He's young and talented . . and the future of classical music

Published on Thursday 9 October 2008 21:53

HE IS a musical prodigy accustomed to wielding his conducting baton. But as Robin Ticciati prepares to lead the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as its principal conductor, his main concern is not musical scores, but golfing ones.

A surprise choice of conductor at the age of just 25, the tousle-haired musician last night revealed he was looking forward to taking on some of Scotland's top golf courses.

Mr Ticciati learned the piano aged eight and the violin a year later – much later than classical prodigies such as Scotland's Nicola Benedetti.

At 13, he set his sights on being a conductor as he " wanted to tell the whole story, rather than sit on one instrument".

However, while, as he states, his devotion to music is so encompassing "that's why I wake up in the morning", like any 25-year-old he has other outlets.

"I love golfing, and it's going to be a great challenge to have a go at Scotland's courses.

"But I also love cooking, just concocting things, throwing ingredients together.

"I have a wonderful girlfriend, we love going out for a film or even better just ordering one in. It can be art house at one extreme, or a blockbuster like The Bourne Identity at the other."

However living and working with music makes the moments of quiet even more important: "Walking by the sea is one of the most important activities to me. I'm really forward to doing that in Scotland."

A group of Scottish Chamber Orchestra musicians lobbied management to offer the conductor a contract after working under him for three concerts on a Highland tour last year.

The attraction was mutual; Mr Ticciati said that in each concert he found "new colours, new shapes" with the orchestra, saying its musical capacity was "phenomenal".

Roy McEwan, the orchestra's managing director, said: "For a young man, he has an amazingly charismatic stage presence and charm – personal charm."

He will lead the orchestra in Edinburgh for the first time late next year, with luck in the refurbished Usher Hall.

Mr Ticciati's conducting career has been meteoric. At 15 he first took up the baton to conduct an amateur male choir; by his early 20s, he was a veteran of concert halls from London to Milan.

"My brother and sister played and music was always in the family," he said. "My grandparents were musicians from Italy."

His grandfather, Miso Ticciati, was a well-known conductor and arranger. Like his mentor, Sir Simon Rattle, he dropped violin for percussion as a youth musician, to survey the orchestra from a different perspective.

He added: "It was a desire and a wish and a thought ever since I was 13, that this was something I wanted to be."

At Cambridge, he conducted the university symphony orchestra as well as his first opera.

There has been a trend of younger conductors at Scottish orchestras.

Garry Walker, an associate conductor at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra at 26, said: "There may be now a more specialist route to conducting, because the training starts earlier, and people mature younger."

Last year, Mr Ticciati was confirmed as a rising star when he was named music director of Glyndebourne on Tour, the opera festival's touring arm.

In 2006 he became the youngest debut conductor at the Salzburg Festival.

Exceptional musicians are off the scale

Other musical prodigies:

Nicola Benedetti

Now 21, the Scottish violinist started to learn the instrument at the age of four and reached grade eight at the age of nine. At 15, she was a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra and at 16 won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.

Sir Simon Rattle

Entered the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1971, at 16. At 19 he won the John Player Conductor Competition. He was a conductor in the Glyndebourne Festival aged 22 – the only person to beat Ticciati's record.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

By the age of five, Mozart could read and write music and was beginning to compose. As a teenager in Rome he famously heard Gregorio Allegri's famous Miserere just once then wrote it out from memory.

Yo-Yo Ma

The celebrated Chinese-American cellist, now 52, studied the instrument when he was four. He gave his first public recital aged five, and performed at New York's Carnegie Hall at age nine.