James Cuddeford

HK Magazine: How has your experience been with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta?
James Cuddeford: I’ve been concertmaster for the Hong Kong Sinfonietta for two-and-a-half years. The orchestra is freer, its programming is quite inventive. We do a lot of chamber music, I get to play solo quite a lot, or play early music or 20th century music. Even in terms of size—with a lot of orchestras, basically there’s always going to be 50 to 80 people onstage. But just the other week we were doing a baroque concert and there were a couple of pieces with just five or six people onstage. It’s very important for an orchestra to be flexible. That flexibility was one of the things that attracted me. A lot of orchestras get locked into doing the same type of thing.

HK: You used to be in a string quartet—what would you say the differences are between that and playing in an orchestra?
JC: I still think being in a quartet is one of the hardest things a violinist can do—in many ways harder than being a soloist, harder than playing in an orchestra. But there are different difficulties doing different things. The hierarchy of soloists—chamber musicians, orchestral musicians and teachers—actually doesn’t make much sense, but they’re easy labels. One of the main differences is a quartet is pretty much democratic. You control everything in discussions with only three other people—what you do with the music and in terms of arranging concerts, touring, scheduling. In a sense you’re your own boss. Chamber musicians or soloists can just change direction—it’s your life, your consequences. If you want to play a piece totally different to the way you played it two days ago, you can. But in an orchestra, everything takes a bit longer and there’s more structure involved. It’s not more difficult or easier, just different.

HK: What’s the relationship like between your composing and performing work?
JC: I’ve always spent about half my time composing and half playing. With a good performer, you’ll have a sense that he’s composing as he’s playing. And a good composer is performing as he writes because he’s hearing the sounds there and then. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that there’s been a separation. In the 16th century to the 19th century, everyone who composed played in some form. There was never someone who just sat at a desk and composed and lectured at a university. There’s nothing wrong with that, but all of the great violinists until the early 20th century composed, and it’s perfectly natural.

HK: How do you think the classical music scene has changed since your career first began?
JC: It’s a big subject to talk about, but I do think even the really conservative, really big orchestras are learning that they have to be flexible. I think the days are over where you can just turn up and play music from 1750 to 1900, always in a concert hall, always for people 50 to 70 years old. Of course, orchestras have been trying to change their images, but actually I find that musicians are also enjoying this aspect a lot more. It’s important for an orchestra to realize that they’re a loose collective of musicians rather than one big blob. Music should be growing. It’s a living thing.

HK: Are there any composers or musicians you draw inspiration from?
JC: I studied with two of the greatest composers of the second half of the 20th century in Europe, Kurtag and Stockhausen. Stockhausen is extremely famous for his various incredible visions. I’m not saying that my music is like that, I haven’t written anything like that, but that’s the background which I’ve come out of. It’s the music I loved when I was a teenager and the music which is really close to my heart. That music’s hardly ever played in Hong Kong, ever, so it’s a bit hard to talk about.

Catch Cuddeford with the Sinfonietta on Sep 14.