In learning a new score in preparation for a premiere a well-developed aural perception is the most important ingredient for a conductor. In the author’s experience, both as instrumentalist and composer there are more inadequate performances of premieres than of any other category of composition, usually because the conductor’s aural perception is so limited that the actual sounds of the score have not been digested, resulting in his/her simply beating time. It took Rachmaninov ten years to discover that his Symphony no. 1 was not a failure, but the victim of a badly performed premiere. The conductor’s ear has an even more demanding task in non-tonal music. For those who are lucky enough to have perfect pitch it is less of an issue. But the process of learning a score is the same as for those who do not have it. The carpet between my desk and my piano is well worn for conducting reasons as well as those of composition. However one chooses to absorb the substance of a new score a highly developed aural perception is the route to a responsible and effective premiere, not simply a clear conducting technique.

Leon Botstein believes that ‘visual score preparation is important’. By that he means that sustaining a visual memory of a page is the foundation for memorising the sounds indicated. He considers that ‘most people hear and see the score at the same time. Even people who have photographic memory are still turning pages’. He recommends that ‘organising the score in musical sections is valuable’.

Awareness of a conductor’s visual needs in the setting of a score is not always understood by some composers. Before computer-set scores became commonplace a conductor would usually have to read from a manuscript copy, even if the work was published. In most cases these scores were prepared with immaculate graphic clarity (works of art in themselves) by composers who sustained a sense of responsibility towards the conductor. At other times the conductor has to do a good deal of rewriting. We have to keep in mind that before composers did their own settings by computer, most premieres were performed before the publication of a printed setting. In my own experience computer-set scores by composers who are not entirely expert create more problems than manuscript scores, no matter how good the compositions might be.