A Hero’s Life – meet our President, Sir Mark Elder CH CBE

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sir Mark Elder becoming the London Philharmonic Choir’s President in 2014, we had the opportunity to chat with him about working together, why he chose to be our President and find out more about his fabulous upcoming concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the 25th October.

Sir Mark Elder was Music Director of The Hallé until June 2024, and is now their Conductor Emeritus. He became Principal Guest Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2022, was Music Director of English National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, USA. Sir Mark works regularly in the most prominent international opera houses and has worked with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras. He’s also principal artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) and works regularly with our own wonderful orchestra – the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), which is how we’ve come to know him so well.

Why then, with this phenomenally busy career and workload, did he choose to be our President?

“Well of course I’ve worked with you all for a very long time and I’ve always enjoyed it. I felt we got on well and we all knew what I wanted and you were really able to deliver it. I have always had the feeling that the Choir is full of people who have a great imagination and who are very passionate and spirited in their attitude towards the music we were preparing together, which is a terrific quality.”

“Over the years of course we’ve done a lot of varied music together from Beethoven to Berlioz and Mahler to MacMillan. One piece that stands out in particular for me is when we performed the whole opera of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischutz together with the OAE and you were completely in it and it all merged to make a great theatrical atmosphere – I was very, very thrilled with that. And then of course, there’s Elgar. His music is not straight forward and it needs work. As I’m sure you know, I’m a huge Elgar fan and am championing his work so that his legacy will live on. I remember how nervous I was about first doing The Gospels and The Kingdom but we took them head on and they were brilliant, and of course you’ve all been up to Manchester to collaborate on Elgar’s music with the Hallé Orchestra and Chorus which we all enjoyed performing together.”

“I wanted to be the Choir’s President because I wanted to show that I support this kind of work, and also an orchestra having a choir. It was the first step for me of realising how I could help the choral tradition of our country keep growing and you are a marvellous choir to be supporting that with. I’m very proud of you all and I’m look forward to working with you again, something I know we will be doing next year. It’s always good to know that there are things in the diary together for the future and the next eighteen months are no exception.

Unfortunately I can’t talk about that just yet, but I can tell you about the marvellous concert I’m excited to be conducting with the LPO on the 25th October at the Royal Festival Hall. The LPO is the London orchestra I’ve known for the longest time, because of Glyndebourne really, and I’ve always felt connected with them and wanted to develop this connection – we’ve done some terrific things over the years. This programme is a marvellous one because it suits their whole range of skills and playing; the concert starts small as it were and gets bigger and bigger as we play towards the grand finale of Ein Heldenleben – A Hero’s Life.”

“We start with the complete ballet of Ravel’s Mother Goose, a chamber work of such delicacy and refinement. The complete ballet isn’t often played and it’s a different experience so it’s definitely one to hear. It’s theatrical and full of divine colours and effect; at one level it’s a way of getting the audience’s ears tuned to the subtleties of the orchestral playing before the epic and grand finale to come.

In between these two pieces we hear the rarely performed Second Violin Concerto by Bruch which I’m doing with Canadian violinist James Ehnes (rhymes with tennis by the way!). He is a great friend and colleague of mine and he’s a great person to espouse the cause of this little known and rather lovely romantic concerto.

Finally then we come to Strauss’s stupendous Ein Heldenleben. It’s a grand piece which I’ve done all over the world, and I still love and respect it and try to get the best out of it – it has to be spirited and sometimes amusing and dreamy, not pompous.

It has the most wonderful sections where different parts of The Hero’s life are put under the microscope. I love the scene with his wife, played by the violin; she keeps trying to to sleep but he, the not so subtle horn, keeps waking her up. My favourite bit is the end where Strauss quotes more than thirty themes and motifs from his previous pieces – even from the opera Guntram which we don’t really know – so we need to understand which pieces come out throughout the journey.

It’s a piece in which you can absolutely enjoy the mastery of the orchestra which is really, really huge; his writing in this piece is imaginative, virtuosic and mature. Strauss was going to finish it abruptly but was told you can’t do that – you need to metaphorically extend and enjoy your retirement at the end as it were, and so was born this famous coda when the wife and he, the hero, play out their last duet together in an atmosphere of resignation and mellow calm that makes for a fantastic finish.”