The maestro of silence

A conductor who controls the atmosphere as much as the music? Edward Seckerson meets Daniele Gatti, music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

It's not often that you remember a performance as much for the silence preceding it as for the event itself. But such was my experience some five years ago, shortly after Daniele Gatti was named music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I'd previously encountered his work only once, at the Royal Opera, where a revival of Puccini's Turandot engendered such an air of newness, in its phrasings, dynamism and authority, that I began to wonder if I'd ever really listened to the piece before. Looking back, it was probably that performance that led me to the Barbican to discover for myself why Sir Thomas Beecham's orchestra had handed over the reins to a young and relatively little-known Italian. Gatti was 35 at the time.

Now, it has to be said that the RPO had slipped somewhat from the immaculate conception of Sir Thom-as's day. The strings in particular needed work, or rather, they needed to regain a sense of purpose and pride and direction once more. That probably went for the whole orchestra, though at this particular concert, it was the strings that Gatti boldly chose to showcase. The first work on the programme was for them alone: Schoenberg's notoriously demanding Verklärte Nacht. Which brings me to that silence.

Bear in mind that this is not a Klemperer or Karajan or Giulini mounting the platform, this is not the kind of figure whose arrival, whose very presence will have precipitated the kind of hush that is more a mark of respect than anticipation. This was something different. This was Gatti standing stock still, head bowed, for the best part of a minute. This was an invitation to enter another world, to contemplate how it might feel and sound, to create a context for Schoenberg's transfigured night so that the music would in a sense begin before instruments were raised and bows drawn.

Interestingly enough, when I met Gatti for this interview, it was in Bologna, his "operatic" home base, the morning after a performance of Verdi's Falstaff. No pre-emptive silence there, rather a pre-emptive strike, with Gatti pitching impatiently into Verdi's explosive opening before the Italian audience had a chance to settle down. It was the same principle, though; creating a context for the music, in this case the bustling Garter Inn where silence is only golden after-hours.

Gatti is very hot on atmosphere and characterisation. He has a great ear for colour but more specifically for colour as it relates to phrasing, while the issue of tension and release, and the way that affects both orchestra and audience, is crucial to him. Every performance has to be an event.

Of his own orchestra, the RPO, he says: "The received 'gossip' about British orchestras is that they are note-perfect in rehearsal and remain note-perfect in concert. But I try to persuade my orchestra always to find something extra for the concert, to make it unique. And we can do this because they are so flexible, they have a great facility for playing generously."

"Generosity" is not just a word for Gatti, it's the spirit that motivates his music-making. He is committed to the RPO until 2006 – which is remarkable, given its continuing troubled times. It's the usual story: inadequate funding, the overworked-underpaid syndrome. But at least they are back at the Royal Festival Hall, their spiritual home, after a period in limbo at the Royal Albert Hall, Still, the fight for survival is as real as ever and you would think that with Gatti's star so much in the ascendant, he might have been tempted to take up more glamorous career options.

When I put this to him, he is puzzled for a moment and asks me to repeat the question. The word "career" jars with him. He thinks of his relationship with the RPO as "work in progress", not "career in progress". Jumping ship just as the journey is getting interesting doesn't make any sense to him. "You build relationships, you build orchestras," he says, "an orchestra only really becomes your instrument when you both start speaking the same musical language. And that takes time. And remember, an orchestra's problems are irrelevant when it goes on stage before an audience. That is where it is judged."

Gatti is now 40, and the older he gets the more difficult it becomes for him to guest conduct. In the coming year, he has prestigious US dates lined up in New York, Boston, and Chicago whose programmes were decided three years ago. "It's like signing away your artistic destiny." A long-term relationship gives him the possibility for pursuing particular lines of repertoire on his terms. There is still, of course, the problem of what will and won't sell in the eyes of the marketing men, and Gatti does not disguise his frustration in that regard. Why is Orff's crowd-pulling Carmina Burana opening a mini-season that looks at the influence of Beethoven on the early Romantics, Brahms, Schumann and Bruckner? Pulling crowds, that's what.

Bruckner, and particularly his unfinished Ninth Symphony (which is programmed for the end of the season), has a special significance for Gatti. It was the first symphonic piece he came to know through his father – an operatic tenor (now there's a surprise) – and the way he speaks of it reflects the way he first heard it, aged 15. For him, it was always a finished piece. To this day he cannot imagine it ending any other way than with that momentous Adagio. At its climax, Bruckner's entire world is turned upside down. He comes back from the abyss, his faith shaken but still intact. Just. Small wonder his sketches for a finale came to naught. There was nothing left to say.

Gatti has plenty left to say. But saying it, feeling it, doesn't make the doing any easier. Having the vision is one thing, he says, but expressing it is quite another. No one would dispute that music comes from within, that the greatest composers and performers are intuitive. But, says Gatti, you must have absolute control of those feelings. As an Italian, he knows better than most how singing impacts upon all musical phrasing. "But it's not just about singing like my mother or father could sing. When I ask an orchestra to sing, the natural sense of breathing has to be there, but so must the tension that controls and sustains it. Starting a phrase is one thing, but how you finish, where the phrase leads, is more important still."

Gatti has hit upon perhaps the most important word in the musical lexicon: "sustaining". There's an Italian word for it, of course: sostenuto . Giving every note its full value in the phrase. An audience may not know why it's more satisfying, but they'll feel it. Conductors like Gatti do not short-change you.

In parting, he asks if he can reaffirm his pride in what he and the RPO have achieved, and continue to achieve, against all the odds. People moan (with justification) about the conditions for orchestral musicians here, he says, but, sadly, compared with Italy where attitudes are parochial, London is a liberating environment in which to make music. But that's assuming – and it's a big assumption – that those holding the purse strings can provide the wherewithal for the Gattis of this world – to say nothing of orchestras like the RPO – to keep digging, exploring, growing. As the man says, we're talking "work in progress". Big word, progress. Costly, too.`

Daniele Gatti and the RPO perform Stravinsky's Firebird and Orff's Carmina Burana tomorrow night at the Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 (020-77960 4242; www.rpo.co.uk)