Our tour blogger Bronwen Maggs has spoken to our conductor Mark Eager to find out his thoughts about the tour…

Conductor of Cardiff University Symphony Orchestra, Mark Eager, is a talented and experienced musician whose breadth of knowledge has allowed him to lead the ensemble with authority and confidence. Mark worked full time with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, performing as the Principal Trombonist, from 1993-2006. However, he has always enjoyed conducting and has a passion for motivating and inspiring students.

Since Mark was offered his position with CUSO in 2008, the orchestra has enjoyed increasing success in the performance of many highly acclaimed orchestral works. Mark’s knowledge and experience mean that he is exceptionally well suited to his role: He commands the orchestra with skill, insight and elegance. CUSO have produced two CDs under Mark, one of which includes a recording of Liszt’s Totentanz for solo piano and orchestra which they performed with Professor Kenneth Hamilton.

When did you take on the role of conductor for CUSO and how did the position arise for you?

“It is a joy to work with students. I love the motivational aspect. There are so many people who accept mediocrity and I like to push people to their absolute limits; show them how to be the best they can be. I’m really lucky to work with all sorts of orchestras.

“As well as working with Cardiff University, I conduct the Welsh Sinfonia Orchestra: A chamber orchestra who work on a big project in Wales called Crescendo. We go into Welsh schools and build school orchestras, working with professional musicians. The pupils not only work with us, but are encouraged to come along to concerts. My position as conductor of CUSO came out of some work I was doing with the BBC. We were working on composition projects with students from the university.

“After observing how I worked with the students, the staff, who were already looking for a new conductor, thought I was well suited to the role. Since the beginning, I had a vision that the orchestra, which had never recorded a CD and had never been on tour, needed to start doing so.”

Mark said that he has been trying to organise a tour for a while, but that he faced many difficulties, including financial ones. He seemed grateful for the genuine enthusiasm of the musicians themselves this year and their commitment to making the German tour happen:

“We now have a core of people who really enjoy orchestra and therefore we were able to get this tour off the ground.”

Do you have any favourite repertoire? Any pieces that CUSO have played over the years that really stand out for you?

“Not so much favourites, but memorable moments certainly. We have done some amazing repertoire. We performed the Janacek Sinfonietta. It is an enormous piece which has nine trumpets off stage, which play big fanfares. That was pretty epic. We performed Symphonie fantastique as well, which was good. We also did Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3 with a pianola which was really quirky. It was really interesting and difficult to conduct. There have been lots of really good moments.”

European musicians have been integrated into the orchestra for the tour. How has that worked in your opinion?

“As guests in CUSO the new musicians were very diligent. They knew the music, they learned it before they came. The difficulty was blending their sound and their tone with ours. The trumpets in particular sound different because they are German rotary valve trumpets. The sound does not penetrate as well and therefore we have had to work on balancing the sound.

“Despite this, the orchestra has come together and come on very quickly in these two days. Whereas in Cardiff the orchestra rehearses for three hours a week and the musicians forget probably 20% of what they learn at least from each week to the next, especially when balancing practice with studies, here they have had no time to forget: They have been entirely focused on the perfection of these pieces. We have fitted almost six weeks of rehearsal into two full days.”

Are you looking forward to the concerts?

“What is good about the orchestra here, is that everyone is really trying their best. The musicians have all chosen to be here and it is a joy to watch them come together. The repertoire is playable music that everyone has a good time in. In the Dvorak, everybody gets a good play, whether you are strings, brass, timpani or woodwind. Having the Morfydd Owen in the middle is terrific. It gives the musicians a chance to breathe and the audience’s ears get a rest too.

“I am never nervous. If you are comfortable in what you do, you feel the adrenaline, but you have confidence in that fact you know what you are doing. I think it is important for confidence to come from a conductor. If a conductor is apprehensive and nervous then the whole orchestra becomes hesitant. It is also important never to criticize a concert once it is done. A concert is where you are at in the world at that point. Nothing you can do to change it. You might want to learn from it and get better, but regardless the concert is where you are at that point and that is never worth criticizing.”

There is talk of another tour being organised for February 2016, is that something you are enthusiastically considering?

This tour has come at a difficult time, with students having to delay going into work and with some of them having only just finished working on final recitals for their degrees. February’s tour will be well timed and it is early days, but the repertoire we are thinking of performing will be exciting and very impressive: It will really wow the audiences. It has been mentioned to me and it works with my diary so hopefully, yes, there will be another tour.

Interesting fact about Mark:

He has competed twice in the Iron Man Triathlon on behalf of Great Britain.