Education in this kind of stuff didn't exist. It was the self education that was great fun, as well as playing the first Rameau opera on original instruments after a couple of hundred years, the first Haydn Creation and the first Bach St. John Passion.

Don:
What do you enjoy about conducting?

Nicholas:
What I really enjoy about conducting is not only performing, but rehearsing ... working out what one wants to do with the music. And it's a two way street. For example, German stage directors work on the idea that the cast has nothing to do with their interpretation, that the cast has nothing to contribute. Those directors are just sort of chess players. If I've got a bunch of singers, and I'm doing an opera we are making that opera work together. I cast them, but they also bring things to the performance. With a different cast it would work in a totally different way.

Don:
Most people study with a teacher to learn how to sing or play an instrument. How do you study conducting, and do you have any advice for young conductors?

Nicholas:
One of the best ways to study is to play in an orchestra. I played in all those orchestras in London; I played a little bit in operas, in school... so I've been very lucky to have played in a lot of groups. There's really no substitute for that. Orchestras have personalities, and I can tell right away whether an orchestra is happy or grumpy--not grumpy with me, but amongst themselves. If you do a lot of guest conducting you have to come in, be aware, and find a way to get the best out of them. I also know from experience and watching people that you don't preach. You don't come and say "I have all the answers, you know nothing and I will tell you," because the orchestra has studied and worked a lot. Certainly young conductors really get killed if they do that, because someone will say, "I've been playing in this orchestra for 40 years and know this repertoire for a longer time than you do."

Don:
Do the musicians in the Philharmonia literally play on period instruments, or do some of them play modern instruments in the style of the period?

Nicholas:
There are two answers. One is some people play genuine period instruments -- in other words, a 17th century cello, a 17th-century Dutch bass that had been owned by a friend of Lincoln's and was played at his inauguration and his funeral. Most wind players play on copies, because 18th-century wind instruments weren't valued like string instruments. Plus musicians in the 18th century led hard lives, traveled a lot, dropped their instruments, and sometimes simply played them out. Some of them were not necessarily that well made. If you blew hot air into an oboe for 20 years, it cracked, or maybe one of your kids stepped on it. Violins could be modernized, but your grandfather's oboe became obsolete. Things like pitch changed, so having an oboe at the wrong pitch wouldn't do you any good at all. A gentleman's instrument might have survived if it was made of ivory because that would be grand and a beautiful thing to own, even if nobody played it, in the same way a harpsichord is a nice piece of furniture. It just looks pretty in a corner of your room. Wind instruments were very much more utilitarian. They tended to survive by luck, mostly because people put them in drawers and forgot about them.

But one has to remember there's nothing wrong with playing on a copy that's maybe five or ten years old, because that's the age the instrument was when the person was playing it in the 18th century. They weren't playing old instruments, they were playing new instruments. If you were playing on a violin in the late 18th century, it might be prized for being a wonderful instrument, and if it was 50 years old, that was just fine. But even then you would play with the equivalent of a modern bow rather than the bow that would have played the violin back in 1710 or whenever.

The other side is: Even if performers are playing copies, are they using period techniques? The answer is yes. And it's important to differentiate between Baroque and Classical instruments. Wind instruments have different pitches, different numbers of keys, and different fingerings. Certainly, string players know about period bowing, and everyone is aware of period techniques, like how orchestras sat and how large orchestras were, relative to the size of the hall.

The most inauthentic person there, of course, is me. I have no place to be there at all, because I should either have written the music, in which case I would be the composer, or the music would have been led by the first violinist. There wasn't the interpreter of other people's music -- "il maestro" -- which is very much a 19th-century idea.

Don:
If the conductor had no role in the Baroque era, what role does the conductor of a modern Baroque orchestra have, and how does it differ from the role of a modern symphony conductor?

Nicholas:
If you're working with, say, the Saint Louis Symphony, they do something like 38 weeks of concerts a year. The music director maybe does 18 weeks, then a whole parade of guests do the rest. The conductor gets first pick of what he or she wants to do, and that conductor will have certain interests. Some conductors love choral music, some hate it. Some of them have quite limited repertoires of composers whose names begin with B -- Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner -- and that's about it, eked out with a little Schumann and Wagner. And then they get someone in to do the Russians or someone in to do Mozart, and occasionally they'll try their hand at something they don't usually do -- with interesting results sometimes. Usually with a symphony orchestra, there's an artistic administrator whose job is to coordinate the year's programs, to suggest soloists, or to maybe steer somebody away from a certain soloist. It's a bit like casting an opera. The conductor has a big say, but not the only say.

In a smaller outfit like the Philharmonia, where there are only seven weeks of concerts, my job is, in collaboration with the office, to take into account what the audience likes or doesn't like. There are certain things our audience sort of expects to hear, like a bit of Handel from time to time. The other thing that's important is having repertoire that creates interest. Since all of our composers are dead, and the number of discoveries is well below what one would like, we try to invest as much as we can in new editions or pieces that haven't been performed since the 18th century. We did the first official performance of Handel's Gloria; we did the Scarlatti Cecilian Vespers. These things don't come by every day. We might be a funny old period orchestra, but we're also only a couple of miles from Silicon Valley, so it's very nice to use computers and the modern technology that's up there to put editions together. Also, Philharmonia's mission statement is to play music on period instruments. It doesn't say what that music is, which is why we can do modern music on occasion.

There are people out there who are very picky listeners. There are certain people who won't come if there's too much vocal music, or too much choral music, or because we don't play enough Brandenburg Concertos. There are always a couple of people who complain if I do Beethoven because they feel they can go to the symphony to hear that. The fact that the symphony does it completely differently doesn't seem to matter. These people are just listening to repertoire, not how it's done. And that's a point of view I disagree with.

So, my job is to produce a season which is as broad as possible, to attract as many people as possible, even if it means losing a few who can't stand ... well, whoever. Our job is for every one person we might lose, to find 20 who will come. I choose what I want to do with my sets, then we choose the guest conductors, usually for what their particular strengths might be. I could conduct Buxtehude, but if someone has that in their veins, why not have them do it. It makes a great deal of sense for a violinist to do a program of string music. So, we choose along those lines.

Don:
What moved you and the Philharmonia forward into the Classical and early Romantic periods?

Nicholas:
One of the reasons is because we are an orchestra. There's a certain period before which there isn't an orchestra as such. It's an assembly of musicians that just happens to be what it is that day. That's different from an orchestra, which is essentially based around 16 or 17 string players and a harpsichord with winds attached. That really doesn't kick in until the 1670s or so. I was asked about playing the Monteverdi Vespers, but we don't have sackbuts, we don't have cornetts... there are only about three people in the orchestra who actually play the instruments called for in that piece. So the early part of the Baroque is sort of cut off from us to begin with.

I tend to think in terms of instruments, rather than repertoire. Before about 1830, the instruments are still recognizable. In other words, the flute that Lully used evolved into Bach's flute, then into the Classical flute. It still has a conical bore, it's essentially made of wood, it has more keys but essentially the same fingerings. Around the 1840s, instruments change. The flute changes completely. It has a cylindrical bore and is made out of metal. Horns start to become valve horns, pianos start having metal in them, and the idea of the continuo gets lost. Around 1830, you've got what is essentially the modern bow. So, you have that period from about 1650 to 1830 when period instruments do really make a difference. Again, Philharmonia is not quite set up for early Baroque music. We don't have the instruments, we don't have the spaces. It's also important to understand we're a touring orchestra: we play in four or five different venues for every single concert, so if we're attached to a pipe organ or something like that, it's a problem.

Don:
I've read that: "One of the greater things about having an interest in old music is the thrill of discovery. No matter how long we dig, how hard we practice, how intently we listen, there are always new discoveries." Do you agree?

Nicholas:
First of all, I don't know that it applies only to early music. If you can't have the thrill of discovery of doing any music, or finding new things in it, or realizing perhaps that what you thought was great is absolute junk in your interpretation, then you're in the business of microwaving rather than actually producing. You never get tired of it. I certainly know. I've done the Messiah well over 100 times now, and I don't get the slightest bit bored or jaded. Some people can be jaded in their twenties. Some musicians aren't jaded in their nineties. Eugene Ormandy's brother was 91 when he played in the 92nd Street Y orchestra, and he had the biggest smile on his face you could possibly imagine. The thrill that we don't get very often of course is the thrill that we're doing something absolutely for the first time. When we did [contemporary composer] Jake Heggie's piece, there was the composer sitting there saying, "Oh, let me just change this a little bit," or "That's a bit fast." Bach doesn't rise up from the grave -- he might roll in it -- and tell me that I've overshot the tempo or something. It doesn't happen. I have to say, it's rather good when it does.

Don:
What new directions have you seen early music going in?

Nicholas:
There are all kinds of changes. Modern orchestras used to resent playing early music and perhaps having so-called "specialists" coming in and telling them what to do when they knew perfectly well not to do it. All that seems to have disappeared. There are a lot of modern orchestras using period instruments when they play old music. Philharmonia's doing Beethoven, and it's doing Jake Heggie. At the other end, I can go to the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has been concentrating on the 3 Bs, and have a grand time doing Handel and Corelli ... and they're playing it fabulously.

Don:
Any thoughts about the way early music is taught in schools?

Nicholas:
Conservatories don't teach much before the 19th and 20th centuries and are therefore self-limiting. The western tradition concerning 19th- and 20th-century music is to play what the composer wrote, and don't ask questions. Early music is very different: it's music for the enjoyment of the people playing it. Musicians are expected to improvise, to jam. It has more to do with jazz, and it's very liberating. One of the things I think is wrong with education is that jazz isn't taught to musicians, and they don't have any improvising skills. When they play Corelli, they can't improvise, and they can't improvise cadenzas when they come to that.

Don:
Any advice to students considering a career in music?

Nicholas:
Don't let parents put you off. If you're passionate and want to be a musician, do it. Most every musician, outside of families of musicians, has had a family member tell them it's a bad idea. You don't have a choice if you're passionate about it. It's a calling as well as a job. If it's just a job, maybe you should look for another one.

Don Kaplan is the author of many articles, music critiques and books including See With Your Ears: The Creative Music Book. He has developed curriculum guides for The New York Times, taught at several colleges and universities including the Bank Street College of Education, conducted numerous teacher-training workshops, and been an artist-in-residence in a wide variety of settings. He is currently helping people learn about music as co-manager of The Musical Offering classical music store in Berkeley, CA.