‘Women can’t conduct, but she’s different’: The backhanded compliment still haunting Simone Young

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Simone Young. The internationally lauded musical interpreter and teacher, 64, is the first woman to be chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

DEATH

You’re chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the first woman to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic (in 2005) and the first Australian – and first woman – in 147 years to conduct Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival (in 2024). Can you die happy?
Yes, I think so. However, I’m still only in the middle of a huge career. We conductors expect to conduct our professional lives 20 years longer than most people. Provided my health supports me, I fully expect to be still doing this job in 20 years’ time.

It’s like the opposite of athletes, who often have to retire in their 20s.
Exactly. However, death is confronting, of course. I’ve lost both my parents within the past 10 years and my brother a couple of years before that; my husband recently lost four of his five best friends. Curiously, I had a run-in with my health the same year I lost my mum, and had an accident requiring complete reconstruction of my shoulder. So I was really addressing a lot of issues about mortality and longevity, which I’d always taken for granted. I have three grandchildren – aged 10, eight and two – and I want to see them grow up. But the concept of leaving something [professionally] unfinished? I’m in a remarkably happy situation where I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and I wouldn’t feel that I’d left anything undone.

What would you like to hear playing when you’re on your deathbed?
I probably wouldn’t want any music. I’d rather have – I don’t know – some poetry, a story, or my granddaughter telling me about what she’s done at school that day.

What about music at your funeral?
It’d be expensive – sorry to my family! – but I’d want to have an orchestra playing Tristan and Isolde – Prelude and Liebestod. And I want the wake to be a party. I was a teenager in the ’70s and I have many, many gay friends. So let’s have some Elton John and lots of ABBA. And lots of colour. I don’t want black at my funeral.

POLITICS

In 1997, the Vienna Philharmonic voted to end its historical ban on hiring female musicians. That same day, you were on the podium conducting that orchestra, nearly eight months pregnant.
Yes, and we then had a young daughter in the audience who believed she was personally responsible for the Philharmonic now having women [laughs].

I love the visual image of you pregnant as that vote was happening in the background. Can you tell me about the politics of that moment?
Well, in fact, there were politics around me working all around the globe throughout my pregnancy with Lucy, who’s now 28. In Italy, the headline was Il direttore con la pancia – The director with the tummy.

Wait, what? There was a child in there!
I was very aware of how nobody had done this before and that if I cancelled all my engagements – and there were times when I wanted to – there would’ve been plenty of people saying, “Well, look what happens when you hire a woman.” That would make it that much more difficult for any of the younger women coming up behind me. I was aware of my position: waving the flag to say, “Being pregnant is not an illness”. If she feels fine, for god’s sake leave it up to the woman to decide what she wants to do.

Has much changed – or not?
Well, now the industry is focused more on young women – and it’s about time. However, misconceptions and deep-seated societal opinions take a long time to change. Only five years ago, I ran into a violinist from the Vienna Philharmonic on the streets of Austria, who was with his teenage son. He greeted me effusively and said to his son, “This is Maestra Young. She’s one of our favourite conductors. Now you have to understand, women can’t conduct, but she’s different.”

Wow, there’s a lot to process right there.
I thought, “Okay, I simply cannot win by saying anything. I’m either going to make an enemy of this violinist or I’m going to embarrass him in front of his son.” The only thing I can do is just keep doing my job well.

What have you learnt about leadership?
That I was really bad at it for a very long time.

Really?
Yes, it’s about being a musician: we are so tough on ourselves. You have to be a perfectionist. But, as a leader, you can’t think, “I’m here, now everybody follow my lead.” You’ve got to learn not to micromanage. People learn best by making a mistake, fixing it themselves and getting on with it. You’ve got to let people have the space to be able to make a mistake without making them feel like it’s the end of the world. That took me a really long time to learn.

BODIES

You have synaesthesia, the neurological condition where you experience music as colour. What do you feel that others don’t?
I thought everybody heard like that because I always have. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I discovered it was something a little bit odd.

Give me an example.
Well, it always operates differently … but we’re about to conduct the sun coming up and it’s in D major, then there’s some C major: it’s all bright keys and about light and yellow. Whether I’m seeing that because I know that’s what the story’s doing, or whether I’m seeing that because that’s what the music is telling me, I don’t know. But certain keys have certain colours to them. E flat is dark blue; G minor is purple-violet; B major is kind of a funny sort of taupe and if you don’t get it just right, it’s not pretty.

Wow. What else are you feeling within your body as we see you conduct?
Very tired shoulders!

Simone Young Conducts Mahler’s The Song of the Earth at Sydney Opera House from February 25-28.

diceytopics@goodweekend.com.au

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