Poles are all trained as soloists not as orchestral musicians

“Poles are all trained as soloists, not as orchestral musicians. That means that everybody there is trying to be the best, the loudest, the most wonderful player. The all-male orchestra was very efficient, but its sound was hard. It isn’t any less efficient now, but the sound is softer and sweeter. And it doesn’t work, because an orchestra must be one organism.”After the performance and the tumultuous applause, Colin Davis pinpoints the key change in this band over the four decades he has known it: the influx of women “They’re very good players, and they make a different sound. This constant movement also allows every player to assess those who join them on trial. Hundreds of hopefuls apply when a post falls vacant, and a musician can spend years on trial.A statuesque young Pole, Iwona Muszynska, has just entered this process, and is learning to appreciate the collegiate ethos.

People tell me that when they sit next to him, they feel like better players.”That’s another thing about this orchestra: they all move around, so nobody gets stuck in a bad position – next to the piercing piccolos or ear-bashing timpani, for instance. The orchastra’s occasional woes have been no less dramatic, and it has had the narrowest squeak in musical history – as the first European orchestra to cross the Atlantic, it was prevented by a booking mix-up from travelling on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.Ever since the London Philharmonic naively bared its communal soul to a journalist in the mid-Nineties- the revelations about sex, drugs and despair were so mortifying that many players couldn’t face their colleagues on publication day – British orchestras have worried about their image, the periodically strife-torn LSO more than most. They run their own record label, LSO Live (launched in 2000), and last year converted a Grade I-listed church, St Luke’s, into a music-education centre. If I’m going to walk into a trap, my neighbour will help me not to. When you play with younger, less experienced people, you immediately feel the lack of this radar. They can walk into a wall quite easily.”Where you sit determines what you earn: the top four numbered desks in the first violins are on a sliding scale above the other 16 unnumbered players, who all earn the same, however long they’ve been here.

But, as Harrild points out, some actually prefer to stay “rank and file”. He says: “One musician, who’s regarded as the absolute doyen of orchestral violinists, wouldn’t dream of moving up He loves being in the middle of the section. “It’s lovely to leave the decisions to somebody else, to just sit back and watch things unfold, to let somebody else decide if it’s an up or a down stroke.” Why is that decision so important? “It reflects your interpretation of a phrase. It comes from the leader, down to the rest of the section.” How easy is it to get out of kilter? “Experienced people acquire a sort of radar system: they react to each other very quickly. You have to wield the stick, but as this is a democratic orchestra, you can’t do that heavily. You have to sort out bowings, and smooth the way between conductors and the other players.

I wanted a less stressful life.”Regina Beukes left a principal’s job in another orchestra to join the LSO as a rank-and-file viola. I’ve just joined a gym.”Brass players are not the only people at risk, Broadbent says: everybody has their exposed moments “It’s all a matter of muscular balance and relaxation. Even world-class weightlifters have this problem: they can’t pull their best when they’re nervous, because they have to relax the muscles that work in the opposite direction from the one they are pulling in. I’ve often heard top violinists getting ready for a concerto, going shift-shift-shift up and down the fingerboard in their dressing room, so that when they go on stage and nerves kick in, it still feels the same.”It was stress that impelled Warwick Hill to move down to the No 2 seat after 19 years as principal second violin “I’d just had enough of leading. An adrenalin shot – and you don’t have the chance to burn the chemicals which are now flooding into the bloodstream That’s why it’s good to go for a run afterwards. He’d been working too hard, and the pressure had affected his embouchure, which he’d signalled by cracking a note in that cruelly exposed lone trumpet call that opens Mahler’s Fifth. Being the pro he is, he recovered his form within a couple of weeks.Stress? In contrast to those poor saps in the LPO, nobody in the LSO seems to take beta-blockers, but the topic still crops up in this miasma of pre-concert tuning and practising that swirls round our heads.