Latin passion comes to the Proms
Marin Alsop is blazing a trail in her career – and in music, says
Three years ago, the American conductor Marin Alsop shattered more than 100 years of inequality when she became the first woman in history to lead proceedings at the Last Night of the Proms. This week she returns to the Royal Albert Hall with the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra and fully intends to bust another stereotype: that Europeans are superior to everyone else when it comes to creating and performing classical music.
“Last time we came to the Proms, people were surprised by the worldclass musicians of this orchestra,” she smiles. “I think they’ll be even more amazed this year.”
Alsop has been Music Director at Sao Paolo since 2012, and like the proudest of mothers, she talks in glowing terms about the unique qualities that her musicians will bring to SW7 on Wednesday night.
“They’re very devoted to the work, yet still maintain their identity in terms of bringing that Latin sense of passion and emotionality to the table.”
With a programme showcasing some of Brazil’s finest composers, from Villa-Lobos to the contemporary Marlos Nobre, this summer’s tour in Europe (the orchestra also play the Lucerne and Edinburgh International Festivals) is “an enormous opportunity for us to connect with the broader world”.
Growing up in New York City, Alsop, 59, did not see any women on orchestral podiums. But she remembers being taken by her musician parents to a young people’s concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein and becoming “obsessed”. She was nine years old. “It was a religious calling, I never even questioned it”.
In those days, female maestri were as rare as hen’s teeth, but Alsop says: “I didn’t think about the gender issue. Bernstein was my idol and my hero, and then he became my teacher. And I had parents who were incredible role models, particularly my mother, who believed that you can do anything you want to in life.”
Her remarkable career does seem to forged on such principles. When New York’s Juilliard School rejected her for their postgraduate conducting programme, she founded her own orchestra, Concordia, and honed her craft with them.
When the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony rebelled at her historic appointment as Music Director (the for any woman at a major orchestra), she simply put her head down and got on with the job.
Ten years on, Baltimore is viewed as one of the most impressive symphony orchestras in the world and it has now renewed Alsop’s contract not once but twice, and she will be there until at least 2021.
Alsop is careful when I ask if she ever felt a victim of prejudice.
“I don’t think in terms like that,” she replies, evenly. “I think everyone’s probably a victim of prejudice to one degree or another, and there are certainly many people who are more mistreated for the wrong reasons than I am. So I feel mostly privileged.”
She is excited about showing off the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra this week. “Brazil has a very rich musical heritage, and these composers have a wonderful way of blending the popular idiom into their classical works.” Some classical conductors would be horrified at the prospect of bring anything “popular” to the classical concert hall.
“Well, I think when we let down those barriers, there can be an incredible hybrid that can connect people to our artform in a much deeper and more relevant way,” she counters.
“I like the idea of not so many barriers and boundaries between things.” Marin Alsop conducts the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra in Proms 51 & 52 on Wednesday 24th August at 7pm and 10.15pm at the Royal Albert Hall. Tickets from £6. Box Office: 0845 401 5040 Live on BBC Radio 3. bbc.co.uk/proms