Alpesh Chauhan
A conductor who reads a score for its architecture first, which is why his Dvořák sounds built rather than played.
- Born
- 1990
- Based
- Birmingham
- Hear them at
- BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
How Alpesh plays.
Builds, rather than sculpts
Structure comes first. Long movements arrive somewhere, and you can hear where from about four minutes in.
Trusts the strings to be quiet
His pianissimos are genuinely quiet, which is a risk in a 2,475-seat hall and part of why the loud passages work.
Unsentimental about the famous bits
The New World’s Largo does not slow to a crawl. Some people will miss that; it is a real choice, not an oversight.
The short version.
Chauhan came up through the Birmingham cello section and then the CBSO’s conducting scheme, and it shows in how he treats the middle of an orchestra: violas and second violins get lines to play rather than filler to hold. Orchestras tend to sound wider under him than they do the week before.
He is not a podium showman. The gestures are small and the tempi are steady, which makes the moments he does push land harder. If you have been put off conductors who perform at the audience, he is the corrective.
Coming to Scotland.
- Sat 17 Oct19:30Dvořák’s New World SymphonyBBC SSOWith Elena UriosteGlasgow Royal Concert HallTickets
Who else does this.
Chosen for a stated reason, not because other people clicked both.
- Conductor
Thomas Søndergård
The same preference for structure over gesture, in the room next door with the RSNO.
- Conductor
Ryan Wigglesworth
Also a composer, and it shows in the same way — the inner parts get looked after.