has recorded lots of beautiful things. Right now I have her Schumann album playing. Any friend of Schumann is a friend of mine, so I think we’ll be fine together.

What are the main differences between how people would have heard these pieces when they were first written, and how we’ll experience them in this concert?

Yes, the piano and orchestral instruments are very different nowadays, and so are our modern ears in many ways, but I believe our hearts are similar, so it is surely possible to recapture the feeling the original listeners had. When doing ‘old’ music like these Haydn and Mozart concertos, I like to imagine that we can smell the ink on the page because it is still wet. On the other hand, the ‘Unfinished’ was already a dusty relic when it was first performed in 1865, long after Schubert’s death, but the audience was entranced. As the local critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, it was ‘as if, after a long separation, the composer himself were among us in person’.

Do you have a favourite moment in any of the pieces in this evening’s programme that people should listen out for?

All three pieces are bursting with wonderful, often sublime moments but I will single out the transitional phrases in the ‘Unfinished’’s second movement where Schubert spins the sound to a gossamer thinness, so that time stops and we hardly dare breathe.

What music do you enjoy listening to as a break from work?

I am so lucky that my hobby is also my work. Listening to other musicians is always a joy. That’s probably why I am a conductor.

Which other concert coming up in our London season would you most like to hear, and why?

Having lived and worked in Scandinavia, my appetite is particularly whetted by Sibelius No. 2 with Emilia Hoving on 27 October, Nielsen No. 5 with Santtu-Matias Rouvali on 3 November and Sibelius No. 1 with Esa-Pekka Salonen on 10 November. But I can honestly say that I wish I could hear them all!”

Andrew Manze joins the Philharmonia Orchestra and pianist Lise de Le Salle for a programme of Haydn, Schubert and Mozart at the Royal Festival Hall, London on Sunday 6 October and De Montfort Hall, Leicester on Friday 4 October.