News and Press

Following his performance with the RPO and Natasha Paremski last month at the Royal Albert Hall (The Great Classics), conductor Eduardo Portal talks to Hannah Nepil about what it takes to be a professional conductor.

Who can resist the whiff of danger? For Eduardo Portal, it’s exactly what makes his job so thrilling. ‘Conducting is high risk,’ he says. ‘Only yesterday, when I was conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, I felt that the concert was entirely in my hands because the players were reacting so accurately to my slightest gesture. So I felt that if I performed well, then the concert would be a success. But if I made a mess of it – well…’ He trails off.

Hannah Nepil speaks to Amanda Forsyth, lead cellist of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, ahead of their collaboration with the RPO at the end of the month.

There’s a matter-of-fact quality to Amanda Forsyth’s voice when she says, ‘it was the worst and best time of my life.’ The Canadian cellist is describing the run-up to the 2011 world premiere of A Ballad of Canada, the last piece ever composed by her father, Malcolm Forsyth. He was suffering from pancreatic cancer at the time and had been told he had two months to live. ‘But he lived for nine and the reason was that he had this premiere and he wanted to be there. And he was. Somehow he managed to get, with his oxygen tanks, to Ottawa,’ Forsyth recalls.

The concert on Thursday 27 November at Cadogan Hall, featuring conductor Alessandro Fabrizi and pianist Alexandra Dariescu, is dedicated to Music and Neuroscience – a scientific project that aims to develop and deepen understanding of the relationship between the themes of music production and science.

Picture the following scenario: you’re feeling under the weather, so you make an appointment with your GP. After a lot of ho-humming, they dispatch you to a specialist, who prescribes three hours of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto shaken up with half an hour of Haydn’s Nelson Mass – to be taken twice daily with food and absolutely no Wagner.