When she was three, the daughter of a friend of mine used to call me 'The Connector'. Like many malapropisms, this delightfully innocent slip of the tongue actually reveals a great deal. Conducting is essentially all about connecting.

Most classical music performed today was written by people who are now dead. This wasn't always the case and it's intriguing that it changed around the time conducting emerged as a profession in its own right. I don't mean to suggest that conductors killed off the composer but the absence of one did increase the responsibility of the other. Connecting with the composer's wishes is an obvious part of performance. Conductors are not mediums, but we are in the position of trying to act as a specific link between a large group of today and an individual of the past.

Gustav Mahler talked about his music as existing 'between the notes', and it is certainly true that a single sound on its own has relatively little emotional meaning. Only in the relationship between one pitch and another does a melody or harmony find its significance. The essence of music lies in the invisible glue that binds the notes together and it is this that good musicians make stick in our hearts and minds. I see part of my job as trying to connect each note to the next, not necessarily always smoothly, but definitely as logically and organically as possible. Allowing the players to move from one note to another without any break in the music's line is one of the main goals of conducting. The more that line is connected within itself, the more the listeners are carried along with it.

I was once asked if I felt people attending concerts needed conductors to physically point out what they should be hearing. It had in fact never occurred to me that I had a visual responsibility beyond what I thought would benefit an orchestra. After all, if the conductor is trying to illuminate the piece for the audience's eyes as well as their ears, where does that leave those listening at home to their radios or CDs? I know of some people who even go to concerts and keep their eyes shut - and that's just because they find the conductor such a distraction!

I don't think concert-goers need conductors to connect specifically with music but being able to identify with an individual undoubtedly helps the human relationship between them and the orchestra. Ultimately though, it is the power to connect people within an audience that is one of music's greatest abilities and for me to be part of something that makes a public respond as one, is one of the more significant privileges of conducting.

Connections work on so many different levels. At its best, so does conducting. The relationship between the two is obvious when you come to think of it, but perhaps some things need the profundity of a three-year-old child to be articulated so simply.

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