Redefining "Success" as a Classical Musician

Stevens & Pound - Delia Stevens and Will Pound

On 21 June 2025 at Stromness Town Hall as part of the St Magnus Festival, the duo Stevens & Pound present Ascending - a cross-genre concert full of original compositions and reimaginations following the creative evolution of classical composers who were inspired by the English Folk Revival. And then on 23 June at the festival in St Magnus Cathedral, Stevens & Pound join another duo, Grant & McQuade for Sharing and Gathering, a wide and varied programme and where they collaborate for the first time.

Here, percussionist Delia Stevens - one half of the classical-folk collaboration Stevens & Pound  - reflects on her definition of success; from where she is as a musician today and whilst growing up in the classical music industry.

The original master plan:

Back in the day, this was my vision for achieving “success”: 

Get grade 8 distinction. Get into the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Win BBC Young Musician of the Year. Get into music college with a full scholarship. Win all the other music competitions. I am officially recognised as “talented” by others. I get all the concerts (no admin woes). My mission is to show the world how AMAZING percussion is and that there is more to it than just playing the triangle every now and then at the back of an orchestra.

A decade or so on, some of that kind of happened and most of it didn’t, or it was a really small slice of the pie. And I now have a completely different view of what “success” looks like as a musician.

How do we Define Success in the Classical Music Industry?

There was some truth in that dream. Because in the classical music industry, the people who are programming all the music are not necessarily virtuoso instrumentalists themselves. And very unlikely to be a percussionist, or feel comfortable on judging the merits of one. So how do they know which percussionist is “the best”? 

It was important to me back then that I played difficult music which would be appropriate for a competition or exam. I was not particularly worried at the time about how generous this music was to the listener, but more that it was in some way personally satisfying to play, or accomplish; that it made me grow and that it impressed my teachers, peers and the classical music community.

I thought of myself as pursuing a “creative” career - especially with the title "musician" after my name. The source of this creativity came from what I considered to be a uniquely personal interpretation of this music. However, this was contextualised by the need for technical perfection, executed in a stylistically correct way for the historical context of the time and as faithful to the score and the composer’s intentions as possible.

Is it possible to genuinely innovate within so much expectation to imitate, especially when the music you are performing is constantly being judged with a score sheet in an examination environment?

The problem the curators have is that a lot of classical musicians play the same music. Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending has been voted “the most popular piece of music” a record twelve times in the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame. And the expected standard can only be described as perfectionism. I was working with the Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers Sofi Jeannin who summed it up nicely: “We play concerts as if we are recording, yet we somehow expect our recordings to sound like concerts”. Orchestras even dress the same - in a black uniform with a tonne of specifications - moving too much, overly expressive facial expressions, pink hair... these moments of individualism are deemed to be "a distraction from the music".

Who Decides Who is Successful? 

It helps if there is a panel of virtuoso (or formerly virtuoso) musicians who can decide who the most faithful “interpreters” of the score are and then create a menu for everyone else to know who is the best. At one point during music college, I realised that all of my ‘performances’ that month were an exam, audition or competition.

Some of this expert objectivity is of course subjective. A non-specialist audience were actually more able to successfully guess who an expert panel chose to win a classical music competition by watching silent performances than by listening to audio-only renditions of the same performances. 

Ticket sales or how many people would buy the album and listen to it obsessively did not matter to me back then. I was not looking to be “famous” like a pop star (in fact, I still hate having my picture taken and was a very shy child). I was used to a guaranteed fee - often put up by a sponsor of the festival/music society rather than whether the concert sold well - not worrying too much if I or the audience was going to “like” or understand the music or sign up to the mailing list after the concert and become a “fan” for every single project I was involved in on stage. I was there to serve the music, somewhat anonymously. 

What about Other Genres?

When I set up a world music band after music college, the first thing I did was look for a competition we could enter…but I could not find any. What now?

Working with harmonica player Will Pound - who grew up in the folk world - has been interesting. He thinks in teams (PR, agent, manager, plugger for sync), album cycles (write - record - release - tour - PR), deals (royalties, audience numbers, box office splits). He already had a logo, a press pack, and a thriving social media following who really care about his next concert/release/tour. Not that I was living under a rock - I would consider myself to be a somewhat savvy, fairly organised and entrepreneurial person, but this was a different way of thinking entirely.

Stereotypes and Expectations

Musically, Will is probably happier to let an idea breathe longer than I am comfortable with or to pick a more popular piece of music to play.

However, just as classical music can be perceived as “you have to be educated to understand it”, stuffy or frankly, boring - folk music comes with its own waistcoat-related plethora of image problems. And it also has the constraints of a living museum that classical music faces in the 21st century - that there is a “correct” way to “interpret” the music “as it was originally played” with the added nobility problem that you need to be “born” into a tradition in order to do it properly. 

Will’s sheer mastery and musicianship blows all of these preconceptions out of the water; approximately ten seconds after you have heard him play you have changed your mind. The Daily Telegraph described him as “One of the world’s top harmonica players” and UNCUT Magazine as “a master of the mouth harp”. 

What does Success Mean for me Now?

Earlier in my career I allowed my success to be defined by judging panels, competition outcomes and examination marks. These days I have a completely different benchmark.

Success to me is the ability to let go completely to the music and the performance. Playing music I am completely in love with and sharing it with an audience as an act stemming from generosity rather than boasting. Accessing the feeling of uninhibited full expression, the mastery of technical freedom that never blocks what you want to say, boundless joy and total connection with the other musicians on stage and the audience. It could be in a room of four people as long as they are totally engaged in the music - the prestige of the gig is not important for this feeling. You know when it happens and it is up there with the best things I know about life.

After a concert I curated and played in recently, a classical musician came up to me at the end and said "That is the most joy I have ever experienced on stage. It was as if you were floating above the music. Thank you." That meant a lot to me because they had essentially described my new measure of “success” back to me. 

Delia  - Stevens & Pound

The St Magnus Festival runs from 20 to 27 June 2025, further details from the festival website.

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