Orchestra with the school music class and I just couldn’t believe how wonderful it was,” she recalls. “It was in Wellington at the town hall and I was just amazed by it. Then, when I went to university, I started getting the idea that this is what I’d like to do but it was a question of how at that point.


“I went to America to do postgraduate studies in Boston – I got a scholarship to their conservatory – and then I came to study here with William Pleeth, who was the teacher of Jacqueline Du Pre. I came on a New Zealand Arts Council grant. Initially, those were opportunities that I just couldn’t not take up.


“Then it was just a question of being able to meet masters here. For instance, I would never have met Leonid Grin if I hadn’t been in Europe. It’s exposure to those kinds of people that I really wanted to get.” Young says she always had a desire to conduct and she thinks her background as a cellist gives her a credibility among the musicians she works with. “For me it was natural to be sitting in an orchestra wanting to conduct it, but then I began to realise not everyone felt that way,” she says. “I definitely think that [experience as a cellist] is an advantage. It gives you a good insight into what is needed from a conductor if you have sat on the other side, as it were.” As for the programme for next month’s concert, entitled


Masterworks from Moscow, Young says the idea is to attract a wide audience with the most well-known composers and then treat them to others that they may not be as familiar with. And she says the ethos and approach to technique demonstrated by the Russian Virtuosi of Europe is a quality she really values. “Every one of the players is technically of a very high standard,” she says. “They love music and there is a tremendous commitment and openness to performing. That’s what I love about them and their whole philosophy.”


Although she is quick to point out that she is at the beginning of her professional life (“I started studying with Leonid in 2009 and so I’m just emerging from that really”), Young already has vivid ideas about the kind of work she wants to produce. “The most important thing about an orchestra is everybody is there to play to their utmost and do their best and really give commitment to the concert and the music they are playing,” she concludes. “That really is the key to everything, as far as the orchestra is concerned. And the [ideal] music is very difficult to choose – Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich... Anything like that would be just amazing.”


As luck would have it, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky (along with Schnittke) are on the bill at the Cadogan Hall event. So it sounds as if Young’s career path is hitting all the right notes so far.


Rachael Young and the Russian Virtuosi of Europe present Masterworks from Moscow at Cadogan Hall on November 23 at 7.30pm. www.cadoganhall.com


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