When Anthony Marwood met the Irish Chamber Orchestra, it was love at first sight, its new artistic director tells Michael Dervan

In orchestral terms, violinist Anthony Marwood and the Irish Chamber Orchestra are showing all the signs of a whirlwind romance. They gave their first concerts together in Limerick and Dublin just 18 months ago.

Last April came the announcement of Marwood's appointment as artistic director. And he makes his formal debut in his new role at the University Concert Hall, Limerick, tomorrow week.

Appearances, it seems, are not lying. The appeal of working with the orchestra, he says, was immediate. "As soon as I started playing with them in the first rehearsal, I sensed a strong spirit of openness and communication. And after that a kind of willingness to explore in rehearsal, in a way that is, sadly, quite unusual in professional life.

"It really struck me right away. These people are here to do some significant work together. They were incredibly open to me and my ideas, and happy to use every second of rehearsal time in a constructive way. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it's most unusual. In so many situations you're not really allowed to do that. You're supposed to stop the rehearsal 20 minutes early for the sake of some kind of unwritten etiquette. I've always thought this was a very, very strange way to go about things."

There are all kinds of rules of thumb about the relationships between rehearsals and concerts. The idea that a good rehearsal foretells a difficult concert is particularly strongly ingrained. Marwood's first ICO concert seems to have been every bit as rewarding as the rehearsals.

"Sometimes, if you don't rehearse something, the concert can be quite exciting and very spontaneous. Sometimes if you have just a little bit of rehearsal, it can be a bad thing, because you've only just begun to touch on the things that need to be discussed. But in this case there was time to probe.

"If you've done your work and you've gone deep into something, that is a very freeing feeling, actually. I'm not instinctively one for the rehearsal on the day. I really hate that, actually. Sometimes one has to do it and get on with it. But I kind of feel like everybody is being short-changed. Some orchestras may feel, oh, good, there's only one rehearsal. In actual fact it's less meaningful, and, I feel sad for the audience, who might not necessarily realise what's happened. On some level it's cheating."

In spite of his delight in preparation, Marwood invites spontaneity when actually performing. "I think it's very important to be in the moment. It's extremely important to let it in, as it were. I would find it too deeply scary to know how every single thing must, must, must be, and to try and follow that. I think it would come out sounding unnatural. You understand shapes and architecture and colour, things like that, so you have some sense, like a map, in a way. But within that, things will happen. So much of music is a conversation, people are going to say things in a slightly different way, and it's important to be able to react to that.

"I'm fascinated by theatre, and how actors work, and how actors perform the same play night after night after night. Some people think, how awful to repeat night after night. I actually don't. I think, how amazing to have the opportunity to let something go a slightly different course every time. It's absolutely fascinating, to have that sense of trust between people on stage."

He's speaking from experience. Since 1999 he has been collaborating on performances with the south Indian choreographer and dancer Mayuri Boonham. He's also toured in a production of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, not just as the violinist, but actually onstage as the soldier - and playing the violin into the bargain.

The ICO is still basically an orchestra of string players, and Marwood would like to see it grow by hiring the wind players necessary to make it a full chamber orchestra. "I certainly feel that it would be wonderful for the group to be more of an adaptable size. It would be really wonderful if it could be a full chamber orchestra at times. That raises all kinds of questions of personnel and funding. That is the direction I would like to go in, not exclusively, because there is plenty you can do as a string group.

"It seems to me also that the ICO is poised to be a truly international orchestra if it wants to be at this point. That's reflected in its ambitions to perform abroad more, but also in the way that it sees itself. It's Irish on the one hand, but it's a player in the bigger international scene as well. That's quite a difficult balance to get. I don't want it to be too much of an insular thing that's contained within Ireland. Establishing that identity, and being proud and centred in that way, is very important. But it's also important to be outward-looking."

He instances the orchestra's attitude to contemporary music. "It's very important to encourage and develop relationships with Irish composers. But I don't think we should get hung on the idea that it can only be that. I don't want to exclude the possibility that it can be wonderful new music from anywhere in the world."

The most striking aspect of his opening season, however, has nothing to do with contemporary music. It has to do with the number of string quartet arrangements which have been included. "I suppose instinctively there's something about learning to play chamber music with each other on a bigger scale that I wanted to practise and explore. And playing great chamber music repertoire is a good way of doing it."

Marwood is a member of the Florestan Trio, which won itself a Gramophone Award for a disc of Schumann in 1999.

"I wouldn't want to have the label put on me, that I'm the guy who does arrangements. I hate boxes. I hate labels. On the contrary, it's very important that we play a very broad range of music, that we're very adaptable. Sure we play baroque music and we play new music. I don't want there to be any sense of limitation in that respect." In general, when it comes to repertoire choices, he says, "It will be more a question of marrying a guest director, guest conductor or guest soloist with a particular repertoire."

He wants the orchestra to be active in the recording studio. "It's very early days but, certainly, one of the things we've talked about is starting our own label. Which I think is probably the way to go. The recording world changes so fast these days, doesn't it? A lot is happening very fast. In any case, I think that recording teaches you a great deal. I think it will be very, very healthy for the ICO to do that. We would learn an awful lot."

The way he says this reminds me of the great pianist Artur Schnabel, the first person to record all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, who said he discovered how to listen to himself in a completely new way through his experiences in front of the microphone.

The ICO is already on the path to creating a new home for itself in Limerick. "Having your own home would be so, so wonderful. Having the possibility to have a hall which could then be used for recording, it would be absolutely fantastic."

You don't have to search very hard these days to find negative predictions about the end of orchestral life as we know it. "The mistake," says Marwood, "is to try to hang on to some idea of status quo." There are dangers, he says, from orchestras expecting "to walk out on stage in our tails, for our audiences to come to us, for the repertoire to sell itself. If you have that expectation, you're absolutely doomed." However, he says, "I have very little time for these prophets of doom. For as long as I've been playing concerts people have been saying the audiences are ageing. And yet, mysteriously, there are still people who are alive in the audience, even now.

"I'm absolutely passionate about the idea of going after younger audiences. But I think one has to accept on the other hand that classical music is possibly something people come to at a certain point in their lives. We have to positively enjoy the possibilities to be imaginative, and to draw people in. And I also feel strongly about not losing that sense of focus about the work we do, the excellence of the work we do. Again, I feel it's a bit of a balancing act. It's about building trust with the audience. That's the key to success. Short-term, quick-fix approaches are a disaster. It requires patience and a lot of work."

Anthony Marwood directs the Irish Chamber Orchestra in Mendelssohn's D minor Violin Concerto, Samuel Barber's String Quartet, and Beethoven's String Quartet in C sharp minor at the University Concert Hall, Limerick, Mar 30, City Hall, Cork, Apr 1, and the NCH, Dublin, Apr 2