Clive Gillinson — “Never, ever be satisfied”
Clive Gillinson’s remarks at the Eastman School of Music commencement on Sunday, May 16, 2010 are included below. Gillinson, the 2010 recipient of the Eastman Luminary Award, was managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1984-2005, and has been Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall since 2005. In both positions he has overseen strategic and artistic planning, resource development, education, finance, administration, and music education. In his 2010 Commencement address, Mr. Gillinson explained the values that have guided him in trying to bring great music to the society at large, values he considers essential to any musician.
It’s wonderful to be here, in this spectacular building, in this truly great school. Listening to this wonderful trombone choir reminded me: When I was at the London Symphony Orchestra, one of our trombone players decided that his dream was to create a brass band in a prison. He was introduced by the guy who was running the prison; he was introduced to the inmates at the prison. I’m not trying to imply in any way that trombone players are insensitive, but he stood in front of them and said, “I hope you realize it is incredibly difficult to play a brass instrument, so I hope you’re going to be in here a long time.” A lot of them, unfortunately, were in there for a long time. In fact, he and the band were immensely successful. In fact, just before their first concert, one of the inmates was released; and for the first time in British prison history, he came back voluntarily in order to play in the brass band concert. It shows you there’s a lot of power in music.
As a parent, one thing I always think about is what you can really give to your children. In the end, I think it comes down to three things: love, values, and education. All of you who are graduating — obviously coming from here, you’ve had phenomenal education. In terms of love, President Seligman [earlier] talked about the care and the love your parents have given to you. And the one thing I would like to talk a little bit about is values.
I’ve had an incredibly lucky life, and I’ve met and worked with some of the most extraordinary musicians in the world. And I think what I’ve learnt from them has defined a lot of my values and helped to see what really matters in life.
I guess the first lesson I learned was that money follows vision. Never chase money. Always go for the things you truly and utterly believe in.
When I took over as the London Symphony Orchestra’s manager, they were financially in a very poor position. I had just heard a rumor that Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist, was in two years going to be celebrating his 60th birthday [in 1987] with another London orchestra. That orchestra was in good financial shape, but they thought they couldn’t afford it, and so they went to another orchestra to see if they could share it. When I heard about this, I thought, “I cannot believe it.” You know, that any orchestra could feel that they should share something – [something] that should have a really unitary vision — to celebrate one of the greatest artists of all time. So I went to Rostropovich’s manager and I said, “We’ll do this.” She said, “But you’re in unbelievably bad shape…you can’t afford it. They can’t afford it, and they’re in good shape.” I said, “I promise, we’ll raise the money.”
So she went to Rostropovich and said, “There’s this lunatic at the London Symphony Orchestra who said they want to do this all on their own. They’re in a terrible financial state, but they promise they’ll do it.” He said, “If they believe in me like that, I believe in them.” And he brought the festival to us; in fact, Rostropovich became one of the closest people in my life and was a big part of transforming the London Symphony.
It’s that whole issue of going for the things that matter and that you believe in and somehow you’ve got to make it matter, you’ve got to make it happen; and in point of fact we did raise the money and it was immensely successful. It was a huge artistic triumph, but in point of fact, it was also financially successful as well.
One of the most important lessons Rostropovich taught me was that every single thing you ever do matters. Somebody else told me this story, not him: it was at the time when Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the writer, had been denounced in the press; he hadn’t got a home and hadn’t got a place to stay, so Rostropovich very bravely offered to let him stay in his home. At that point, all of Rostropovich’s dates disappeared out of his diary. He had no work, nothing. His friends didn’t recognize him in the street. It was a terrifying time in the Soviet Union, and his life collapsed.
He was told one day, “There is one recital you can do, in an aircraft hanger up in Siberia. There will be four thousand people there.” And so he went up there with his pianist, and there was nobody there.
And he said, “What’s happening?”
They said, “We’re really sorry, we forgot to promote the concert, so there’s nobody here.”
“Really nobody?”
“Well, there are ex-political prisoners who have walked for the last four days across the snows of Siberia because, somehow or other, they’d heard that you were going to be giving a recital. But, obviously, you can’t do a concert for five people in an aircraft hanger.”
And Rostropovich said, “On the contrary, I do the concert if they’ve walked all this time for it.” So he did his entire recital program for these five people, and he did all of his encores to a standing ovation from the five. That tells you about his philosophy of life: there was never, ever anything in music that didn’t matter.
A lesson I learned very early on is that questions are more important than answers. So many people you meet are in a hurry to give you the answers and tell you what you ought to do. It’s not what matters. What matters is asking the questions, and having an eternal curiosity and always wanting to understand and know more. Then there’s a chance that you come up with the right answers. Albert Einstein somehow managed to say everything that one would want to say so succinctly, and he always said that he had no particular talents, just an insatiable curiosity. The fact that he knew that was the most important talent he had says it all.
I remember when I first arrived at Carnegie Hall, people would often ask, “What’s best for Carnegie Hall?” when we sat down for a planning meeting. I always said, “That’s the wrong question. The right question is, ‘What’s best for music, and what’s best for the way music can affect peoples’ lives? If you ask that, you’ll always do the right thing for Carnegie Hall in the end.” And I think if throughout your lives as musicians you ask those two questions, and answer them honestly, you will end up doing the right things.
The other big, big issue for me in terms of values (if you want to call it a value) is humility. One of the things that I always found astonishing with people like Rostropovich or Lenny Bernstein is that they were never satisfied, however good the performance was today. In fact, Rostropovich never wanted to talk about today’s performance. All he was thinking about was how it was going to be better tomorrow. He didn’t want praise. He was very, very perfunctory about people praising him today, because that performance was finished; it was gone. What did he learn from it, how would it be better tomorrow?
I remember in my very early days at the London Symphony, one of the incredible things every conductor would say when they came was: “I’ve just been conducting the Berlin Philharmonic or the Vienna Philharmonic. When we come to London, when we go to most places, if the rehearsal on the day of the concert finishes at one o’clock, no matter what, [even] if there’s still things we think need doing, at one o’clock that’s when it finishes and everybody stops. In Berlin and Vienna, if the players think it can still be better, they will be asking questions and they’ll be expecting the conductor to go on rehearsing, until they feel it’s as good as it possibly can be.” It’s that whole perpetual quest to be better and never, ever be satisfied.
I remember an amazing thing about Lenny Bernstein: when he was in his sixties, he threw away all of his scores of the Tchaikovsky symphonies. He bought them again, so that he could start thinking about Tchaikovsky fresh and not be influenced by all the markings and everything else he had put in [the scores] throughout his life. He wanted to test and challenge himself again, he was never, ever satisfied. You never, ever find the answers. You have to go on seeking.
Another huge influence on me is a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist who was a concentration camp survivor and went through unbelievable horrors. At the end of WWII, Frankl went straight back to Vienna and started practicing again, despite everything that had happened. He’d lost all his family, but to him everything was about forgiveness; about what you put into life, and how you contribute to other peoples’ lives. His philosophy was that everything that matters in life ensues, you don’t pursue it. If you pursue happiness, money, wealth, success, you never find them. If you pursue the things that matter, helping other peoples’ lives, caring about music, caring about the affect music can have on peoples’ lives, out of that will ensue a life that really matters. For me, his view about ensue rather than pursue is a true fundamental of life, and I think this is one of the great books if none of you have read it.
Also out of this whole thing of ensue comes the issue of careers. I have children in their late twenties. And one of the things they could never really, and still almost never, believe is that, no matter what, I can virtually guarantee that not one of you in thirty years’ time will be doing what you expect to do.
The thing that is interesting and almost always true about talented people is that they are multi-talented. They have immense opportunities throughout life, as you all will. You’re all extraordinarily talented. But the only way you’ll know what all the opportunities are is if you bring total passion and total commitment to everything you do, so that, as with Rostropovich, there is no such thing as a second-class date. There’s no such thing as something that matters a bit less. If you do it with total commitment, windows of opportunity open, and you will find your life going off in directions.
I would almost guarantee there’s no one on this stage who is doing what they thought they were going to do with their lives. I’m certainly not. I did practice the cello, and I hoped to be a cellist, but life’s gone off in a different direction, as it does for everybody. And I think what is wonderful about life is to pursue the things that really matter and your life will then take its own course. It’s very hard to force it, which is the thing that is really difficult to come to terms with that you actually won’t be guiding a lot of the time. The only way you’ll guide it is by being totally committed to what you do and utterly passionate about what you do.
It’s wonderful to be here, and I’m sure you’re going to have utterly fascinating lives; I’m sure you will have many careers, and I think the dedication and the passion and the commitment that have brought you to this moment will be what defines your life, your contribution to humanity, and to music. And that’s what actually matters.