My work in orchestration did not begin with the ambition to become a composer. My experience of composition was initially connected to my organ studies in Conservatoire, where the curriculum included Harmony, Counterpoint, Fugue and free composition for voice and organ. I took it as a way to acquire a craft. Later, in Geneva, a very important exam of the Virtuosité curriculum was Improvisation: there, all I had learnt came very handy, in trying to build a variety of “languages” to suit the specific theme we were given. It is, actually, something that each organist does all the time – at least, to fill short gaps during the liturgy. And improvisation is, also, the backbone of the continuo player, to flourish the accompaniment in Baroque music with creativity as if it was already written by the real composer! But all this grew out of necessity: I have never felt the need to write music as a means of personal expression.
As my career as a conductor developed, I gradually became aware that my knowledge of the orchestra went beyond conducting technique. I had acquired a detailed understanding of instruments, their possibilities, limitations, and the practical ways in which musical ideas could be translated into an orchestral texture.
When I first began working with a computer, I bought one of the notation programmes available at the time – it was called Igor Engraver and was later discontinued. I had used it to copy a considerable amount of orchestral music, specifically when I had a score but not matching orchestral parts. When the software eventually ceased to be supported, I found myself with the printed scores or the PDFs and files which could not be transferred to Finale or Sibelius, but the experience had added some other valuable practical familiarity with orchestral writing and notation software.
I choose Sibelius and I use it since the early 2000’s.
The first occasion on which I actually wrote new orchestral material came during one of the early gala concerts I conducted with Rolando Villazón. The programme included an excerpt from Massenet’s Le Mage containing a few bars for chorus, although no chorus was to be available for the performance. I decided to rewrite the passage for two trumpets and two trombones. What began as a practical solution to a specific problem marked the beginning of a different aspect of my musical work.
The turning point came through my work on Rossini’s Danza. I had already conducted the piece at an earlier gala with Rolando Villazón and noticed a practical problem in the orchestration: some viola pizzicatos were written at a speed that made them difficult, if not impossible, to execute effectively. I therefore rewrote that passage in a different way, preserving its musical function while making it genuinely playable. This was one of the first occasions on which my experience as a conductor directly led me to intervene in the orchestral writing itself. From there, orchestration gradually became a natural extension of my musical work: not composition for its own sake, but the practical study, adaptation and creation of orchestral material whenever the music and the circumstances required it.