Cracking the Glass Podium


Terry Hyde looks at some CDs recently donated to TASS* and discovers that they include11 Mozart symphonies conducted by...shock...horror... a woman!


This season of the BBC Proms featured five women conductors compared to 53 who were men (www.womeninmusic.org.uk). Although this was the highest number of female conductors ever at the Proms, it is not typical. In the previous 11 Prom seasons of this century, there was an average of only one female


conductor per season; and in three of these years, there were none at all. Does this matter? Is it evidence of discrimination? As the comedian Jackie Mason once pointed out: just because there are no Jews in the rodeo, this does not necessarily mean that the rodeo business is rife with anti-Semitism; it might be that Jews simply don’t want to be in the rodeo. Is it plausible that female musicians do not aspire to the baton and the podium? The best answer comes from Veronika Dudarova, who in 1947 became the 24


first woman to conduct a symphony orchestra. In the 1987 Swedish documentary film about women conductors: A Woman is a Risky Bet, she says “Only poor soldiers don’t want to be generals.”


Classical music has been steeped in conservative masculinity and misogyny for centuries, not least when it comes from the ‘maestro’ in the spotlight. Britain’s greatest


orchestra, the LSO, has a roster of six conductors: all men. All 12 winners of the LSO’s biennial conducting competition have been men. Blatant sexism along the lines that women make poor


conductors because they “lack gravitas“ or “don’t really understand music written by men” (the poor dears) has largely disappeared in the rest of the world, but there is still some way to go in Britain.


women conductors seems to have done little to inspire talented female musicians to consider conducting. However, this may be more to do with ageism than sexism. Despite being handicapped by not possessing a Y


chromosome, there will be gifted young women who feel that they have something to offer with the baton rather than the


The rarity of British


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33