The Short Cuts
There are two short cuts I know of:
Win a Major Conducting Competition
This is obviously very tough to do, and you have to be a technically very gifted conductor, because typically competitions have little time to assess anything beyond the immediate connection between what you show and how the orchestra responds. True, this is, in theory, conducting distilled to its essence, but let's be honest: there are plenty of extremely successful conductors where the relationship between what they show and what the orchestra plays is... mercifully limited. But you can rest assured that by winning a competition (or even getting into the final) will mean you can bypass a lot of the difficulties of getting an organisation to take an initial punt on you.
This is obviously very tough to do, and you have to be a technically very gifted conductor, because typically competitions have little time to assess anything beyond the immediate connection between what you show and how the orchestra responds. True, this is, in theory, conducting distilled to its essence, but let's be honest: there are plenty of extremely successful conductors where the relationship between what they show and what the orchestra plays is... mercifully limited. But you can rest assured that by winning a competition (or even getting into the final) will mean you can bypass a lot of the difficulties of getting an organisation to take an initial punt on you.
Get Yourself a Well-Established Champion
Another excellent way of not having to undergo the difficulties of getting noticed is to be championed and mentored by an established and powerful conductor. This well-respected person is then able to to vouch for your quality, so orchestras are happier to take the risk on you (and they also want to dignify the established conductor by taking their advice, strengthening their relationship with that established conductor). The conducting profession is full of people who were taken under the wing of someone more established than them: Marin Alsop was Leonard Bernstein's protege: Daniel Harding was Claudio Abbado's protege, and in the younger generation, Duncan Ward was mentored by Sir Simon Rattle and Ben Gernon was nurtured by Sir Colin Davis.
The more experienced conductors don't always get it right, by the way: This absolutely applies to none of the names mentioned above, but remarkably, there are currently quite a number of young conductors being pushed forwards by established industry figures, without them being able to do the basic fundamentals of the job. I promise, this isn't me being catty and having a difference of artistic opinion and therefore declaring them to be useless - my only criticism is that they seem to have the objective disadvantage of not to be able to do the basics of conducting. It's pretty alarming.
Another excellent way of not having to undergo the difficulties of getting noticed is to be championed and mentored by an established and powerful conductor. This well-respected person is then able to to vouch for your quality, so orchestras are happier to take the risk on you (and they also want to dignify the established conductor by taking their advice, strengthening their relationship with that established conductor). The conducting profession is full of people who were taken under the wing of someone more established than them: Marin Alsop was Leonard Bernstein's protege: Daniel Harding was Claudio Abbado's protege, and in the younger generation, Duncan Ward was mentored by Sir Simon Rattle and Ben Gernon was nurtured by Sir Colin Davis.
The more experienced conductors don't always get it right, by the way: This absolutely applies to none of the names mentioned above, but remarkably, there are currently quite a number of young conductors being pushed forwards by established industry figures, without them being able to do the basic fundamentals of the job. I promise, this isn't me being catty and having a difference of artistic opinion and therefore declaring them to be useless - my only criticism is that they seem to have the objective disadvantage of not to be able to do the basics of conducting. It's pretty alarming.
Along with all the barriers on the previous page, and the slim chances of even the most stellar young conductor getting a short-cut, most of these factors make it a pretty onerous task. So, what's to be done?
I don't claim to have cracked this conundrum, but I have got some ideas for specific action points to help maximise your chances in the areas over which you have at least some control.
I don't claim to have cracked this conundrum, but I have got some ideas for specific action points to help maximise your chances in the areas over which you have at least some control.