Exactly what does a conductor actually do?

And are an A-level in music and blind enthusiasm any help? Sue Perkins found out when she went to baton camp….

I came to music very young. I was bookish and awkward, and wanted a means of expressing the millions of emotions flying around inside me. The piano seemed as good an outlet as any. The only problem with music, however, is that in order to get to the point where you're good enough to really feel you're saying something, you've spent over a decade in a room on your own practising scales.

I did my grades; I even got as far as an A-level, where I was lucky to be taught by someone who moved me beyond the arpeggios and key changes and mind-boggling mathematics of it all. She made me see how music connects seamlessly to philosophy, politics, history, life. I loved it: it's the only study I've done that I found utterly and compellingly immersive. Then I went and spoiled it all by doing an English degree, and never played the piano again.

So, despite having a modicum of musical knowledge, I came to Maestro, the BBC's new TV series in which eight amateurs learn to conduct, with the same prejudices as everyone else. What is a conductor for? What does he (and invariably it is a he) actually do? Whenever I went to a concert, all I could see was a middle-aged man with a stiff peak of silver hair waving his arms around in blind opposition to the musicians around him. I could not see any correlation between the flamboyant baton-swirling and the music itself.

I soon learned. The very first thing we were asked to do on showing up at "baton camp" was to take a well-known waltz - Blue Danube - and then go straight into an enormous concert hall and conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra, from nothing. And it was awful. I was flailing and sweaty; I couldn't get my gestures to marry with the ones I wanted. There was a lot of giggling from the orchestra. Immediately afterwards, we were shown a tape of what we'd done, to review. It was excruciating: I don't like watching myself at the best of times, but here I looked like a perspiring windmill. We spent the next five days working on the same piece, plus the first movement of Beethoven's First Symphony - taking them apart, understanding what makes them work.

For the past few months I've been in training with my mentor Jason Lai, working on pieces by Brahms and Beethoven with a semi-professional orchestra. I've been learning how to stop and start, learning to speak to the orchestra in their own language. You can't just say, "Can we go from that bit and make it really quiet?" You've got to use musical terms and make it sound authoritative. After all, musicians know how to play the score marks; you need to be able to show them the emotional expansiveness. For example, I wanted the Blue Danube waltz to flow, like a merry-go-round, rather than sag like the turgid romance some might make it, and I had to communicate that to the orchestra. These famous pieces are in your power for a little while - that's the joy of it.

Being a conductor isn't just about setting the time. A metronome can do that. It isn't about grabbing the glory with a few judicious hand sweeps and a torrent of sweat. A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends. She can bend sound in the moment; she has the power to command consensus.

As a performer, I'm used to seeing my audience. Now, my backside is facing the people I'd normally be facing, and I'm looking instead at people who are more knowledgable than me, and who know far better than I do what's coming. I am a terribly shy person, but I have now learned to stare at a stranger with an oboe in his mouth, or a viola in her arms, with the intensity I would normally reserve for a lover.

I never realised what a very physical activity conducting is. My whole upper body aches. Conductors live well into their 90s, and this is largely down to the cardiovascular workout they get. Conducting has resculpted my physique into very lean muscle mass: I have lady biceps. (I can see a DVD workout coming on: eat what you want but beat time to Beethoven's Ninth. Mind you, your bottom half would be the size of a continent.) Meanwhile, my mentor has been trying to take away the props I find useful. He has made me tie my hair back. He's trying to get me to take my glasses off because he wants me to stare, and raise my eyebrows, and gurn at the orchestra. I talk with my hands a lot, and he's trying to take that away and make my gestures really delicate.

Whatever the critics make of Maestro, I hope they don't call it a reality show. Yes, we amateurs are eliminated as the weeks go on; but reality is washing your knickers and slagging off your friend's boyfriend and putting food out for the cat. It isn't standing in a posh suit in front of the finest performers in the world as a sonic boom of beautiful strings smacks you in the chops. That's not reality - not for me anyway. For me, it's pure bloody magic.

You always have to be a few bars ahead'

Empathy, authority, timing - the conductor's craft

Roger Norrington, conductor and Maestro judge

Of course conducting takes years and years to do well. What Maestro won't reveal is how the contestants would think about a score from the beginning to the end, nor how they would handle a three-hour orchestra rehearsal. But we will discover how to get sound out of an orchestra. The key thing is authority. Some people have it, some don't.

The thing that all the competitors found difficult was that they wanted to follow the music, as you do when you listen to it. But doing that meant the orchestra got slower and slower until it ground to a halt. If you're conducting you always have to be a few bars ahead.

People say to conductors: "What do you actually do? Couldn't the orchestra do it without you?" The answer is yes, they could, but it wouldn't taste too good. Conducting is like being a cook. As a conductor you spend a lot of time trying to make it look easy, so it was kind of heartwarming to hear the competitors say: "My God, it's more difficult than it looks." On a fundamental level we're all musical. It's instinctive, like dancing.

Charles Mutter, associate leader, BBC Concert Orchestra

At the end of each show the judges choose the two weakest contestants, and the orchestra votes to save one. But the real story is how we react with the various people in rehearsal and performance. Having to do the same little snatches of pieces with each contestant gives you the opportunity to really think about what you do and don't need from a conductor: people skills, a basic respect for the orchestra, a constructive approach to solving problems.

As the leader, my job is usually to interpret what the conductor is doing and translate it into a way of playing that the rest of the orchestra can get behind. But here, we were told to follow absolutely what the conductors were doing. If they don't bring us in, we don't come in. If they speed up or slow down, we follow them

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/12/classicalmusicandopera.television