Robert Read became chief executive of the National Concert Hall (NCH) in February, since when he has been running "this wonderful national organisation from my kitchen table in northwest London".
His slant is positive. The situation “forces us all to be creative, to think about how we can do things in different ways. And aren’t we fortunate to live in a world where technology allows us to connect with each other in this kind of way.”
He comes to Ireland from Kings Place in London. Kings Place is a building that opened in 2008, just a few minutes walk from King's Cross Station. It's both a 26,000sq m commercial office block, with tenants including the Guardian newspaper, and an independent arts and conference centre, with two small concert halls. Kings Place has the Aurora Orchestra as its resident orchestra, and its "artistic associates" include the Brodsky Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Harry Christophers's choir, The Sixteen.
Read was managing director of the Kings Place Music Foundation, a charity which spent £3.9 million (€4.5 million at today’s exchange rate) on its activities in 2019, a year in which the NCH’s expenditure was €9.5 million.
I ask what attracted him to the NCH job in the first place. He says he admired the journey the hall has been on: “Going from what was very much a receiving house into something which is more of a production house. The potential for a very big redevelopment project, the integration of the National Symphony Orchestra [NSO]. These very big things are something which don’t occur very often in the lifetime of an organisation. And the vision of the organisation really, really resonated with me.”
He took up the job not only at a time when the NCH is closed, but is also facing into future closure that has nothing whatsoever to do with Covid-19. The venue will have to shut for a protracted time to allow the redevelopment – for which the Government three years ago allocated €78 million – to take place.
So Read’s interest in reaching “new audiences and new communities”, in having “a relevance beyond Dublin, beyond Ireland,” and being “internationally facing” will all be very important when the hall becomes a building site.
Interestingly, when the redevelopment was first announced, his predecessor Simon Taylor’s best guess about the hall going dark was that it would close this month and reopen in September 2023.
Chief executive pitch
I ask Read about his pitch at the job interview, and he smoothly replies about his having “the necessary attributes, experience, qualifications, personality – all the prerequisites for succeeding in this roll” and points to his “long career in leadership roles in cultural organisations”, which has equipped him “to take on this very, very prestigious and high-profile role”.
And was there any killer question in the mix? He remembers “one particular question about when the NSO is integrated into the remit of the NCH, and what happens when we have clashing priorities or clashing points of view about programmatic decisions. Where do I stand with that? How do I bring those sometime conflicting matters to a satisfactory resolution?”
It is a question that has been posed by lots of music lovers and also by orchestral musicians. His answer? “I said it was up to me, leading the organisation, to bring different points of view together, to reach consensus, and where appropriate for me to adjudicate on that decision-making process.”
He sees the integration of the NSO, which is currently part of RTÉ, into the NCH as a development that will “take that long, brilliant partnership together to a more formal footing, as we come together as one entity”. He has the advantage of being non-partisan over the long and complicated relationship between resident orchestra (for whom the hall was created in the first place) and hall management (whose priorities have not always taken the NSO’s interests sensitively into account).
It’s difficult, he says, to define a timeline for for the integration. “A lot of it is outside our control. We need to amend the act which gives the NCH its statutory remit in law so that we can operate an orchestra. That might take some time.”
He points to clear opportunities independent of the formal transfer, to joint work on the 40th anniversary of the hall’s opening, which falls next September. He wants “one strategy that applies to both entities, so that we’re working in absolute harmony on our forward programme.”
Inclusivity
When it comes to change, Read wants the NCH “to become a more diverse, accessible, inclusive organisation in terms of audiences and programming. We’ve got a very austere and imposing facade. So, physically, we look somewhat inaccessible. I would love to take down some of that formality, and to open up.”
He wants “to be welcoming so that people feel the concert hall is for them. That they can have a lifelong connection with it. It’s up to us to build a programme which absolutely provides life-long engagement with music for all people at all points in their life. That’s the most important thing that I want to be responsible for changing, that people will feel that the hall is relevant to them, that it has meaning for them, and that we have something there that’s appropriate for the youngest of audiences and then on to families and then to teens and early 20s when you’re open to lots of new musical experience and adventure. Something that goes with you throughout your life. And that we absolutely preserve our commitment to symphonic and classical music.”
Some years ago the hall found itself in the news because of complaints about major outside promoters facing difficulty pinning down dates for their gigs. The core issue seems to be that promoters were denied the opportunity to book dates on which, ultimately, no concert took place. I’ve also had representations made directly to me by smaller promoters about idiosyncratic handling of booking arrangements by the hall.
Read, obviously, can’t comment on the past, but he sees the people and institutions booking the hall as part of a single ecosystem. “We need to work collaboratively with all of those close artistic partners to produce a programme which is rich in diversity, which is accessible, popular and enjoyable, but gets the balance right.”
He is definitely on the side of increasing the hall’s curatorial intervention. “We can’t just have arbitrary performances appearing sporadically in the annual programme. There’s got to be coherence. There’s got to be meaning. I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think we can work and partner with promoters really successfully in a way which is going to ensure that we minimise dark nights.”
Female voices
He points to the partnership aspects of the hall’s current Spring Summer Variations series, though he doesn’t have a satisfactory answer when I query the fact the hall programmed a five-concert Spring Summer Variation series without representing a single female compositional voice. The NCH, of course, is not alone in this kind of neglect. Irish National Opera is presenting a Friday Opera Explorer series that runs to 30 arias from the 19th and early 20th centuries, not a single one of which is by a woman. It is disappointing that the two national music organisations with the highest levels of funding from the public purse have so much ground to make up in finding a consistent place for the historic repertoire of music by women in major series.
Read’s vision for the redevelopment is that it should “absolutely transform the hall itself,” seating, stage, acoustics, lighting, so that it will be “better for audiences, artists and performers” backstage and front of house as well as in the main auditorium. “We are working hard at the moment to develop scenarios that will enable us to develop the level of investment that we would really like to bring to bear on redeveloping the complex.”
His vision goes well beyond that iconic space. “The main hall is just one piece of a much wider complex of buildings,” Read says, and he’s focused on developing “the most compelling vision through which we can to bring into service the rest of the estate.”
He talks of “a dedicated learning and participation wing . . . spaces that can be flexible, dynamic, multipractice spaces, used for bands or small ensembles, to orchestras . . . being able to support music from emerging and young experimental artists . . . technical suites, workshops, recording studios, and something very close to my heart, a publicly accessible space on the ground floor, a civic, town-square space, where anyone is welcome any time of day.” He has a great phrase for it: “A kind of crucible where musical alchemy can happen.”
And he’s clearly relishing the implications of the hall having to become dark. “It’s really exciting to have to to think beyond our walls, beyond our current physical boundaries, to think imaginatively and innovatively about how we can present beyond our normal perimeter.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to reach audiences that don’t normally have contact with us. To go with the NSO to different venues across the country. I love the idea that we might be in unexpected, unusual, unconventional spaces. The opportunity for the NSO to tour, not just in Ireland, but in Europe and internationally. It’s a wonderful opportunity to think differently about how we can bring what we can do to a wider audience. All part of making what we do more accessible.”
