Classical & Opera: New man in the know at RSNO

That’s not to denigrate Woods, who was exactly the right appointment to see the RSNO restore its reputation as a national orchestra, both artistically and commercially, which he did with considerable success during his five years running the ship, and after a period of stagnation.

With audiences now substantially up, and the forthcoming transition between outgoing music director Stéphane Denève (opening his final season next week along with violinist Nicola Benedetti) and his successor Peter Ounjian firmly in place, the engine would seem to be purring over nicely.

So what list of priorities does that leave for Elliott, who has spent the past three years as director of culture at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in London, with a broad remit that included restructuring the Cultural Olympiad in England?

And why would he want to come back to running an orchestra, having previously done that with considerable success in Liverpool between 2001 and 2008, where he transformed the near bankrupt Liverpool Philharmonic into the healthy organisation it now is?

For Elliott, it makes absolute sense. “I’ve never returned to a sector of the business I’d been in before,” he says. “Generally I’ve moved on with transferrable skills and knowledge to something new.

“In the case of Liverpool, I took an orchestra on its uppers financially and artistically and got it into a great place. Then it was off to government where I had major cultural strategies to play with, but not before I had been seconded to Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture directorate to help rescue a bid process that had got lost on the way.”

That last task enabled him to draw on the experience he previously gained in Birmingham as chief executive of the Heart of England Tourist Board, an industry wholly dependent on partnership activity and the ability to pull public and private sector interests together.

“But the RSNO, being a national rather than a city orchestra, is something new for me. And having had six years of considerable development and growth, it is at a similar stage as the Liverpool Phil was when I left it. So I feel I’m coming to the job at the point where I left off. The challenge now is to take the RSNO to the next stage. But this is a particularly hard time for any arts body, with cuts prescribed over the next three years and little likelihood of a reprieve in the foreseeable future.

“The RSNO’s current success has built confidence among our audiences. Confidence allows you to be more outward facing, to build trust with others to do things. In difficult times like this you have to be more expansive, working at partnerships, otherwise you just keep contracting,” he argues. “The way forward is not to cut the beans, not to cut things out. I’ve worked in funding; I’ve worked in government; I’ve worked with so many leading organisations, and I know it to be true. Money follows ideas.” (If only Scottish Opera had adopted such fighting talk all those years ago, rather than contract into the bit-part company it now is.)

One of his priorities is to loosen up the rigidity of the orchestra, a process that has already begun in the chamber music series now established as a by-product of the main season, which Elliott believes can be developed further to strengthen the orchestra’s activities outwith the core Classical concert season.

He outlines two key areas of development – that of contemporary music, and that of education and learning. Again past experience informs his views. “I’m personally passionate about contemporary music,” he says. “It’s good for the players, and it gives them a relationship with composers, especially Scottish composers. I don’t believe in ghettoising it. I’m with Simon Rattle on that. Give audiences a taste here and there, but it must be experienced as part of sound programming, where the music is integrated well in terms of the story told in a concert.”

But he doesn’t believe in just throwing new music at an audience. “I chaired theatre boards when I was in England, including Sheffield’s Crucible. I learned there that you don’t just take a new script and bung it on the main stage. You have workshops with actors, and that’s what I think is missing from our work at the RSNO.

“With new works, we should have smaller ensemble workshop activity, developing a score, taking it through various stages, and working with the composer to the point where we’re confident of putting the finished work onto the main stage.”

Elliott has seen it all work before with the Liverpool Phil’s 10/10 contemporary ensemble and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The signs are we may see something similar announced at the RSNO.

The key, he says, is the combination of excellence and making everything a central part of what the orchestra is about. That’s vital too, says the man with an educational degree, when talking about educational work.

“I prefer to call it learning. I’m not interested in the traditional model where education and community work looks like a token add-on. Learning applies to the players as much as it does to our audiences, whether it’s musicians on the platform exploring repertoire or exploring other genre, or community groups getting their first ever taste of classical music.

“But when we’re doing such work, I want to know that we are maintaining an ongoing relationship: that if we go in and make an intervention, whether it’s one week or three years, we know where it’s going. Too often in this business we parachute in and out. We have to build for the long term.”

Sensible talk from a man who’s seen the arts from almost every angle.

● The new RSNO season begins next week, featuring Nicola Benedetti at Dundee Caird Hall, 29 September; Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 30 September and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 1 October. www.rsno.org.uk