The psychology of performance: Richard Tognetti on nerves and strength

Richard Tognetti performingImage:
Richard Tognetti was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his services and leadership in Australian music. (Supplied: Simon van Boxtel)

For 25 years, classical icon Richard Tognetti has served as the artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. As part of Mental As, he shares his approach to managing stage nerves and abandoning the notion of perfectionism.

Adrenaline can transform into nerves or adrenaline can transform and transmogrify into the magic of being fearless.

It's a bit like big wave surfing, and big wave surfers talk about this fear and harnessing it and turning it into a positive.

That's really interesting, and it's hard to prophesise; it's hard to work out what is going to happen to your nerves in a concert. You either get match fatigue or you get match brave, and that really comes from experience.

A lot of people get really scared just getting up in front of a school and addressing an assembly. Times that by a million and put an instrument in your hands, and [add] the abstracted nature of music, and then you've got a taste of what it's like standing in front of an audience.

Sometimes you feel great all day, you walk out on stage and fatigue hits you, the adrenaline turns into negative nerves. Other times you can be feeling rotten all day and really nervous and you walk out on a stage and you feel fearless.

It's a bit like big wave surfing, and big wave surfers talk about this fear and harnessing it and turning it into a positive.

Richard Tognetti conductingImage:
In 1999, Tognetti was declared a National Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia (Supplied: Simon van Boxtel)

I remember standing in front of an orchestra directing Le Tombeau de Couperin of Ravel and being quite daunted.

Now I'm not, and now we do Mahler, and the Christmas Oratorio of Bach and Beethoven 9, and you get used to that experience of being in front of a large orchestra, in front of many people, being a general if you like. At first it's a really daunting experience.

It's not an innate talent, conducting or directing, it's a real learned thing. You just have to build up hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, months, years of experience.

Perfection obsession.

We are so hooked on perfection these days, that you hear a squeak and squawk and 'oh no, it's not like the CD'.

To overreact to those small things, those small hiccups creates a certain fear on the stage as well.

You've got to give in to those little mistakes.

There's no question that in Mozart's time those squeaks and squawks were a part of the action.

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