Charles Hazlewood
Charles Hazlewood
Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewoodis a British conductor and advocate for a wider audience for orchestral music. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in his 20s, Hazlewood has had a career as an international conductor, music director of film and theatre and a curator of music on British radio and television...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth14 November 1966
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Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble.
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It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.
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There's always blood on the carpet when I play Beethoven at the piano. I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!
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Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage.
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I think most people's record collections are more interesting than radio generally gives them credit for. You're likely to be as interested in the Grateful Dead as Palestrina. It pisses me off how compartmentalised music is. I used to be in a punk band, you know?
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Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe.
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Musical 'fusion' projects have earned themselves a bad name, but that's mainly because they often involve pop artists conscripting orchestras to play unimaginative backdrops to their acts. What's really exciting is when you spark off a dialogue between very different musical forces.
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I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' - if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart.
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For anyone who doesn't have that connection with Mozart, I urge those people to go and find some of his music, because it can quite genuinely make you just glad to be alive.
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I want people to hear really exciting music played by the best, but in a context where they can clap when they want to, chase their toddlers, drink beer, take photos, get lost in the music and generally be themselves. And because a field has no rules, it's the perfect place to create unlikely combinations of musical genres.
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Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.
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The Southbank Centre Unlimited Festival was a distinct moment in time, an amazing counterpoint to the London 2012 Paralympics. There is no question that a major shift in perspective is taking place, that the world is waking up and greeting - as if for the first time - the extraordinary community of people with disability.
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All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.
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[As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.