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22.08.08

What the papers said ...

Kathryn Flett, The Observer

I watched Maestro (BBC2) mostly because it was there, and not because I expected to be wildly entertained by a mixed bag of slebs learning to conduct, which just goes to show how wrong I can be because it was riveting.

A lot of this was down to the casting, for it is only at the surrealist cocktail party of one's dreams/nightmares that Peter Snow struggles with his baton technique alongside Goldie and David Soul, with helpful hints from Bradley Walsh and Jane Asher. . . but once you'd got over the shock and shelved all your preconceptions (Snow ought to be good at it just because he sounds as though he should be, while Alex James would obviously be great simply because he used to be in Blur) then you couldn't drag yourself away from the gripping drama of it all, not even to check on the swimming.

And I learned lots - not least what a conductor actually does. I mean, I understood the essence of it, obviously, but it's only when you hear an orchestra conducted very badly that you can appreciate why it is so difficult to do it well, and certainly the BBC Concert Orchestra has never sounded more crappily cacophonous than it did under the baton of Peter Snow, who proved to have the innate musicality of a weightlifter, albeit with much less rhythm, while Alex James's attempt at interpreting Bizet may have prompted a judge to comment that it was 'a rock 'n' roll Carmen', but they were just being polite.

Aside from James, Sue Perkins, Katie Derham and Jane Asher all know their way round a score and cajoled ladylike performances from the orchestra, while Bradley Walsh's mentor described him, sweetly, as 'in the zone with the Prokofiev', and David Soul somehow got through it without kicking over cardboard boxes or crashing a car.

But it was only with the final performance, when graffiti-artist-turned-drum'n'bassmaster-turned-actor-cum-all-round 21st century renaissance geezer Goldie took to the podium to give us his Grieg, that we saw why conducting is equal parts technique, performance and X factor.

You straight away knew it was going to be good because Goldie looked so completely at home he may as well have been in front of the decks in a club. By the end, however, when his mentor punched the air and judge Sir Roger Norrington declared, 'this guy's a conductor. . . terrific stuff, total control', it had been a journey so thrilling I immediately had to watch it another half a dozen times.

Goldie may not be able to read music but he has the blindingly obvious advantage of not only already being a composer of sophisticated soundscapes but also, via DJing, of being a conduit between music and its audience. Alex James may as well stick to cheese, while if the rather smug Jane Asher wins, I'll eat an entire cheesecake.

Clare Heal, The Express on Sunday

I'm not a gambling woman. I have enough vices already without adding another to the list but, were I partial to a flutter, I would place money now on Goldie to win Maestro (BBC2, Monday).

The BBC's "Baton Idol" show is unexpectedly thrilling and the drum 'n' bass star clearly a conducting natural.

Initially, the very concept of this programme elicited nothing from me but cynical laughter: eight celebrities competing for a chance to conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra at Proms In The Park.

It seemed such an obscure, elitist thing to put on TV that I couldn't imagine it catching on at all.

After all, how many people really understand what it is that conductors actually do? They look impressive in their tailcoats but how hard can it really be to wave a stick around?

One of the judges, Sir Roger Norrington, conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, attempted to explain: "You need to be able to react to the music and bring out all its secrets, all its hidden perfumes, " he said with feeling but little meaning.

This, however, turns out to be the genius of the show. Rather than attempt to explain what exactly it is that conductors do, Maestro shows us. We learn at the same time as the contestants.

Roland White, The Sunday Times

Maestro looks extremely promising. It's jolly and uplifting, makes you feel good about the characters and is not afraid to offer some proper facts: conducting exercises you might try at home. You probably shouldn't book the Albert Hall after watching, but you could do no worse than Peter Snow. Unable to read music, and with arms that took on a life of their own, he was voted out at the end of the first programme. Cruelly, the orchestra has the final say.

The winner will conduct at Proms in the Park, and the early favourite was Goldie, the drum'n'bass DJ, who conducted with such vigour that he had the various sections of the orchestra sprinting neck and neck to the finish line.

David Lister, The Independent

Why, come to think of it, is it only conductors who are called Maestro? Other cultural figures at the top of their profession do not get such an elevated form of address. The National Theatre's Nicholas Hytner is a talented bloke, but I'm sure he'd blush if I addressed him as Maestro. Sir Paul McCartney would consider it a bit pompous. Even the seemingly immortal Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate, revealed today to be indispensable in the visual arts and having his contract renewed yet again, is a mere "Sir". Art Galleries do not produce maestros. Conductors, though, wear the epithet effortlessly. They are simply not as other men.

And so I look to a drum'n'bass man such as Goldie, pictured, and his fellow plain speaking TV Maestro celebrities such as Alex James and Katie Derham to cut through some of the more forbidding territory that surrounds the conductor's art and to show the rest of us that it is the art of the possible.

If the BBC does manage to illuminate the art of conducting to a much wider public, then that new audience will discover that this is the age of the charismatic conductor.

Andrew Billen, The Times

The complacent, overlong yet not exactly unengaging reality series Maestro, in which celebs compete to become orchestra conductors, was presumably conceived to challenge the common prejudice that any fool can wave a baton. The opening instalment had the opposite effect. If the drum'n'bass DJ Goldie could conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra to the acclamation of professionals after just five days' training, what were we to think? Faced with this phenomenon, the judge Roger Norrington squealed: "This guy is a conductor! It is disgraceful. He can't even read music." ...

... It was all very polite and parlour game - or would have been if some sadist had not persuaded the "BBC icon" Peter Snow to take part. This was like telling Douglas Bader that he had something to offer Strictly Come Dancing. Windmill Arms hasn't a musical bone in his body. With the doomed intensity of a Georgian tank commander, he took the orchestra on in a deadly battle that left Prokofiev slain. Audience members could be observed screwing their ears shut. His ejection was a mercy culling but, to be honest, in 90 minutes, the nearest thing to music to my ears was the compere Clive Anderson's ad-libs.

Deborah Orr, The Independent

... It was quite a revelation, seeing just how appalling a noise an untutored conductor could achieve from a group of fine professionals. One had nothing but admiration for the orchestra, who did as they were told, even when being told by an idiot. They no doubt could have played these pieces of music - Bizet's Carmen, Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights, Strauss's The Blue Danube, and Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King - blindfold. But the illustration of their obedience to even the most inept of direction confirmed that the eight entertainers had all taken on an daunting task.

The line-up consisted of three actors, Jane Asher, David Soul and Bradley Walsh; two newsreaders, Peter Snow and Katie Derham; two popular musicians, Goldie and Alex James; and one comic, Sue Perkins. All had some background in music, except Snow, who was deservedly dispatched in the first programme. Fittingly, the members of the orchestra had the final say on who should leave.

Because it was made so very clear that the eight had wandered into a realm of awesome complexity and skill, the show quickly established itself as weirdly compelling.