The Leeds: Gaetan Le Divelec & Adam Gatehouse in conversation

Claire Jackson (CJ): This year’s instalment will be the first with co-Artistic Directors Paul Lewis and Adam Gatehouse at the helm. Adam, what new developments can we expect?

Adam Gatehouse (AG): Well, The Leeds has always had a place in the top pantheon of competitions. What we felt was lacking was a way of reaching out to the world. We used to bring the world to Leeds – which is a wonderful town in the north of England – but we felt that The Leeds needed to reach out to the world. We brought the first round back in April out to Berlin, Singapore and New York, those being the three centres from which we draw our competitors, and, for the first time we are streaming the competition online through medici.tv. Through them we will be able to reach an audience of millions – probably a greater audience in this one competition than we’ve brought in the 55 years of the competition’s history. Crucially, I think, we have developed a prize package which is very valuable: partnerships with organisations like the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Warner Classics, and, really crucially, the partnership we’re developing with Askonas Holt, which will ensure artist management for one of the winners.

CJ: It’s really important that this prize package is designed with the pianist’s long-term career in mind. How will Askonas Holt’s management do this?

Gaetan Le Divelec (GLD): We would always take a long-term view of an artist’s career, particularly a young artist. We take an artist-centred approach, so what we do will very much depend on the individual. We will focus on their strengths, and look at the areas they need to develop in the short-, medium- and longterm. There is a wide range of ages amongst the finalists, and obviously our approach would be completely different with a 19-year-old than with a 29-year-old. We expect there will be an aspect of it which would be a pastoral role, and advising on career strategy and repertoire. We also have a huge amount of information which transits through our office, and that gives us a real opportunity to place an artist in the right places at the right time.

AG: For us, the fact that we are partnering with Askonas Holt is also of huge value. I’ve known Askonas Holt for the best part of 30 years, and have worked with them in various capacities, and have always known them to be an agency that really does take the artist’s long-term career to its heart. I’ve seen so many wonderful artists – Ian Bostridge is one, but going back further, Felicity Lott, Thomas Allen – whose careers started when they were virtually unknown, here at Askonas Holt, and who have in the best possible way been allowed to build their careers to their best possible advantage. For us that is very important.

CJ: Paul Lewis has spoken before about the importance of not taking on too many engagements within the first year, and how it’s very tempting for a competition prize winner to run before they can walk. Would you agree?

GLD: This is perhaps one of the most important things for anyone who manages an artist who has just won an international competition: it will be mainly about slowing things down, rather than speeding things up. From an artist manager’s point of view, what a competition of The Leeds’ calibre brings to the equation is momentum, and you could easily take a short-term approach and go too fast. We all need to remember that any pianist who wins a competition of this calibre, however good they are as an instrumentalist, is still at a stage where there is a lot they need to do in order to develop. The danger is that they get exposed too much too soon. A lot of people are going to hear them in the two years which follow the competition, and a lot of people are going to form opinions – that includes concert presenters, orchestra managers... It is really important that they form the right opinion at that point, because if they don’t, you’re looking at years before that can be turned around.

CJ: It will be a question of pacing the engagements, but also making sure that they play the right repertoire, that they’re really ready to present to the audience, and where they know they can bring something strong and unique. And that’s going to make people who hear them feel that they are an artist who is ready to go.

AG: I think it’s very interesting that when we asked Murray Perahia [Patron of The Leeds] what is was like after he won The Leeds in 1972, he said it was quite traumatic because he didn’t have enough repertoire. He had to take six months off to learn repertoire, and had to cancel all the engagements they’d lined up for him! With that in mind, we have raised the stakes a little bit for the contestants, in that, for instance, they have to present two completely different programmes for the semi-finals; they have to come prepared to play these two completely different programmes of 75 minutes, which includes chamber music, and we will choose that the night before one of them has to go on to perform. The same with concertos; they will have to have two concertos ready to play, and we will select which one it is.

CJ: I think the danger of anybody who is catapulted, if you like, onto the stage through winning a major competition is that they simply are not equipped with enough repertoire to cope with it.

GLD: It’s the amount of repertoire, and it’s the ability to build a programme. One of the things that gave us faith that The Leeds was a competition that we’d like to establish a partnership with was the thinking that went into all this. You feel that they have thought about all the aspects that make a successful concert pianist: not just the instrumental part, but the repertoire, how to build a programme, the chamber music side of things... These are all crucial aspects of building a career.

CJ: Both of those aspects; the chamber music and the breadth of repertoire, that’s quite unusual in a piano competition.

AG: I think where we are slightly different to some of the others, is that we do make some quite strong stipulations. Particularly when it comes to – again going back to Murray Perahia – what he called the ‘core classical repertoire’, which is what he said attracted him to The Leeds. So, for both the preliminary rounds and the first round, they have to perform a work pre-1800 or pre-1820. In the concertos, they have to have a concerto which goes from Bach to Mendelssohn, via Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, as well as Rachmaninov, Schumann, Chopin or Prokofiev. They need to be able to do both, and I think that is crucial. The other crucial thing that Gaetan touched on is the programming, and each of the contestants that gets through to the semi-finals has to present the jury with a 500-word exposé about why they have chosen the programme, and that will be taken into account.

CJ: Which again is unusual, and it’s these forward-thinking ideas that are making this competition so exciting. One of the particularly unusual things about this prize package is that it’s not automatically going to be the first prize winner that Askonas Holt represents. Can you tell us why?

GLD: Well, it’s actually quite straight forward. Successful representation of an artist rests on obviously a talented artist and good management, but also on a good chemistry between the two. To be bound to representing an artist without knowing anything about who they are is not something that would make sense from our perspective. There are also some very practical reasons why it isn’t actually possible for us to take on the winner; they may already have representation for example. It was a pragmatic decision. But the way the competition has been designed gives us every reason to believe that we will agree with the jury of the competition, that the winner is also the one that we should represent.

CJ: Am I right in thinking that jury doesn’t just comprise pianists?

AG: We wanted the jury to be one that was international performerled, so there are five international pianists (Paul Lewis, Imogen Cooper, Lars Vogt, Shai Wosner and Sa Chen), but we also wanted a composer, so we have Thomas Larcher. We also wanted a chamber musician, somebody who would bring a different perspective, and I’m really pleased that Henning Kraggerud is on that, because he’s a kind of wild card. Anyone who’s ever met Henning knows that nothing is quite straight forward with him, and his music making is always really interesting, and he’s collaborated with all sorts of people. Given the accent that we are placing on chamber music, I think that’s really important. Then we have myself, and Gillian Moore [Director of Music at Southbank Centre] as concert promoter. It’s not a huge jury; I don’t see the value in that.

CJ: It will be interesting to see the dynamic between the mentees and the mentors, particularly as they’re not all pianists.

AG: Well, yes, and Henning is going to do a masterclass during the competition. That’s another thing that I have not mentioned and that I should: we’re offering not only the contestants, but the audience members, a much broader experience. The competition element takes place in the afternoons and evenings, but in the mornings, there are going to be masterclasses, exhibitions, discussions, talks. And crucially, all the 24 who come to Leeds will stay at the competition right through to the end

GLD: This is another thing that we found incredibly appealing about the way the competition was designed. I’ve always felt, from my perspective as a manager, that a competition should be of value to all the candidates and not just the winners.

CJ: Given the age difference runs from 20 to 29, the person you’re representing may well still be at a conservatoire, still studying. How would that work?

GLD: Again, that really depends on the individual artist, it depends on their professor. There are some artists that are still studying who are very independent from their professors; there are others who will want to discuss everything with their professors. And you have situations where a professor will want to engage with the management, or others where they kind of feel that’s maybe not my job.

CJ: What it would of course mean if we are looking at an artist who is still studying, is that obviously has a direct impact on the number of engagements that they’re able to take on on an annual basis. We would need to have a very candid discussion with the artist about the comfortable number of engagements they can take without it impacting on their studies and their continued development. That would mean taking a long-term view; we would be looking at perhaps a five-year strategy, where only when you get to that point would you start increasing the pace. We have a lot of experience with managing artists who are at that sort of level; there is a history of us working for artists who are, some of them, actually still in their mid-teens and who are very much still students. We basically take it slowly. And in the early years, it’s a pastoral role; it’s making sure they do the right things, and it’s often more about saying no than saying yes to invitations.

AG: Just to pick up on what Gaetan said about artists in their teens, we have actually raised the lower age limit to 20. There was no age limit; some artists came at 15. Paul and I felt very strongly that, particularly because of those sorts of conflicting things and the fact that at that age they don’t have the repertoire or the maturity…

GLD: …or the stamina…

AG: …or the experience to really embark on the sort of career that winning, and the exposure of winning, The Leeds will open them to. If they’re good at 18, they’ll be even better at 21!

This is an edited version of a longer video interview. Watch the full interview at askonasholt.co.uk or on YouTube.