How orchestras build reputations by touring

Sixty years ago, taking a British orchestra on tour was a diplomatic statement as well as a logistical achievement. When Sir Adrian Boult led the London Philharmonic to Moscow in 1956, it was to mark the supposed change in atmosphere after Stalin's death. The goodwill did not last long. A few weeks later Russia crushed revolt against communist rule in Hungary and relations were back to square one. Nonetheless, the process required the full (if inefficient) co-operation of governments and Sir Adrian, who always refused to fly, citing back and ear trouble, made the journey even more complicated by taking the train all the way – through the Iron Curtain states of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland before being allowed into Russian territory and monitored every kilometre of the way to Moscow.

At the nine concerts themselves, shared between Boult, George Hurst and Anatole Fistoulari, the reception was as delirious as the hosts' protocol allowed (no Western orchestra could be admitted to be better than a Soviet one, at least in public) and the players were fêted lavishly, while Moscow and Leningrad's musical elite, including the recently rehabilitated composers like Shostakovich, were in attendance. In fact the whole London contingent went to the celebrations for Shostakovich's 50th birthday. Through the 1960s and 70s, as air travel became easier and cultural diplomacy important in foreign policy, tours in the summer months became more normal but they were still seen as big occasions. This was just as true for foreign orchestras coming to Britain (usually to the Edinburgh Festival and The Proms) as for ours going overseas.

Even 30 years ago a tour was considered newsworthy enough to send a journalist along with the players – I was fortunate enough to join several orchestras on various trips abroad. Some turned out to be routine – just a matter of reporting on the concerts and adding a bit of colourful travelogue. Others, though, could be both surprising and controversial - for a journalist, tours are often a time to really get to know players and their unguarded thoughts about the music business. On one assignment, to come back from America with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, several players approached me in the middle of the night in the plane over the Atlantic to explain how terrified they were of the Principal Conductor, Lorin Maazel, and how miserable he was making life for them.

On another, with the BBC Concert Orchestra in northern Italy to help celebrate a peace anniversary, the carefree mood was quickly dissipated when one of the women players was confronted (the details are sufficiently hazy after so many years for me not to want to go further than that) by a predatory hotel manager.

Altogether more satisfactory and fun was the tour of Germany made with the BBC Scottish and their legendary conductor, Jerzy 'Mad Max' Maksymiuk. When I joined in Glasgow he greeted me with the immortal line, 'nice to meet you – have a grapefruit', which he duly produced from his raincoat pocket and tossed to me. One of the two tour coaches was equipped with a ghetto blaster playing the season's best concerts set to drum machine, and enough cases of Tennant's lager to keep the brass section's lips moist all down the endless autobahns. They carried Sibelius' Fifth Symphony with them and just how good they were showed when, by perfect coincidence, I heard them in Augsburg one evening and the Munich Philharmonic with Celibadache in the same work the next. The Scottish orchestra and Mad Max won by miles.

In a post-pandemic world, touring will, of course, remain vitally important to reputation. Hearing an orchestra live can draw a distant audience's loyalty for years, far more than any number of recordings or streamed events. Equally a disappointment can mean that listeners do not exactly rush to hear them again, either when they come to Britain as tourists or when the band revisits. All of this means that taking a 'B' team or touring with a conductor who is neither the Principal nor of special renown is a mistake. It's bad enough when the concerts are in isolation. When they are part of a festival where all the big name competitors are in town, the great can start to look rather too ordinary.

A good example was the London Symphony Orchestra's visit to the Enescu Festival in the autumn of 2019. The festival had been opened on previous nights by the Berlin Philharmonic showcasing their new chief, Kirill Petrenko. Instead of the LSO appearing with their equally newly installed principal, Petrenko's predecessor Sir Simon Rattle, they had Gianandrea Noseda who, with the best will, is no world beater. He is a time beater who wallops the music into submission. There are some orchestras who need and respond to that approach but the LSO are too good for it. They are used to conductors who might not beat one to six in a bar but who indicate shape and flow with subtlety the LSO's wonderful players can work with. The result of engaging Noseda for Bucharest was that the orchestra sounded fine but not exceptional – unlike the Polish National Radio Orchestra or the Dresden Staatskappelle, playing in the rest of the week I was there. Did the LSO think, 'Oh, it's only Bucharest, Noseda will do,' without realising that the league table of festivals has changed since the 1990s?

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) might have had the same problem, performing Gluck opera the two nights after Europa Galante had given us Handel and before Accademia Bizantina produced Vivaldi. There was no complacency anywhere from them, though, despite starting at 10.30 in the evening. Fabio Biondi as usual led Europa Galante from the violin, and Lawrence Cummings directed OAE standing at the harpsichord. The excellence was never in dispute. To hear first Handel's Silla, then Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (with Anna Caterina Antonacci) and Orfeo ed Euridice (with Iestyn Davies), and Vivaldi's Giustino on successive nights showed how rewarding concentrating Europe's best in one location can be when they are at their peak.