Ilan Volkov: 'The price of going to see Celtic or Rangers is more than a concert'

Ilan Volkov, chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, may be just 26, says Christopher Wood, but can he persuade Glasgow's youth that classical music is as exciting as football?

Let others dine out on the time they hitched a ride with the first US tank to enter Baghdad. I was there when Ilan Volkov made his conducting debut. He was 12 and could barely see above the music stand, but the authority he exuded was natural and unquestionable, and made him seem twice as tall as he was and the orchestra play twice as well as they were wont to.

Now 26, Volkov has recently been made chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is the youngest ever to be entrusted with the stewardship of a BBC orchestra, but is not about to buckle under the pressure. "When an orchestra doesn't know you and you have a big name or grey hair, of course they will treat you with a certain amount of respect because of where you are in your life," he says. "But actually, conducting is pressure enough – it's a pressure job whoever you are, however old you are. Watching conductors, I never feel that when they get older, they get more comfortable. Age is only an issue in the first five minutes with an orchestra."

And those five minutes finished a long tie ago, for Volkov has been regularly working with the BBC Scottish for a couple of years already. Before that he conducted the youth orchestras of both the London Philharmonic and the Northern Sinfonia, and did three years as assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa. When barely a teenager he sat in on sessions with John Eliot Gardiner before leaving his native Israel to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. One of his teachers there remembers him wandering about, Hamlet-like, with nose buried in a score, and says he was brilliant at many things but was "a bit of a genius at conducting". He has also guested all over the world with too many orchestras to mention: Volkov may be young in years, but hardly in experience.

At the BBC Scottish he steps into the shoes of Osmo Vänskä, who did much to raise the profile of the orchestra over the last six years. Volkov is unfazed by the spectre of such a predecessor, and already talks of the orchestra like an old trusted friend. "I feel there is a real joy in playing music which comes out in their interpretations," he says. "They're always interested to try what I ask them to do, they never resist. It's not always the case that it's done with such a good spirit and trust in the conductor. And this amazing professionalism that there is generally in the UK, they are able to sightread very well and get results very quickly. That's an advantage, because these days you don't have 50 rehearsals for a concert."

Speed will be of the essence in becoming familiar with all the new and exciting stuff Volkov intends to throw at the orchestra. "I'm interested in a broad range of repertoire," he says. "In the second half of tonight's concert we're doing Rameau's Dardanus and Stravinsky's The Firebird – hundreds of years apart, and I couldn't say which I love more. The season this year really represents what we believe in – there are lots of premieres, which is part of an ongoing relationship with new music. The repertoire here can be very open, mainly because it's a radio orchestra. And the audience here responds very well to that – they don't worry if it's not all familiar. They want things they don't know."

As well as extending the repertoire, Volkov hopes to broaden the orchestra's audiences. The Firebird performance was part of a project in which he drew on his experience with youth orchestras to work with children of primary school age in Glasgow. "You have to grab them at that age," he says. "And then you create lots more people who will go to concerts later on. These days the price of going to a football match is much more than a concert: the most expensive price to come and hear us is £18 – you can't get in to see Celtic or Rangers for that much."

The idea of droves of Glaswegians decamping from Ibrox and Celtic Park to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is unthinkable of course, but rather appealing. Perhaps it is the idealism of a young man that makes him entertain the thought, but Ilan Volkov would not stand a ghost of a chance if all he had going for him were youth. "In half a year it will end, this talking about me being young," he says. "It's a gimmick, so of course the media is going to talk about it. But I hope it's not the most interesting part of what I'm doing."

Ilan Volkov's next concert with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (0141 353 8000) on 10 April