For Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) conductor Michael Laus, a career in music is something he always wanted – or rather, one of three careers he had his sights set on.
“I was torn between writing, astronomy and music; those were and still are my three great loves in life,” Laus told Times2.
“But you have to choose in life, and I took up music – and I’ve never been sorry for that.”
Laus’s passion for music was ignited at an early age when his father, a stage manager at the Manoel Theatre, used to take the young future conductor with him to work.
“I spent all my evenings there – sometimes even doing my homework there – and watching concerts. Great soloists used to come; I remember [Soviet-born Icelandic pianist] Vladimir Ashkenazy, and [American-born British violinist] Yehudi Menuhin, for example,” he said.
“And not just music – there were theatre productions of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw plays too,” said Laus, pointing to these early productions as having sparked his passion for literature.
And this eclectic approach to creativity is one Laus believes is important for conducting.
“There is creativity when you conduct – you have to decide on the interpretation of the style, and I even find creativity in the way you organise rehearsals, especially after working with the same orchestra for a long time,” he explained.
“You have to make things interesting; If you always repeat the same regime, things start getting boring for everyone. It’s a bit like teaching; you have to be creative every day.”
Joining the orchestra
Laus embarked on his musical journey at the piano, later taking up the violin and viola, with his first experience of sitting in an orchestra during his time studying at the Malta School of Music, formerly the Johann Strauss School of Music.
“I remember in the first session we did, thinking, ‘this is what I want to do in life’. I decided that somehow I wanted to be connected with an orchestra – whether through playing, conducting or administrating one – but I knew that that was where I had to be.”
And as fate would have it, Laus was destined to do exactly that, occupying various roles during his time with the MPO.
Laus joined the orchestra as a conductor in 1991 when the orchestra was still the Manoel Theatre Orchestra, after returning to Malta from Milan, where he studied music at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi.
Laus has been with the MPO since – minus a couple of years working in Switzerland as the orchestra tried a new format dividing the conducting role equally between three conductors. The idea turned out to be short-lived, however, with Laus explaining “somebody has to be to be the chief”.
After being asked back, Laus returned as chair of the board of directors where he spent five years “getting the orchestra on its feet” before moving back into conducting again.
‘Very lucky’
Reflecting on his decades of conducting, Laus said he considers himself “very lucky” to have forged a career in conducting: “I’ve had many colleagues, students, and very few of them actually became professional conductors – it’s a tough job, and tough to get started”.
Underlining the difficulties of hiring new conductors, Laus stressed the success of a conductor was “very difficult to decide in the short term,” only becoming apparent – or not – over the long term.
Turning to the public’s interpretation of the role, he described it as “mysterious; people see the physical part, where you’re standing in front of the orchestra waving your arms around, but that’s really the very tip of the iceberg”.
“The work that goes behind it, preparing the orchestra, people feel it in a way. But not everybody can really pinpoint what it is that makes a good or a great conductor.”
And approaches to conducting vary “with individuals, orchestras and countries,” he said, noting that during his years studying in Milan, the prevailing attitude had been that “the score is a sacred script; you cannot touch it”.
“Fortunately, this has changed a lot – partly due to recordings,” said Laus, explaining that with some classical works having been recorded hundreds, if not thousands of times, it would make “no sense” to always perform a work in the same way.
“There would be no sense in having more than one recording; you would just make one ‘perfect’ recording and that would be it,” he said.
“The reason classical music lovers have tonnes of recordings, sometimes of the same work, is because this difference in approach is reflected [in the different recordings] and they find it interesting.”
As for the movements at the front of the orchestra, “they change depending on which orchestras you conduct – and the level of the orchestra; the more professional the orchestra, the less you have to beat time”.
“When I study scores now, I’m really just studying the music – the movements come in the moment of when I’m in front of the orchestra.”
‘I’m still grateful to them for that’
Away from his role conducting the orchestra, Laus explores his love of Baroque music directing the Goldberg Ensemble, a choir of around 25 singers – with instrumentalists joining for some concerts – focusing on music written between circa 1600 to 1750, including works such as Handel’s monumental Messiah.
“I had long wished to work with a choir regularly – I love that… and we do repertoire I cannot usually do with the orchestra,” he said.
Another project close to Laus’ heart is the Malta Youth Orchestra (MYO), an ensemble he founded more than 20 years ago and that performed its debut concert in 2004.
“We didn’t have any funds at all for it when it started, so I started on a voluntary basis and asked the principals in the office if they would like to be involved too,” he said of the orchestra’s beginnings.
“I told them, ‘You’re not going to get a penny for this’, but they came every Saturday morning anyway – about 20 of them – working with the youths all together. I was very impressed, and I’m still grateful to them for that.”
The MYO has since played regularly in Malta and overseas, including twice in Italy in July last year when it performed in Montecatini and Florence. And next year will see collaboration with the University of Malta, Laus said.
Looking ahead
Turning to the music scene in Malta today, Laus noted that while there was a “lot more happening – sometimes there are things every day and people have to choose what to go to,” there was also “less attention being paid to each individual event”.
“What I’m really worried about – and it’s not their fault – is how much the young people are interested in, not just classical music, but culture in general such as the theatre as well,” he said. “I find there are maybe too many distractions”.
With AI-generated music on the rise, is Laus concerned by the technology?
“It shouldn’t substitute human creativity, and it can help composers experiment with ideas and find crazy ideas that might never have occurred to them. So, I don’t worry about it – I just worry if it’s not used as it should be used.”
Read James Cummings’s earlier article on the MPO here.