The evening of Wednesday 20 April 1983 was like any other. The temperature was quite temperate. At the Lane Cove Town Hall, however, the evening was hotting up and in a state of controlled panic. It was the opening night of the Lane Cove Light Opera Company’s initial production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore. The musical director was Greg Yurisich (then a principal baritone at Opera Australia), the director was Stuart Maunder (later to become artistic administrator at Opera Australia) and looking after everything buzzing around in his usual cheerful manner was the late Gordon Wilcock (then a principal tenor, also at Opera Australia). However there was one other outstanding event that night. Simone Young, then 22, took up a baton for the first time. Even then she showed the confidence and maturity that has since characterised her professional life. She wore a basic black dress and heels. Nothing’s changed…these days her conducting heels are daringly longer. ‘I keep falling over myself if I wear flats,’ she jokes. But her little black number remains.
Born to immigrant parents, Harry from Northern Ireland and Simone senior from a small island off the Dalmatian coast, the younger Simone was educated at North Sydney’s Monte Sant’Angelo Mercy College. Music was an obsession even then, but more as a teaching pursuit. Further studies at Mme Leila Chalmers piano tuition school on Manly’s Eastern Hill followed. Further studies at the Sydney Conservatorium proved anti-climactic for an independently minded Simone and she sought solace in teaching at Riverview College where she met a French teacher called Greg Condon. They married, now have 2 grown up daughters, and to ensure they spent the maximum time with each other she taught him to love opera and in return he instructed her on the finer points of cricket. But more of that in a mo.
Simone toiled as a repetiteur at The Australian Opera with the occasional conducting stint from 1983 before joining Cologne Opera in 1987. There followed the purgatorial years which husband Greg equates to being in a wilderness ‘when Simone seemed to have fallen off the edge as far as Australia was concerned. The people in Cologne, recognising what a vast talent she had, exploited her to the full. Then came a stroke of fate; she met Daniel Barenboim. ‘He was a vital ingredient in my development,’ Simone recalls. ‘I assisted Daniel in Bayreuth…then in Paris and then he hired me as a conductor at the Berlin State Opera.’ Invitations began to flow from the major opera houses, including Australia.
Coming back to the cricket. ‘I immediately developed a love for it,’ she admits. ‘I like the strategy and the mental games that are part of it. When we were saving for a house I even worked part time at the Sydney Cricket Ground selling meat pies and hot dogs. That was the summer Greg Chappell scored a double century in a test match when he was ill.’ Even when away from home she keeps in touch with Australian cricket via satellite TV. Not like the bad old days when she and Greg were forced to listen to the BBC short-wave transmission of the Ashes Test in January 1987 ‘while huddled for warmth in Paris. Snow was piled high in drifts outside and to make matters worse there was a power strike. We each had 3 layers of clothing plus all the doonas and blankets we could find.’
Simone’s other great love is old-time movies. ‘It’s tied up with my job really,’ she explains. ‘I don’t usually get home much before 10 on most nights. To wind down I watch TV and if I’m lucky I might get reruns of the old black and white Perry Mason movies. My all-time favourite is Singin’ in the Rain because I think Gene Kelly is terrific. But I’ll watch anything with Judy Garland whether it’s good or bad. I love Bette Davis, Katharine and Audrey Hepburn.’ Lately she’s discovered Marlene Dietrich. ‘They’re all so relaxing and pure escapism, especially the musicals. My idea of bliss is watching the movies with a glass of red wine, a really good blue cheese with a few dates and walnuts.’
How did a lass from suburban Balgowlah get to become this titanic, albeit high-heeled, figure in Australian music? ‘I guess from the outside it looks like ambition,’ she explains when pressed for the secrets of her success. ‘It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with needing to make music in the best way I am capable of, which automatically means that as your own standards improve you start looking for better orchestras and better singers. Plus, you soon realise you need to learn more languages. And [to understand the thinking behind the various compositions] you begin reading the philosophies the composers read, you start seeking the art work available to them and you become eager to experience the conditions of the halls they performed in. And so you start climbing that ladder. I’ve always said I’ll do things to the best of my ability and to do that I need to have the best people around me.’
What does conducting mean to her? ‘I am a musician whose instrument is the orchestra. It is a huge privilege to spend my life performing the great masterpieces of the entire classical repertoire. It is a hugely demanding profession, physically and mentally, and yet it is my profession. There is very little magic about it – the old adage of 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration still holds.’
Australia, and particularly Sydney, loves Simone. I recall one evening late in 2003 when Simone conducted the Elizabethan Trust Orchestra in a concert which included Holst Planets and Mahler’s Rückert lieder. The audience was transfixed as Simone swayed, danced, cajoled, swept, squatted and sensually redefined the art of conducting. We clapped, stamped our feet and ‘bravoed’ well before the final chords of Pluto had time to settle. It wasn’t Sydney anymore; it was Madrid during a bullfight or Paris after France had won the soccer World Cup or Australia after winning an Ashes series 5 zip. What has happened to the conservative classical Sydney audience of yore? Has Simone Young’s presence alone changed musical mores? The reality is Australia can’t get enough of Simone. They love her with an unreserved adulation shown only to a favourite daughter or a talented niece or even a spoilt grandchild. Perhaps it is because we have become accustomed to the anonymity of the conductor operating from an operatic pit with just the occasional glimpse of a baton or a hand beating time. We now demand more. Simone dressed in full conductor’s regalia, black tails, flared pants and a daring neckline (replacing the obligatory white bib) perfectly suits the flamboyance we expect. Her flowing locks swaying to the rhythm of the music reminds us of a romantic figure from some bygone era.
She led Opera Australia for a little while but when her term was up they failed to renew her contract and she popped up in Hamburg as chief executive of the State Opera and eventually chief conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. This was 2005. She is conscious of following in the illustrious footsteps of Gustav Mahler whom she admires greatly. She also loves the music of Bruckner, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Wagner. By the time she finished in 2015 she had recorded all of Bruckner’s 9 symphonies plus his 2 study symphonies.
I catch up with Simone as she prepares for her concert series in Adelaide which includes Emma Matthews, Lisa Gasteen (one of her all-time favourites), Catherine Carby and Miriam Gordon-Stewart. The programme is based on the music of Richard Strauss. Itemised below is the programme for the 4 Sydney concert, which include pianist Louis Lorte and Cantillation.
So what’s it like being ‘free’ after her 10 year tenure in Hamburg? ‘In Hamburg, besides my musical obligations, I had to deal a lot with the public. Also I was responsible for a staff of 700 people. That takes a toll after 10 years. Now my only responsibility is to the music. I don’t accept any engagements where I don’t approve of the programme. What is performed depends quite a bit on the orchestra, on whether the singers or chorus are available and on whether it agrees with my love of romantic and modern music.’
Simone is currently accompanied by her husband Greg on this tour of the main orchestras in Australia. It commenced in Brisbane, went to Perth and is now in Adelaide. Her children Yvann 31, is an accountant with a financial company and the younger Lucie, 22 has just graduated with her Bachelor of Music and is contemplating her next move.
I will finish with something I saw when Simone was being interviewed on SBS more moons ago than I can remember. It has nothing to do with Simone waving a baton or being an executive of some symphony orchestra or opera company. It concerns Yvann when she was 3 going on 4. “Mummy,” she said, “when you’re away from home there’s a hole in my arms.”
Sydney Concerts: Wednesday 21 August at 6.30pm, Thursday 22 August 22 at 1.30pm, Friday 23 August at 8 pm, Saturday 24 August at 2pm. The programme for the 21 August concert is James Ledger’s ‘Two Memorials (for Anton Webber and John Lennon)’, Schubert arr Liszt ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ and Liszt ‘Dante Symphony’. The other concerts are: Overture to Schubert’s ‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’, Schubert arr Liszt ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ and Liszt ‘Dante Symphony’.