What do conductors actually do? Review of ‘Inside Conducting’ by Christopher Seaman

Conductors love telling stories, especially stories about other conductors, and every chapter of this otherwise determinedly pragmatic book begins with one. Perhaps the most telling concerns a ‘famous conductor’ who mistakenly gave a massive downbeat in a bar that was supposed to be silent. The orchestra, reading the score correctly, did not play. Voice from the back of the violas: ‘He doesn’t sound so good on his own, does he?’

The anecdote illuminates the driving question behind this book, the one we’ve all wanted to ask while fearing to sound ignorant: what do conductors actually do? Some are sceptical. The Polish pianist André Tchaikowsky told Christopher Seaman that he never looked at conductors ‘because he couldn’t understand what any of them were doing’. Others find it a hard question to answer. In 2012, the music journalist Tom Service interviewed six great conductors about ‘how they do it’. It was fascinating, but you walked away from Music as Alchemy almost as mystified as when you walked in.